Rick Warren A False Prophet?

I've seen quite a few posts on the Blogdom of God blogs about Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life. Also, I know of quite a few good churches doing studies based on the book. But not everyone thinks PDL is the best thing since sliced bread,

I'm convinced without any shred of doubt that Rick Warren is a false shepherd. Regardless of his popularity right now, the word of God has sealed his fate, and God will eventually visit him in judgment for propagating the deceptions of Satan.

These words come from Vessel of Honor where Mac Swift offers some interesting tidbits about Mr. Warren.

I'm interested in knowing what some of you PDL bloggers think about this.

Well, what do you think?

Secret Weapons

I've heard that when we first invaded Iraq that Iraqi insurgents thought we had some special secret weapon that caused their weapons to miss. We had a secret weapon and we still do, but it isn't what they're thinking. Patriot Paradox posted a recent email that explains,

'Chaplain, let me tell you what God did for me; Chaplain, the angels that we have been talking about for weeks, preceding this war, shielded me and protected me.' It was amazing.

The email continues,

Rocket-propelled grenades would come at them, and literally curve in mid-air and go around them. Untold Marines shared with me that rockets would come and literally dive down as if batted by some unseen hand. We had one rocket go through a Humvee passenger-side window, and explode in the compartment. Without a doubt, it should have killed every man in that vehicle. And yet, when the explosion came through, it blew out the front of the windshield, and so it exploded out instead of in, and not a single man was injured.

And there's much more over at Patriot Paradox. Go read it and you'll be both amazed and thankful.

A related story caught my eye about six months ago. It was about something called "Shields of Strength". It isn't magic and doesn't act as some kind of talisman. In fact, soldiers have been killed wearing Shields of Strength. Instead, they serve as a testimony to Faith and the power of prayer.

The 1-by-2-inch shield, which Rippetoe wore along with his military dog tags and a Christian cross, displayed a U.S. flag on one side and a quote from Joshua 1:9 on the other: "I will be strong and courageous. I will not be terrified, or discouraged, for the Lord my God is with me wherever I go." [source]

Over at Beacon Blog is a post about a story in the LA Times. Go here and look at the pictures. In one of them there's a soldier being baptized. Around his neck you'll notice a Shield of Strength dog tag like the ones described above.

Read more about it here.

Once this thing is over and all of these soldiers return home, what kind of impact do you think they're going to have on their communities?

Catholics and The GOP

I received an email asking if I could post this. It's going to be tough for Bush to win Illinois but maybe something like this will help:

An open letter to Conservative Catholics

As part of a grassroots effort, the Republican National Committee is reaching out to Catholics this election cycle. One of the ongoing efforts is to identify parish leaders within each Catholic church to help communicate that it is the GOP that best exemplifies traditional Catholic values in America...

This is a truly grassroots effort, attempting to build a relationship with Catholics at the Parish level. The GOP is seeking Conservative Catholics, who are active church goers. These people will lead the effort to get the facts out to Catholic voters, and to register conservative Catholics to vote. The Parish Leaders will receive information from the RNC in support of their activities.

This is an important element in the effort to re-elect President Bush, and elect Republicans at the statewide level. As Catholics, it will enable us to be heard on issues such as abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, and any number of other issues

Illinois has a large Catholic population. Catholics in the State of Illinois could enable the President to win here, and provide the Democratic Machine a big surprise come November. The only way to enable this scenario is to become involved.

To become involved , please email George Dienhart at gdienhart@rocketmail.com

Sincerely,
George Dienhart
McHenry, IL
===============
Good Luck George! - jdm

Eye on Fallujah

Confused about what is happening in Fallujah? For an excellent detailed analysis of the tactical situation The Belmont Club is the place to visit. Today's post, Nightfall tells you all you need to know about the progress of our Marines. The previous days' post, Thrust and Parry tells me that we have some people on the ground over there who know what they're doing.

Instead of watching ABC or NBC news tonight go to The Belmont Club. You'll be a lot less confused.

Totem to Temple

This is the sixth in a series of interviews with bloggers who are part of The Blogdom of God. The Blogdom of God is a loose group of Blogs that identify themselves as 'God blogs'.

Today's interview is with Bob Rouse of Totem to Temple. He's prepared to speculate on the Anti-Christ of the Week and if you're into "holiness" churches you might want to move along. There's nothing for you to see here...

Q: Is available light online a substitute for church?

A: NO!!! and it never will be. One of the objectives (although I may or may not have met the objective well) and also one of the many answers to question 15 below is to emphasize that even though the church today has many problems in the midst of the good within the church, a true believer will eventually find a local body of Christ to be a part of, support via tithes and prayer, and contribute to Christian service within the church body and also out of the church body to go out and fulfill the Great Commission.

(Interviewer Note: I was giving him a hard time because he says his blog isn't a substitute for church. Sometimes my laconic wit doesn't translate well by text only.)

Q: You've had quite a few experiences in charismatic churches. What was it about them that attracted you and why do you think you experienced the problems you did?

A: One of the many things that attracted me to the charismatic movement was that at that time, they were one of the few groups of Christians I had seen that went out and with the power of Jesus heal the sick, cast out devils, do outreach, etc.

Q: Why do you find yourself drawn back into it through watching TBN?

A: I am not really a TBN fan. I do not watch it unless someone I want to see is on television. I think in many ways, it has gotten a little excessive and has allowed itself in many ways to spread a money-driven Gospel that equates money to anointing and money to God loving you and lack of money as the root of all evil, non-anointed, and God must hate you. However, I do like a select few that appear on that network from time to time like Mario Murillo, some (not all) of what Gregory Dickow teaches, and Dwight Thompson.

I realized that when I went to search for the truth in the matter about the Holy Spirit, I ended up uprooting both wheat and tare before the harvest time in a noble attempt for the truth. However, you can not truly distinguish wheat from tare until they bloom at harvest time.

Q: Legalism can be a tough drug to give up. Did you have problems with that and do you still?

A: Yes I did have a really bad problem with Legalism growing up in the pentecostal / holiness movement as a child (suits equated to holiness, attendance every time the doors were opened, and crossing those t's and dotting those i's) and there are probably some areas today in my life where Legalism still likes to show up. But like many people, I made a mistake of giving up an extreme on one side via legalism and went to the equal and opposite extreme of almost anything goes misusing grace as an excuse. I have had to go onward towards a quest of balance to find the middle, straight and narrow road while still being in compliance to what the Scriptures state. It's a delicate balancing act like a tightrope walker on a tightrope hundreds of feet high in the air. One shift in balance on either side and one goes tumbling down.

Q: You're a single guy in your 30's. Any prospects?

A: Not at this time. Maybe one day in the near future God will somehow lead my path to meet her and it will eventually lead to marriage.

Q: Do you still have the Black Grand Prix? (One of my favorite cars both then and now.)

A: I still do. It has seen better days in the past. Being 15 years old, it's beginning to 'nickel-and-dime' me as I repair the things that are starting to break down on the car. It's my secondary vehicle as my S-10 is my primary vehicle now.

Q: Do you think if you bought another one you might find a wife?

A: When I finally get financially back on my feet, I really would like to have another Grand Prix or if possible, the new GTO (in black of course) with the last generation HO 350 Corvette engine under the hood. I stood in the parking lot of the Pontiac dealership one early Sunday evening and was enamored by the styling cues of the GTO while being shocked at the price on the sticker. I really like what Pontiac has done trying to make stylish cars that look a little European that come close to a BMWesque feel behind the wheel (even though they may lack BMW quality and craftsmanship) at a price a poorer man might be able to afford when compared to the BMW.

I hope and pray that the quest for a Godly Proverbs 31 / Genesis 24 woman that may one day become my wife WILL NOT come as a result of having a nice vehicle, house, or whatever material possession that moth and rust will one day destroy. I pray that it may come about because two people meet each other, have their priorities and relationship with God right, and realize that
marriage is a serious lifetime covenant between me and the future wife to have and to hold, through rich or poor, sickness and health, till death do us part.

Q: What's your favorite Linux distro? Why?

A: It depends what you want to do. For serious server-based enterprise grade operations, Red Hat because the major enterprise grade server sellers (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc) usually test the hardware performance to Red Hat and the open source software development projects like Apache, PHP, MySQL, and others really emphasize their beta testing on Red Hat platforms. Even though my
secondary 'technical tinkertoy' home machine uses Red Hat, I actually found that for the home user with little to no Linux experience, Mandrake had a much easier graphical user installation interface and installed better on a home grade system than Red Hat. I think Red Hat took notice because later versions of Red Hat made drastic improvements to the graphical user installation
interface that made it easier for the inexperienced home user to install.

Q: Do you still have your Commodore 64? (I wish I still had mine.)

A: I have it but it is not working. In fact, when it quit working, I realized at that time that Commodore's days were numbered with the failure of the Amiga and the IBM PC AT/XT were the future. I then abandoned Commodore and bought a XT/AT clone with DOS.

Q: There are two types of computer geeks; artists and engineers. The artists tend to be free spirits who can come up with really good (but really buggy) programs. The engineers write really nice code but they have no ideas and tend to be overly rigid. Which one are you?

A: Engineer. In the past, I have done some 'beta testing' for some freeware and helped discover bugs and was able to communicate to the software developer's programming team to help the re-simulate the fault condition to provide resolution. It seems like most everywhere I have worked, I have always been the one to be given the product / processes with the intermittent problem to
re-simulate and re-create the problem to find the root cause of the intermittent problem to address and resolve to completion.

Q: It sounds like you listen to a lot of music. Any current favorites?

A: I listen to a lot of stuff. Primarily I have been listening to the voice audio of the ESPN sports radio network (particually Todd Wright All Night and Mike and Mike in the Morning) because I love sports and I want to blog more in the future about sports but my current musical tastes have been an unique blend. From Moving Pictures by Rush to George Gershwin's An American in Paris to the Brecker Brothers to Michael W. Smith's Worship to Paul Baloche's God of Wonders to various Lincoln Brewster CD's a friend loaned me to the Jazz Violin playing of Jean-Luc Ponty. It's an interesting hodge-podge of different music.

Q: So, who's the anti-christ this week?

A: I have not decided yet. The Kellen Winslow, JR statements about the Washington Redskins not picking him in the NFL draft has gotten him deep consideration along with Michael Jackson switching lawyers. However, something else may pop up between now and Friday that may change my mind altogether.

The 'anti-christ of the week' started out as a joke that just snowballed. A friend of mine and I were watching television one night when a news item came on about Winona Ryder being charged with shoplifting and I just blurted out these words in a sarcastic tone "Winona Ryder, Anti-christ of the week". My friend busted out laughing and rolled out of the couch to the floor in an hysterical fit. After he got over the humor, he proceeded to tell me the story (very similar to the way the antichrist was treated in pentecostal / holiness circles growing up) how when he grew up in independent Baptist fundamental circles, everytime someone made the world news, that person somehow became the most probable candidate to be the 'one world government anti christ' and how the bible prophecy teachers just re-issued and recycled their books, tapes,
etc. substituting the current newsmaker's name as the antichrist.

We then started naming all the people and things we heard were at one time the antichrist from the Pope, King Juan Carlos, the credit card, Henry Kissinger, Gorbachev, HAL9000, Britney Spears, 'the beast' supercomputer in Brussels Belgium, Bill Gates, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, Bob Geldof (Live Aid), IDI Amin, Marshall Tito, Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ortega, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Elian Gonzalez, Francois Mitterand, etc. We then treated it like a game show stating if we had the money, we would send these people who were named antichrist of the week some Lee press on nails, Rice-a-roni, and a software version of our future antichrist of the week board game.

When I started blogging, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to add 'antichrist of the week' as a weekly feature on my blog to which he stated his approval. Now one small upstart Christian portal has e-mailed me about the possibly of them syndicating my antichrist of the week post on their humor section of their portal.

Q: What is it about your current church that keeps you engaged?

A: The quest for balance between the Word and the Spirit. The elders have desired this for many years and have slowly with caution taken some measures to incorporate this balance into the church's vision while at the same time evangelizing the lost. Such things such as welcoming the move of the Holy Spirit along with their study of Douglas Bannister's book "The Word and Power
Church", hosting R.T. Kendall (which I blogged about recently) for a weekend seminar have helped push this desire forward. Being Evangelical Presbyterian, they (and myself included) had seen Word only churches that preached more from 'dead guy theology' notes from Spurgeon, Luther, Calvin, etc with no inking of the Holy Spirit to the Spirit only churches that preached little to no Word and valued spiritual experiences as excessive tongue talking, slain in the spirit, worship music for three hours, etc. The Word of God is infallable and the Bible does mention healing, casting out of devils, the gifts of The Holy Spirit, baptism of the Holy Spirit. The quest to be a church that has a solid foundation on the Word of God while allowing a genuine move of the Holy Spirit at the same time has been a tedious war that has caused some minor church splits in some cases and also a revelation breakthrough at the same time.

Q: How long have you lived in North Carolina?

A: All of my almost 36 years of life.

Q: Is there anything special you'd like people to bring away from your web page?

A: Some of that objective I had answered in question 1 earlier. However, I really want people to see that I am not some super human, super spiritual Christian who has it all together. I fail. I have fallen. I have risen back up. I am rising up again in some areas. I want people to see a real and authentic Christian with no masks and facades that they can relate to as a real person
who writes and blogs about the real experiences of their real life offering the real solution of Jesus to their real life's real problems while not denying the problems the church does have and attempt to reveal and provide a solution for those problems. Maybe I am an unrealistic idealist. However, I have met too many non-Christians locally and online via IM and e-mail that think all Christians are or must be "Republican, feminized Promise Keeper, butterfly kissing dad, married to the stay-at-home mom, calling themselves "single income" but the mom sells Avon, tupperware, vitamins, Amway, etc. at night, homeschool the seven kids who look like the Precious Moments Figurines with the praise and worship CD playing 24/7 living in the Thomas Kinckade gingerbread houses in the meadow next to the brook where the deer pants for water reminiscent of Little House on The Prairie" where the environment appears to be "sanitized", "isolated", and "overprotected" in their homes and their woodgrained minivans or SUV's with the soccer-ball sticker on the gas tank lid preaching from their Jesus Junkets or their T-Shirt Theologies when crawling out of their bunker bombshelters for their once a week trip to church and the grocery store" to enter the Kingdom of heaven. I do not have a problem with many of these characteristics and concepts such as Republicans, homeschooling, single-income families in and of itself. The problem I have is when people who call themselves ministers of the Gospel have stated, implied, etc. that failure to be or follow through those characteristics deems one as a "fake", "unsaved", and / or "inferior" Christian while those who do are "real", "annointed",
"remnant", and "superior" Christians.

I just want the people (unsaved and saved) who visit the web page / blog see a fellow Christian who shares the same struggles and how I will, through the power of Christ overcome. It's time to be real, genuine, and authentic and point people to Jesus.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

A: Yes, Thank you to many of the new e-blog-friends I have made out in cyberspace for your support, comments, suggestions, etc. Blogging has been a very interesting medium that has captivated me and has given me new opportunities and new ways to explore different ways and styles of writing vastly different from the long-winded articles I did on my regular web page. I want to grow and mature in Christ. I want to help others mature and grow in Christ. Also, I
want to help them through Jesus be set free from the legalisms, abuses, bondages, etc. that may hold them captive. I also want to meet some new bloggers and hopefully, this interview may be instrumental in that goal. Again, I want to thank you for interviewing me.

Bob has some great content on his blog. Be sure to check it out at, Totem to Temple.

If you haven't read previous Blogdom of God interviews, check them out here:
Josh Claybourn
Adrian Warnock
Fr. Jim Tucker (Dappled Things)
SecretAgentMan

If you are a member of the Blogdom of God and would like to be interviewed, please contact me. -jdm

Just War

One Hand Clapping does it again. For the second time in two days Donald Sensing points out an article that I find extremely interesting. (Despite the fact that he doesn't have a link to Army of One on his site.) He does this in a post titled, Primer on Just War Theory.

It seems that many religious people are opposed to the war in Iraq because they don't believe it is a "Just" war. They tend to ignore or minimize the Legacy of Terror from Saddam's regime and focus instead on America's "imperialist tendencies".

For someone with an open mind, there's great information on Just War theory here.

Bullets and Dollars

Dollar bills are like ammunition to a political campaign. A whole host of so-called 527 groups bankrolled by guys like billionaire George Soros have been actively assisting the Kerry campaign. That's why the Bush-Cheney campaign needs donations. Follow the link below to donate to the campaign:

Donate !

More information here.

... and don't forget some of the other Blogs for Bush...

Beacon Hill Blues

Lately, whenever I see John Kerry on TV I find myself humming the old Carly Simon tune,
"You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you..."

I don't know why. Is it just me?

In case you forgot the words, they're here.

Wild Men

Donald Sensing of One Hand Clapping brings up something that's been nibbling away at me for quite a while; the wimpification of the church. In a post last November called, Would you trust your salvation to this guy? he looks at many of the traditional portraits of Jesus - all of them very effeminate, and wonders about the feminization of the church. Take a look at the pictures on his website. They look familiar don't they?

He also points out a great article by Doug Giles called, Where are God's warriors and wild men? Mr. Giles makes the observation that if you look around in church on Sunday morning you're likely to see a lot fewer men than women. He comes to the conclusion that guys, in general, avoid going to church. As a result, they've abdicated much of the leadership of the church to women. Mr. Giles goes on to give some suggestions that really get to the heart of the issue,

• Put an end to preaching by cheesy, whiny, quiche eating, preening Nancy Boys ... right now! It freaks us meat eaters out. Get it? Hire a pastor who throws off a good John Wayne vibe instead of that Boy George feeling. Know what I mean? And cheer on “Pastor Wayne” to serve up the solid meat of the scripture … the stuff that prods the congregation to biblical maturity rather than prolonging their infancy.
  
• Ditto regarding the worship/music leader. And make sure your new testosterone laden songmeister is outfitted with weighty worship music instead of the saccharine-laced slush we have had to sing ad nauseam et infinitum for the last, oh, 100 years. That’s a pretty simple can-do … don’t you think?
  
• Enough with the Precious Moments prints and figurines -- okay? How about decking out the sanctuary with serious transcendent art work that stops us in our tracks, rather than ubiquitous prints of fat baby angels who look like they’ve got a good buzz going from too much Mountain Dew and children’s aspirin?
  
• Lose the Church’s “I’m in therapy for ever” feel. Yes, yes, we’re all a work in progress but the co-dependant, extended womb the Church has wrongfully created has allowed congregants to not get a life because of some difficult doo-doo in their lives. Sure life’s hard, little Sally, and the sooner, we celebrate the struggle the quicker we will draw men back to our houses of worship.
  

I have another suggestion to add. The next time someone suggests a "Men's Retreat" at your church, suggest that the retreat actually involve something that men like to do! In past years, I believe, the church has taken a womans view of what it would be like to have a retreat and then tried to jam men into that same mold. For women, it might seem like fun to sit around in a room all day and reflect on things like feelings and relationships. They might enjoy discussing all the minutia of their daily lives with other women. They might come away from something like that feeling refreshed and invigorated. As a man, I come away from things like that feeling bored beyond belief and motivated to do nothing but sit in front of the television with the remote for the next several Sunday mornings.

Yet there have been numerous occasions over the years where I've been guilted into going to such retreats. I've decided I'm not going to any more of them. They're designed for someone with different "wiring" than me. A "Man's" retreat would involve doing something. It might involve a camping trip or it could involve some type of work project. The men involved might have time to discuss or reflect on some important spiritual issues, but the focus of the retreat would be men doing things together. Men develop relationships, and even meaning, from doing things together.

The wimpification of the church has been subtle at times, but it's ever present. If we want more Men to become strong leaders in the church we need to think about the specific way they interact and experience the world around them. The sooner the better.

PCUSA and The Patriot Act

The Presbytery of Northern New York has asked the General Assembly (the governing body of the Presbyterian Church USA) to ask President Bush and members of Congress to repeal the Patriot Act. [source] Meanwhile, the lobbying arm of the denomination has already expressed it's opposition to the Patriot Act. In a statement here the PCUSA urges it's members to write Congress expressing it's opposition to the Patriot Act.

As a member of a PCUSA Church, I find this sort of political meddling extremely insulting. Of course, this is only one of many instances where the PCUSA chooses to focus on left-wing political causes rather than the spiritual needs of the church.

My Own UAV

Air Force pilots used to laugh hysterically whenever someone would suggest that someday a radio controlled robot would fly the jets. They still laugh but it's more of a nervous laugh since that day seems to be not too far off...

For geeky types like me, the UAV's (unmanned aerial vehicle) used by the American Military are simply amazing. The most well known UAV is called the Predator and for good reason since it's also capable of carrying the aptly named hellfire missile.

The Predator embodies all the fantasies most 10 year old boys have about radio controlled models with the extra added benefit of being real. In fact, if you aren't afraid of spending a lot of money on a toy, you can get a scaled down version of the Predator complete with wireless video link here.

A post over at The Belmont Club called, Eye in The Sky highlights all the latest advances in UAV's including more capable weapons and a greater ability to evade the enemy. And if you're really into finding out more about UAV's the best place to go is The UAV Blog where there's plenty of information.

I don't know about you, but one of my 10-year old radio control fantasies is to have a vehicle that looks and acts like a bird. Only this bird gives you a constant video feed. Hmmm, what to do about offensive weapons? I guess it could drop a "payload" on the enemy and that payload could be more lethal than the type usually dropped by birds.

Once they invent such a thing, Osama (if he's still alive) will get really paranoid.

Operation Homecoming

Are you one of those guys who can field strip your trusty M4 but you can't write a grammatically correct sentence? Do you excel at urban street fighting but you aren't sure how to maintain a gripping narrative?

Well, the National Endowment for the Arts has some good news for you! They are sponsoring a series of workshops to help you write all about your war experiences. That's right, they'll have the help of authors like Tom Clancy and Mark Bowden, who will lead some of the workshops. And you thought the NEA only wasted our tax dollars! [source]

Another One For The Flipper

On Earth Day, Democrat John Kerry reluctantly admitted to having a gas-guzzling SUV in the family - but blamed his wife.

"The family has it. I don't have it," Kerry said yesterday.
[source]

Eh?

As heard on Fox News' Bulls and Bears this morning,
"The Canadian Government couldn't organize a one car parade and if they did they'd tax both cars."

Legacy of Terror

Even now, more than a year after the invasion of Iraq, I still hear sophisticated arguments about how we should have never invaded in the first place. Some of the arguments are pretty rational and some are espoused by decent people. Yet, without fail, every one of them makes me at least a little angry. Here's why...

At least 400,000 people were executed by Saddam. Men, Women and Children who were forced to kneel then were shot in the head. They are buried at more than 270 sites throughout Iraq and more are still being found.

The impetus for going to war was clearly flawed. The lack of WMD represents a major error on the part of the intelligence services, the President, the previous President, Congress and similar organizations from other countries. All of whom assumed WMD was present and would be found. However, that means little in light of the knowledge of the genocide that occurred under Saddam.

Throughout modern history whenever killing on this scale is uncovered, the peace activists and others swear "we must never forget" - until the next time a tyrant is uncovered and then these same people refuse to support the necessary steps to stop the killing. There always seems to be some high moral argument against taking action. We can add Iraq to a long list of places that includes Auschwitz, Cambodia, Srebenica, and Rwanda.

Then there are those who decry any role for America as "the world's policeman". No, we shouldn't feel compelled to run around the world righting every wrong, but whenever and wherever the mass killing of innocents occurs we should be there if we have the power to stop it. Otherwise, we become complicit in a crime against humanity.

Those who still argue about the unjustness of our war against Iraq need to visit here and read the report with all of it's grisly detail. You might have a great sounding, eloquent argument against our military actions, but my response is this: 400,000 buried in mass graves all over Iraq. To put it bluntly, I don't want to hear any of your arguments. They all amount to cowardice and hiding behind religion or some other high and mighty principles that bear the smell of mass graves.

Previous post on this issue: Modern Chamberlain

Earlier article from the BBC: BBC Report

Current article in The Weekly Standard: Saddam's Crimes

From The Vatican Secret Service

This is the fifth in a series of interviews with bloggers who are part of The Blogdom of God. The Blogdom of God is a loose group of Blogs that identify themselves as 'God blogs'.

Today's interview is with a blogger who goes by the name of SecretAgentMan. His blog is called, SecretAgentMan's Dossier, Reports and Analyses from the Vatican Secret Service. SecretAgentMan makes no secret of his Roman Catholic beliefs and he's also a lawyer, which makes for a very powerful combination.

Read his answers then go ahead and try to convince him he's wrong. I dare you. In fact, I double dog dare you!

Q: You've chosen a Spy Theme for your blog. Other than the fact that it sounds kind of cool are there any reasons for this theme?

A: Thanks! It started out as my shame-faced way of posting on a message board after I had, with every good intention and very publicly, sworn of message-board posting for Lent. I got ahold of some websites for various anti-popes (guys who think, for some delusional reasons, that they're the pope and that John Paul II is not the pope). There's Lucian Pulvermacher, a/k/a Pius XIII, who's somewhere in the pacific northwest, and then there's "Pope" Michael I in Delia, Kansas (who, if memory serves, has proclaimed the Atkins diet as the official Catholic diet ex cathedra). So I did fisks of their websites and posted them under the name "SecretAgentMan."
After that, I just kind of kept the name. There are other reasons as well, of course, one of them being that I don't want to get my vanity mixed up in my writing, which is hard enough to do even using a pseudonym.

Q: Did you ever buy that "History of Food" book that captivated your attention so much?

A: Yes, I did! It's a wonderful book, although you can't sit around reading it for hours at a time like you could other books. There's too much, you have to slow down and take it in bits and pieces, like a good meal. You have to linger over it, returning occasionally to sample some
more. There's no end to the fascinating information in that book. For example, the author notes that the Church didn't consider vegetable oil to be prohibited by fasting regulations but did consider butter to be proscribed, levying rather large payments for indulgences allowing the
holder to use butter during periods of fasting. He goes on to consider the fact that most of "Reformation country" (Germany, Scandinavia, England) relied on butter, as opposed to olive oil, for its shortening, and wonders if the onerous burdens created by the Roman system didn't play some role in heightening, or piquing, ordinary peoples' resentment. He's a responsible
author, and so he doesn't imply that the Reformation was about butter or anything silly like that. But it's an interesting coincidence of fact insofar as people tend not to embrace revolutionary upheaval unless they feel entirely and inescapably oppressed; taxing and controlling food, doing it in God's name on a culturally-discriminatory basis, is certainly one way to generate a perception of oppression that can itself open or increase individual awareness of larger quarrels.

Q: You seem to be to the right of center in the political spectrum but I can't tell by reading your blog if you are a Libertarian or a Republican or some combination thereof. Who do you tend to support for political office?

A: I'm definitely not a libertarian. You can't refuse to employ the power of the community against gross evils like prostitution, slavery, and drug-peddling and obey Christ. But that's what libertarianism, strictly defined, means. Now there are people who use "libertarian" as more or less a synonym for favoring economic freedom and private property, but I'm not
using that definition in my answer. I tend to favor Republicans because their fascism is much slower and more haphazard than the Democrats'. I'd probably better explain that by pointing out that fascism isn't the same thing as anti-Semitism or a kooky pan-Germanism. Fascism is a serious, though evil, political philosophy. Its real progenitor was Mussolini, who
described the fascist attitude thus:

Anti-individualistic, the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State, which stands for the conscience and the universal, will of man as a historic entity. It is opposed to
classical liberalism which arose as a reaction to absolutism and exhausted its historical function when the State became the expression of the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual.

And if liberty is to he the attribute of living men and not of abstract dummies invented by individualistic liberalism, then Fascism stands for liberty, and for the only liberty worth having, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much
less have value. Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people."

Fascism is a direct and open repudiation of the Kingship of Jesus Christ, described so wonderfully in Pius XI's 1925 encyclical Quas Primas. (Which proclaimed the Feast of Christ the King in direct rebuke of Mussolini). The essential outlines of Mussolini's system have been in place for a long time in our education, our culture, our government -- what is Roe v. Wade if not an example of "the State expressing the real essence of the individual" to the exclusion of unborn children? How could abortion and pornography thrive in the United States without our belief that "the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can
exist, much less have value"? I could go on and on about this topic, but basically I support (some) Republicans because they're generally ambivalent about the progress of fascism. Democrats, on the other hand, have long since stopped worrying about it. But I wouldn't call myself a Republican by any means.

Q: Apparently, you're a lawyer of some sort. What led you to that profession?

A: I'm not really sure. It's certainly not the profession I would have chosen for myself.

Q: Many Catholics feel that the Iraq War was not a just war. They think it was wrong to go to war against Iraq. What do you think?

A: Well, I guess I need to start out by distancing myself from the"Oh God, we're so corrupt and evil, how dare we defend our society so long as one child remains hungry" bunch who oppose the war. Most of my "writing" about the Iraq war is long lost, since it was only posted on Gary Hoge's message board (which is a great place to visit, by the way) and they don't keep extensive logs of old posts. I don't think the war was "just" inasmuch as a just war has to be conducted according to lawful authority, and the only lawful authority the United States has, by treaty, is the UN Charter which authorizes the use of military force only with the consent of the Security Council or when a threat to national security is so immanent and direct that it is unrealistic to consult the Council. I never heard anything -- including Colin Powell's presentation to the Security Council -- which convinced me Iraq posed that kind of dire threat to the United States. I heard proof that Iraq had an evil and murderous regime, which harbored
nothing but malice toward its people, its neighbors and the United States, and that it might have had weapons of mass destruction. If that's enough for us to invade Iraq, then it's enough for me to shoot my neighbor if he's a mean, wife-beating son-of-bitch who hates me and owns a gun. And the Security Council refused to authorize our attack. That about did it for me;
I'm not in love with the United Nations. I think it's an insidious organization in many ways. But as long as we're publicly binding ourselves to the Charter then we ought to abide by the Charter.

More to the point, I think the invasion of Iraq was an enormous blunder. It was the brainchild of some very miseducated people who think there's meaning to the term "nation building." Clinton tried that in Somalia, but there's no such thing as a "cultural erector-set" that you can take overseas and spend fifteen minutes (or fifteen years) putting together to build a
civilization. The rise of modern Western institutions took about 500 years, all of it was unplanned and brought about by historical accidents and unintended consequences. I simply don't understand a contrary view which ignores religion, culture, and historical experience as guides to the future of a nation and focuses entirely on typing up grand plans for a "free and
democratic Iraq" on computers running off the Fourth Infantry Division's portable generators. That's hyperbole, of course, but that's still the sum and substance of how we're going about "civilizing" Iraq. What did Mussolini say? "The Fascist conception of the State is all embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value.
Thus understood, Fascism, is totalitarian, and the Fascist State - a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values - interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people." I can see how, starting there, one ends up with the idea that we can create a whole culture of laws, customs, and politics simply by tinkering with the form of Iraq's state.
Unfortunately, I fear all we will end up having done is unseat a dangerous dictator so that the equally-dangerous passions of millions of his former slaves can be unleashed against one another and ourselves. We've made the United States an irredeemable object of disdain, distrust, and outright hatred in every other Arab and Muslim country in the world without any appreciable increase in U.S. security. We shouldn't evaluate our policy on the stark question of whether the U.S. is "safer" now that Saddam is out of power -- of course we are, but the increased safety is both marginal and, if recent events in Iraq are any indication, temporary. I think our policy
guarantees that a future Iraq will be ruled by a regime eager to prove that it's not "tainted" by the "Great Satan" and which will, therefore, engage in even more anti-American activity -- perhaps by actually acquiring weapons of mass destruction and actually sponsoring Al-Qaeda or
whatever nefarious group replaces it on the world stage.

Q: You've written, "Television is a lice-ridden drunk. Why do I keep saying that? Because if you watch television long enough, you'll see the kind of things you'd see if you hung out with a lice-ridden drunk." There's a lot of truth to that. However, when you do watch television what do you regularly watch?

A: I don't really watch anything regularly. The last TV series I followed with any kind of consistency (a good deal of consistency, really) was Babylon5. I liked its open repudiation of Gene Rodenberry's vision of the future, which is essentially that everything comes up roses after we toss 10,000 years of human experience out the window in favor of the sentiments
in John Lenon's "Imagine." (Kudos to Star Trek's Deep Space Nine series for Commander Eddington's pithy speech about the Federation, and Quark's analogizing the Federation to root beer "soft, sweet, bubbly -- it's insidious!"). I particularly enjoyed B5's open embrace of religion, including Christianity, via Catholic characters like Brother Theo and also
Brother Edward in the "Passing Through Gethsemane" episode. Unfortunately the series had an ending that was as mindlessly humanistic and dramatically easy as anything Gene Rodenberry could want. But you take the bitter with the sweet when it comes to television.

I sometimes watch the History Channel, at least on those occasions when it's not obsessing about Adolf Hitler or running stupid shows about Jesus and Christianity. "American Choppers" is amusing, as are reruns of the first year of "Law and Order." Every once in a while there's a decent movie on AMC, Bravo, or the Sci-Fi Channel. CSPAN's programs are worth watching,
especially if they're in-depth profiles of authors; I could watch their interview with Shelby Foote over and over again. The political programs are less interesting -- seeing Colin Powell, Orrin Hatch or Ted Kennedy flap their gums is about as edifying as watching my dog chew nits. With people like that at the helm, this country's in for rough times. Yes, I'm a tad
cynical about our prospects. Always have been, so take that for what it's worth depending on your view of our prospects.

I find that most of my television experiences are gained via DVD. You can control the content, and sometimes the content's not half bad. I'm currently working my way through Star Trek's DS9 series, which is also more serious about religion than most modern television even if the religious content is repackaged inside an invented culture (Bajor's) and equipped with
a materialistic escape hatch ("wormhole aliens" rather than "prophets"). Kai Winn's slide into apostasy is very well done, both intellectually (via pursuit of the Pa Wraiths) and symbolically (her union with Gul Dukat), and the conflict between good and evil is tantalizingly worked out in the way it always is -- in a "real" world which plausibly (but only plausibly) provides
a solely-materialistic explanation for people who can't see very much.

Television can also give one a good glimpse of the dementia of modern culture. We're probably the first civilization to openly celebrate dumbness, depravity and decay "live" on a 24/7 basis. MTV is a good way to see that sort of thing. Now I don't recommend watching MTV with any
frequency, but there's sometimes the odd bit of value in the programming. For example, once you've seen a single episode of "Newlyweds" you've acquired some interesting evangelical material. The show's proof of the shallowness of materialism. There aren't two people on the face of the earth who are dumber and less talented than Nick and Jessica. If one of
them ever had an idea, he or she would instantly become unrecognizable to the other. But they are rich, and live a life of great luxury, which goes to prove that riches and luxury don't produce an admirable life, one which has importance, meaning, and a sense of inherent responsibility to the larger causes of the human race. And Road Rules? The French nobility at
Versailles, or the country-house set of 1920s England, look like Plato's Symposium compared to the brainless, amoral stumbling one sees on that show. Who on earth wants to actually live like those people? No one, really, and that makes MTV an occasionally-useful resource for guerilla
evangelism.

Not long ago I was doing a fair amount of evangelical work with young people (people in their late teens and early 20s). One thing that interested me is that they all watched MTV. The other thing that interested me is how they all harbor a tacit animosity to MTV and what it stands for. They were almost eager to despise it, because I think deep down they could easily identify the shallow commercialism that motivates every "avante garde" and "rebellious" thing MTV pretends to do. I won't say that MTV is some kind of school for Christ; I think trying to reach people through MTV (as the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island has tried to do) is a fool's errand
which can only interest fools. But the Church Fathers weren't squeamish about describing what went on at the games, and so there's something to be said for knowing how to point out the lice and the stink of alcohol on the next flashy drunk to wander across your TV screen. (And, too, there's an aspect of guilty pleasure involved. The fastest way to feel like John Savage is to turn on the Brave New World television network!)

I fear I've spent a good deal of time talking about MTV, which wasn't my intention. It certainly doesn't reflect the amount of time I spend watching that perpetual celebration of all that is bland, mediocre, and trashy in the human condition.

Q: One of the things I appreciate about Catholicism is that it has reinforced a set of moral values and stuck with them throughout history. Issues such as abortion and homosexuality which seem to be "up for debate" in a lot of Protestant denominations are still solidly held in the Catholic church. Why do you think this is the case?

A: This reminds me of a remark by John Paul II about the crisis in the Balkans. He said there were two possible solutions, the miraculous and the mundane. The mundane solution, he said, was for Jesus to send the Blessed Virgin with ten legions of angels and restore justice and harmony to the region. The miraculous solution, he said, was for the people living there to achieve justice and harmony. In a similar way there are two reasons for the Church's - relative - steadfastness on traditional moral teaching. The mundane reason is that the Holy Spirit guides the Catholic Church and so the gates of Hell will not prevail against her. The miraculous reason is that God has established the Church so that her legitimacy is inextricably bound up with the idea of an infallible and constant magisterium. Even if Bishops wanted to legitimize abortion and homosexual marriages (and it wouldn't surprise me if there were one or two who did), the act itself would indubitably expose the entire Catholic edifice as a sham. I realize that
answer provokes many more questions, but that's it in a nutshell.

Q: When Protestants say "The Church" I think they are using a somewhat different definition than Catholics. So...when I say "The Church" what does that mean to you?

A: There are so many meanings for that word in Catholicism. It can mean the visible structure of the Church on earth, the papacy, the bishops, the laity, etc. It can also mean what Protestants take it to exclusively mean -- the invisible community of God's friends. It can mean something of both perspectives. The nuances are why the Second Vatican Council deliberately chose the word "subsistare" in Lumen Gentium: This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is
professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth". This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists ["subsistare"] in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion
with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity.

Q: You don't seem to like Bishop Spong a whole lot. What do you think is the best way to defeat him and those like him?

A: Heh. I don't. Not because he's a heretic. It's because he's such a silly, puling, ridiculous heretic. I think the best remedy for that nonsense is ridicule, and plenty of it. The Bible enjoins us not to answer fools according to their folly. If one treats the Spongs, Crossans, and
Drinans of the world as though they were serious figures, noteworthy examples of Christian life with significant things to say about our faith, one has ignored good Biblical advice (as well as the entire content of the Bible).

Q: What do you think is causing the growth of evangelical fundamentalism?

A: As the barbarian invasions produced refugees in early-medieval Europe, the barbarian onslaught on American society and its mainline Christian denominations is producing a similar agitation.

Q: Do you think Priests should be able to marry? Or at the very least, do you think there are some changes that should be made in the Priesthood?

A: Married men can be priests in the East. Men marry before ordination (usually about 24 hours before ordination), and my understanding is that they are not allowed to remarry should they become widowers after ordination and married men may not be elevated to episcopacy. (I think that's true for both the eastern-rite churches in communion with Rome and for those not in
communion with Rome). In the Western tradition, celibacy has been the preferred discipline for clergy from the earliest centuries of the Church. Personally, I don't think that discipline should be relaxed. A celibate priest is a walking rebuke to the unwholesome desires of the world and an inspiration to follow Christ in chastity, the use of one's sexuality in a way proper to one's state in life. I know that my priest's only, and entire, loyalty lies with the Church which, for him, is both wife and child. His celibacy is an undeniable commitment to that paternal relationship, and while there are priests who don't even try to live up to that standard, I think religious celibacy is a very wholesome aspect of Catholicism. It's
interesting to note how few priests, either proportionately to the whole priesthood, or in comparison with other professions or ministries where men are married, are involved in criminal or scandalous sexual activity. To me that says, "See, it is possible to live chastely. God will
provide." The root of the sexual scandals in the Church is essentially a disbelief in the reality of Jesus Christ as King of an eternal moral universe which will triumph over conflicting human desires. Celibacy is a direct repudiation of that disbelief, not a cause of it.

What follows is mostly conjecture and surmise. I would like to see bishops selected from a candidate pool of priests who have served as pastors for at least 15 years and who are no more than five years removed from direct, primary responsibility for a parish or religious community. I suspect that many, if not most, American bishops have been on an "episcopal career-track"
and spent far more time in chanceries and bureaucracies than parishes, and I think the overall tone of leadership suffers for it. Perhaps it was easier for Cardinal Law (41 years' service, 12 years as a priest ending 30 years ago, then 29 years as a bishop) to perceive Fr. Shanley as a "personnel problem" than a ravening wolf because of that difference in focus. It's not
that Law "didn't care," but that his care was filtered through a managerial perspective which perhaps left him less aware of the best way to solve that problem. That's just a suspicion, however, and I'd be happy to let anyone correct me on it.

Q: As a protestant, the whole idea of confession to a priest has mystified me. Why would the priest have anything to do with the whole forgiveness? Isn't that why Jesus died on the cross, so that I wouldn't need a Priest to intercede for me?

A: It depends on the view one takes of God's involvement with human life. I would say that Jesus died on the cross so that men could share the joy of confession and absolution, contrition and penance, and the joy of praying for one another on earth and in Heaven. If that seems vain or presumptuous, I'd point out that from the same standpoint one could say it's vain or presumptuous to say that Jesus died for us at all: "It's vain to contend that Jesus died 'for us.' Soli Deo Gloria! Jesus died for God's glory, not man's!" To do that sort of thing only requires imaginarily pitting one truth of Christianity against the others and talking as though
you can't believe them all simultaneously. But Jesus died 'for us' and soli deo gloria because God glories in the divine and triumphant condescension of the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. When it comes to priestly absolution and saintly intercession, Catholics just think God's condescension know no bounds, in that He entrusts men even with a share in His work.

To a Catholic, questions like yours sound nonsensical and frustrating, like asking, "Why would a doctor have anything to do with the whole idea of healing? Isn't Jesus the only healer we need?" There are a few Protestants who have continued that line of thought, going so far as to reject either modern medical care or even any medical care whatsoever. The Catholic Bible
contains the Book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), in which God, the author of Scripture, says:

My son, in thy sickness be not negligent: but pray unto the Lord, and he will make thee whole. Leave off from sin, and order thine hands aright, and cleanse thy heart from all wickedness. Give a sweet savour, and a memorial of fine flour; and make a fat offering, as not being. Then give place to the physician, for the Lord hath created him: let him not go from thee, for thou hast need of him. There is a time when in their hands there is good success. For they shall also pray unto the Lord, that he would prosper that, which they give for ease and remedy to prolong life. He that sinneth before his Maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician. -- Sirach 38:9-15 (KJV).

Commenting on confession and penance, St. Jerome thought of the same analogy: "If the serpent, the devil, bites someone secretly, he infects that person with the venom of sin. And if the one who has been bitten keeps silence and does not do penance, and does not want to confess his wound to his brother and to his master, who have the word that will cure him, cannot very well assist him. For if the sick man is ashamed to confess his wound to the physician, medicine will not cure that to which it is not applied." Commentary on Ecclesiastes, 10:11. To a Catholic, it seems quite sensible to conclude that God, who created men to do His healing work in this world,
also created men to do His spiritual work as well. That such men exist doesn't prevent God from healing or forgiving miraculously, without the involvement of men. But still God creates men and expects them to rely on one another in His service.

Protestants believe this somehow denies God's sovereignty, and that attitude totally mystifies me. How is it denying God's sovereignty to say that when a priest absolves sin, he does it because God is more powerful than evil? The answer I usually hear at that point is your question -- if God is doing it all anyway, why do we need priests and saints? That leaves me wondering,
"Well, then what the heck are we here for to begin with?" Certainly God wants us here for some reason, and I can heartily agree that it's to witness to His glory and sovereignty, but how that witness can be accomplished without participating in His work is beyond me. I'm sorry if that sounds a bit pugnacious, but I just really am stumped at the source of this particular criticism of Catholic doctrine.

Q: If all we had was the Bible in it's present form today. Do you think Catholicism would still look the same?

A: Ahh, but if the Bible were really "all" we had, then our God would be a very cruel God wouldn't He? Without the divine person of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the Bible would be at best a standing unalterable condemnation of man or at worst a sheer waste of paper. What good would it do for us to have the Beatitudes without the Person who grants the grace to understand
and live them? How could we avoid damnation by the Beatitudes themselves without His forgiveness and merciful sacrifice? I understand that's not really your question, but I think it's important to say nonetheless. There are too many Protestants who think Catholics only believe in "the Church and the Sacraments" and not Jesus, and too many Catholics who think Protestants
only believe in "the Bible" and not Jesus. It's important that we keep praising His name to one another so that our mutual suspicions can be lessened or prevented.

When you say "the Bible in its present form today," I want to know which present form -- with or without dueterocanonicals like Sirach/Ecclesiasticus; the NIV, KJV, or Douai-Rheims translation? Do we read the angel's salutation to Mary in Luke 1:28 as "hail, thou who art highly favored" (KJV) or "hail, full of grace" (DRV)? The Douai-Rheims Bible translates Matthew 6:11 as "give us this day our supersubstantial bread," whereas the King James and Revised Standard translations render it as "daily bread." To make matters more complicated, the American Catholic Bishops have produced a Bible (NAV) which translates Luke 1:28 as "Hail, favored one!" and Matthew 6:11 as "daily bread." To believe in sola scriptura one must affirm that Scripture is the word of God and infallible "in the autographs." But we do not have the autographs. Whose transcription of the autographs should we depend on -- St. Jerome's in the Vulgate? The scholars who produced different renderings of 1 John 5's proof (or non-proof, depending) of the Trinity? (Compare 1 John 5:7 in the 1611 KJV with the same passage in the RSV, NIV, NKJV, etc.). I think one
undeniable fact of life in Christ is that Church vouchsafes Scripture, not the other way around. (I leave open the identity of "Church" in that statement, since the idea of vouchsafing Scripture, broadly conceived, doesn't itself require "Romanism"). I think even Scripture attests
to this, for our Lord says "the sheep follow him: for they know his voice." John 10:4 (KJV). So, I guess I have to reply that I don't think I can really answer your question. We've never had "only" the Bible. God is too generous and merciful to allow that. Catholics and Protestants agree on this, even if they view the particulars of our divine accompaniment
differently.

But, if you're asking where I am on the "material sufficiency /partim-partim debate" regarding Tradition and Scripture, I really don't see merit in the distinction, since Scripture and Tradition have a dynamic interrelationship within the Church's ongoing contemplation of
Christ. I don't agree with the more radical "material sufficiency" folks, who sometimes give the impression that you can have sola scriptura Catholicism -- i.e., Catholicism with all its facets growing without the possibility of error from the Scriptures by a process that only differs in
degree from completing a jigsaw puzzle. Nor do I agree with the more radical "partim-partim" folks, who sometimes give the impression that God withheld a secret gnosis from the faithful so that he could tell, shibboleth-style, the "real Christians" from the ones who only accepted the
written part of His revelation. The existence of Catholicism and Presbyterianism is irrefutable proof that one finds in Scripture what one is predisposed to find via a guiding hermeneutic which is Scriptural, Traditional, spiritual, cultural, familial, historical -- in all the things
that God has allowed to make a man. The relationship of Scripture and Tradition occurs within that landscape, and so I think it's ill-advised to regard them as insufficient (radical "partim-partim" theology) or redundant (radical "material sufficiency" theology).

Q: Do you think that receiving communion saves a person from hell?

A: Yes. No. Forgive me, but I might better answer by a question. Do you think reading the Bible saves a person from Hell? To the extent one answers "Yes," he's making a host (no pun intended) of conclusions about the alignment, if you will, of the Bible, the soul and God. One can answer "no" simply by refusing to make those assumptions or even by making hostile assum ptions, such as referring (per the Biblical example) to Satan's use of Scripture recounted in Matthew Chapter 4. The Apostles were very clear that both Scripture and the Eucharist could harm or heal depending on the individual's relationship with the God who made them both. (2 Peter 3:15-16; 1 Cor. 11:29). In the Eucharist and Scripture, God takes hold of the human person -- what happens to the human person can be as wonderful as the Transfiguration or more terrible than Pharaoh's death. Our hope is to seek His grace and be ready, for His day will come like a thief in the
night. Fortunately, our God will always ensure that we find such grace because He is a kind and loving Father.

Q: Is the Pope infallible? Does he have the power to forgive sins?

A: I hope you won't be offended if I reply that the first question has an inherent unclarity which is the cause of a lot of misunderstanding, and I'd like to do what I can to avoid that. Infallibility isn't a fixed status. It's a quality which may be potential or actual. So asking if the Pope "is infallible" is like asking if Joe "is smart." Sometimes Joe does or says
smart things, and sometimes he doesn't. But even when we realize that Joe has said something dumb, we still call him "smart" because we're referring to his capability and not to every action which might possibly involve it. We can say that "the pope is infallible" in the same way we can say "Joe received a Ph.D.," namely to denote some abstract ability, or we can say
"Pius IX infallibly proclaimed the Immaculate Conception" in the same way we can say "Joe was really smart to connect the presence of clouds with rain," namely to denote a particular use of the ability. In neither case, however, are we committed to believing everything Pius IX or Joe ever said is infallibly true, or even smart.

At this point I should like to go a little further and point out some things which may be very unfamiliar to Protestants. Protestants' experience with divinely-assured truth is bounded by a particular understanding of Scripture which commits them, quite understandably, to identify infallibility only with regard to Scripture and thus as inseparable from other things also
identified with Scripture, namely divinity, revelation and inspiration. So I think that when they address papal infallibility they assume, quite naturally but quite incorrectly, that Catholicism regards papal infallibility as an inspired, revelatory act by a divine figure who adds more Scripture to the Gospel. That papal infallibility has often affirmed ideas which contradict the orthodoxy held by Protestants heightens this confusion, since infallible proclamations like Ineffabilis Deus are read from a paradigm that already says the Immaculate Conception appears "nowhere in Scripture." The Catholic biblical exegesis which produced,
literally through many centuries, the dogmatic conclusion in Ineffabilis Deus is not "on the radar screen," so to speak, of the Protestant mind. Thus the idea of Pius IX proclaiming that dogma seems far more like the idea of Moses going back to Sinai to get a third tablet than the reasonable conclusion of pre-existing and time-honored streams of thought about grace,
redemption, sanctity, and the place of man in God's universe. This isn't to suggest that all Protestant disagreement with papal infallibility is the result of a misunderstanding. It's only by way of explaining why so much Protestant disagreement with papal infallibility is plagued by
misunderstandings.

I noted above our Lord's words, "the sheep follow him: for they know his voice." John 10:4 (KJV). That's what infallibility is all about -- the sheep knowing the shepherd's voice. Infalliblity is a divine help, which in Scripture accompanies inspiration and revelation, but which in a particular exercise of the pope's office isn't accompanied by them. Infallibility is a guarantee that the Church, in communion with the Pope, will never bind man's conscience to blasphemy, apostasy, or error. The Church, in communion with the Pope, will by God's grace bind men to the Gospel, the whole Gospel, and nothing but the Gospel. I understand that there are arguments that the uses for which the charism is claimed are not, in fact, the Gospel. But an
adequate appreciation of (or dispute with) the dogma of infallibility must recognize that the charism is not a generative faculty. It creates nothing. It affirms and expresses what "the Church", conceived simultaneously as a divine and human institution participating in eternity and passing through history, has always been told by God. Thus "papal infallibility" is an
exercise of a gift which Christ grants to His whole Church, so conceived. All that having been said, then yes, of course the Pope is infallible when he undertakes to perform that part of his office which has been blessed by that gift. This brings us to a host of other contentious issues ranging from critiques of Newman's theory of doctrinal development within Christianity to quarrels about the ambiguity which the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church declared by the First Vatican Council allows in the identification of infallible statements, but I've gone on long enough and will leave it at that.

As to the pope's power to forgive sins, he has no special ability apart from that of my parish priest. He obtains his power to absolve by his ordination as a priest. There are rare cases in which Canon Law reserves absolution to the Bishop, or even to the Pope himself, but that is a matter of discipline rather than the nature of the sacramental ministry of confession per
se..

Q: I understand and believe in what is known as "The Apostles Creed". Are there any additional things that I must believe in order to be saved?

A: I think the necessary degree of congruence between one's orthodoxy and salvation is a difficult topic. Your selection of the Apostles' Creed is a good example of the problem. I would say that if Protestants understood "born of the Virgin Mary," they would understand that Mary is ever-virgin and that the "brothers and sisters" of the Lord are not Mary's offspring; if they understood "the holy catholic church" they would understand that it is in communion with the Pope; if they understood "the forgiveness of sins" they would know about regeneration by the sacrament of baptism, about confession and penance; and that if they understood "the communion of saints" they would invoke Mary and the other saints to pray for them. But they don't understand those things and, as a result, don't believe in large and significant parts of the Gospel. You, no doubt, would note that I'm a Roman Catholic and say that I'm actually the one who doesn't understand those articles of the Creed and who doesn't believe large and significant
parts of the Gospel. I'm fond of saying that the differences between Catholics and Protestants are fundamental, and this makes them more (not less) difficult to understand. This is a good example of the paradox; we say the same Creed, but we identify it with greatly-divergent theologies and ways of living Christianity.

So, given that the larger portion of my faith is (according to a Reformed perspective) heresy at best, is there any hope I might nonetheless be saved? >From what I can tell, the stress which Reformed Christians (and not a few Evangelicals) put on doctrinal orthodoxy as a necessary sign of a happy predestination forbids a favorable answer:

Multitudes undoubtedly believe that God is, and admit the truth of the Gospel History, and the other parts of Scripture, in the same way in which they believe the records of past events, or events which they have actually witnessed. There are some who go even farther: they regard the Word of God as an infallible oracle; they do not altogether disregard its precepts, but are moved to some degree by its threatening and promises. To such the testimony of faith is attributed, but by catachresis; because they do not with open impiety impugn, reject, or condemn, the Word of God, but rather exhibit some semblance of obedience. . . . . But as this shadow or image of faith is of no moment, so it is unworthy of the name. . . .

I am aware it seems unaccountable to some how faith is attributed to the reprobate, seeing that it is declared by Paul to be one of the fruits of election; and yet the difficulty is easily solved: for though none are enlightened into faith, and truly feel the efficacy of the Gospel, with the exception of those who are fore-ordained to salvation, yet experience shows that the reprobate are sometimes affected in a way so similar to the elect, that even in their own judgment there is no difference between them. . . .

Still it is correctly said, that the reprobate believe God to be propitious to them, inasmuch as they accept the gift of reconciliation, though confusedly and without due discernment; not that they are partakers of the same faith or regeneration with the children of God; but because, under a covering of hypocrisy, they seem to have a principle of faith in common with
them. Nor do I even deny that God illumines their minds to this extent, that they recognize his grace; but that conviction he distinguishes from the peculiar testimony which he gives to his elect in this respect, that the reprobate never attain to the full result or to fruition.
-Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter 2, §§ 9-11.

This all seems eminently reasonable to me, given Protestantism's commitment to the mind's translucency as regards the Gospel, and even more reasonable if one believes that grace is irresistible. Some Catholics are offended when the Reformed debate whether we're Christians, but I think the question (if taken, as it should be, within the context of Reformed theology) is
unobjectionable.

I don't want to be uneven in my appreciation of the problem. Catholicism also has a theological impulse towards doctrinal orthodoxy as a criteria of salvation. Some, for example Fr. Feeney, go too far in their estimation of the doctrinal rigor required for salvation. The rigorists only sometimes take direction from an (erroneous) belief in irresistable grace or transposing sola scriptura's belief in the clarity of the saved mind onto the statements of the Magisterium. Mostly, I think, the rigorist attitude results from an excessively-juridical idea of the Church; rigorists enjoy quoting Unam Sanctam repeatedly as though this settled the issue of whether non-Catholics can be saved. That's a mistake, because Boniface VIII was juridically applying a theological principle to a political-ecclesiastical dispute within Catholicism and so quite naturally spoke in a juridical idiom which, however appropriate to that dispute, does
not (and was not intended to) blithely address the state of modern schisms or their adherents without further effort. This juridical paradigm was easily applied to the Reformers themselves, many of whom were Catholic clergy acting contrary to vows, and to their followers who had (or were presumed to have had) adequate catechism and instruction in the faith. But the relevance of a moral argument may change. It may become more, or less, just as the case to which it is put changes. Post-Reformation Protestants may go through their entire lives without ever having had a meaningful evangelical encounter with Catholicism; indeed, they may go through their entire lives having heard nothing but abominable nonsense about Catholicism. The position of such men and women is, I think, far less dangerous (and less susceptible to theological/juridical evaluations) than that of Philip IV, who received his crown from the hands of a Roman Catholic bishop.

I think God saves those who love Him and try, whatever the cost, to follow where He leads them. I like to think that every non-Catholic, Christian or otherwise, is on a journey into the Roman Catholic Church. For some, that destination will never be reached. For others, it will be reached in Heaven, or somewhat earlier than that. I don't mean to imply that visible communion with the Pope is the perfect end-point of Christianity; Luke 12:48 would obliterate that kind of triumphalism, even if 1 Cor. 13:12 weren't already enough to do that. What I mean to say is that the only reason anyone should ever become a Catholic is that a lover wants to please his beloved in every possible way. God let me wander through more than thirty years of sin before I saw the possibilities open to me, so why should I begrudge a Presbyterian his thirty years of mere heresy? I say "mere," because all sin is error, but not all error is sin. I know Baptists whose
theology is plagued with all kinds of errors touching on the sacraments, Scripture, the saints, the authority of the Roman Pontiff, etc., etc. Each of them loves and follows Jesus Christ more tenderly and with more brave devotion than I ever mustered during my thirty years as a baptized Catholic who was wallowing in all sorts of sin. What did Thomas A'Kempis say? "I would rather feel contrition than be able to define it." I think there are lots of people who go about their lives feeling contrition, so to speak, but who may not be able to define it with any degree of precision. Will God damn them all?

I don't think so, but I also think the real answer to your question can only come from God at the end of your life (or from Him to me at the end of my life). I can say that someone's not pleasing his beloved in every possible way, but is that a comment about the other person's coldness of heart, or only about his ineptitude as a lover? I'm sure there are people whose
failure to love Him in every possible way is caused by malice rather than a lack of art, and that their cold-heartedness will end up being more than His dignity can abide or His mercy overcome. But that's really all I could say that responds to the question.

Q: What do you think are the main cultural differences between Catholics and Protestants?

A: That's a great question. I think one chief difference is that Catholics instinctively love hierarchies while Protestants instinctively abominate them. I think Catholics also have a soft-spot for exuberance, flamboyance, and a "sun-and-wine" attitude which can make our religious experience a little off-putting to people who are used to more restrained and collected ways of doing things.

Q: Have you ever thought of becoming a Presbyterian? (okay that question was asked just for fun. You don't have to answer it.)

A: No. I once briefly thought of becoming an orthodox Jew, but that's when I was a religious tourist. If I'd applied, they'd have been right to turn me down flat amidst fits of laughter.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

A: Yes! But this is more than too long already. Thanks for the interview!

Be sure to check out SecretAgentMan's Dossier for more.

Interested in being interviewed. Send me an email. -JD Mays

Win Now

My experience in foreign affairs pretty much stops when I put the television remote down or when I stop ordering books from Amazon. I've watched Blackhawk Down at least four times, but I wouldn't be the first one anyone called when they wanted to plan a military mission, much less invade a country. But when I see my amateur analysis confirmed by people who do that sort of thing for a living, well, I almost feel vindicated...

Last fall, I posted my concerns about the need for more soldiers in Iraq. After this latest round of warfare and the inevitable casualties, I'm wondering again just exactly why things aren't under better control over there.

This week the Bush Administration was blasted with both barrels from an unlikely source, The Weekly Standard. Larry Miller writes in an article titled, Win Now,

Anyone who reads past page two has known since the president landed on that aircraft carrier that Falluja was the headquarters, the homeland, the core of everyone who ever worked and killed for Saddam Hussein. It's not just a place, a city, a neighborhood, with terrific down-home folks going to choir practice and trying to get by in tough times. It's the place--the bull's-eye. It might as well be named Tortureville, or Saddamfield, or Baathburg. What in the world did anyone imagine was going to sprout up there in the last 12 months? A chamber of commerce? A garden club? A band shell for Sunday programs of Sousa?

...and he's right. It's difficult to come up with a rational explanation for how things in Fallujah could've become so bad. The only explanation I can come up with is that the military forces over there are doing the best they can with the resources they have available. Therefore, it would seem that they don't have enough resources available.

William Kristol, a guy whose opinions I respect, writes in an article titled, Too Few Troops,

Close observers of the conflict in Iraq, civilian and military alike (military, of course, speaking off the record), say that at least two additional divisions--at least 30,000 extra troops--are needed in Iraq just to deal with the current crisis. Even more troops may well be needed to fully pacify the country. And it would be useful to have as many of those troops as possible there sooner rather than later.

He also writes,

The shortage of troops in Iraq is the product of a string of bad calculations and a hefty dose of wishful thinking. Above all, it is the product of Rumsfeld's fixation on high-tech military "transformation," his hostility to manpower-intensive nation-building in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, and his refusal to increase the overall size of the military in the first place. The results are plain to see: We are trying to carry out Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy with Clinton's pre-9/11 military. It is a wonderful military, but it is too small for our responsibilities in the post-9/11 world. As a result, it will not be easy to find the additional brigades to send to Iraq. Troubling reductions in our deployments elsewhere will be required, and an already stressed military will be asked to do more still. Unfortunately, there is no choice.

Nearly every news report from Iraq detailing the ongoing conflicts there notes the presence of a great many "foreign fighters". These foreign fighters are from a variety of countries but most seem to be either Syrian or Iranian. I realize there are some complex issues associated with border control but it seems pretty logical to imagine the futility of trying to defeat these insurgents when they have a ready supply of both men and materiel' from across the border. If we have insufficient numbers to control the borders of Iraq, then we have an insufficient number of troops period.

William Kristol lays a lot of blame at the feet of Donald Rumsfeld, but George W. Bush will ultimately have only himself to blame if the dithering in Iraq goes on much longer. When diehard conservatives like William Kristol raise the alarm they'd better listen because pretty soon a whole lot more voices are going to be joining the chorus.

The Call

I've often wondered about the process by which we decide to choose a vocation. The fact is, there aren't very many kids out there saying, "I want to be a corporate paper shuffler", or "I want to work in a steel mill" and yet there are people doing those things...

I know people who say they knew what they wanted to be when they grew up from a very early age. They then proceeded to follow that path and attain their chosen vocation. That's great for them, but I've never had that kind of clarity. The truth is, there are any number of things that I would enjoy doing for a vocation. But which one?

I never had a really strong idea of which vocation I wanted to pursue but I've always known what I didn't want to do. I knew that I didn't want to work in a factory. I knew I didn't really care a whole lot about working with my hands and I knew that I wanted to be in charge, if possible. (Or at least have a modicum of freedom in the performance of my job) It wasn't much to go by but it was enough to motivate me to go to college and then on to graduate school.

After spending some additional time experiencing jobs that I really didn't like, I ended up with one that's well-suited to my abilities. There's only one problem with that. What if I want to do something else?

I'm a little on the restless side. You know those people who encourage you to relax, close your eyes, and clear your mind? Well they've never been inside my head or they would understand it's futile to even attempt such a thing. As a result, I'm always wondering if there isn't something else I'd rather be doing. Bear in mind here that I'm not coming from the perspective of an irresponsible job hopper. I have a very stable work history and support my family quite well. I'm privileged to have the job I have and take great pride in doing a good job.

All of this restlessness brings me to another question. What would God want me to do? Does he have a specific job in mind for me or does he pretty much leave it up to me to figure that out? From my beliefs it's obvious that God has at least a general will for me, but how specific he gets otherwise is a mystery.

I see other things I can do for a vocation, but I need to determine if I should pursue them. For now, I'm using good old-fashioned common sense which, I think, will keep me from quitting my job and going to work as, say, a greeter at Wal-Mart. I'm also asking God to show me what else is out there. I think I'm going to have to be patient though since God rarely (possibly never) runs on my timetable.

I guess the thing to do at this point is throw the questions out there,
How do you know what to do with your life?
How much do you rely on "answers from above" or on just powering ahead and praying that God will bless your efforts?

Oh, and one more thing. If there's anyone out there looking for a very capable person to travel the world occasionally and do some unspecified legal technical or professional business for large sums of money, feel free to contact me. I think I know just the guy for the job.

There's One Born Every Minute

For a while there I was feeling left out. You see, I've received tons of offers about various "enlargements", not to mention the e-mails informing me that beautiful women are just dying to have sex with meet me, and many many ads for all sorts of medications. Up until now though, I haven't had any offers from Nigeria. It seems like everyone else has, but not me. Not until now that is...

Dear Sir:

Good day to you.

I am Mrs. Mariam Abacha, the widow of Sani Abacha
the Late Nigerian Head of State.

The government has frozen all the family account
and auctioned all our properties.

To save the family from total bankruptcy I have
managed to ship out through a shipping company,
the sum of USD15,500,000.00. kept by my late husband.
The money was disguised to beat the Nigerian
security and it is currently deposited in a credit commission.
I want you to recieve the money and pay it into your
account for the family safely.

I am offering you 30% for assisting me secure this
money fast before it is located by the Nigerian
Government Agents. Contact me immediately with my
Email Address so that I can forward to you all the
neccessary details.

Kindly send your phone and fax numbers for easy
communications.

Best regards.
Mrs. Mariam Abacha
------
Sorry Mrs. Abacha -- no can do, but thanks for trying.

Making it Count

George Soros gave $1 million to the MoveOn.org Voter Fund and $300,000 to the campaign for America’s Future. Both are so-called 527 groups that support the presidential campaign of John F Kerry.

An article in The Hill reports that John Kerry and his Democratic allies have raised almost twice as much money as the Bush-Cheney campaign this year. Twenty-one of the largest Democrat allied groups, called 527's, raised $57 million in the first three months of this year as compared with a little over $50 million raised by the Bush-Cheney team.

The 527 groups surveyed include; the Joint Victory Campaign 2004, ACT, the Media Fund, MoveOn.org Voter Fund, the New Democratic Network, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Meanwhile, Republican allied 527's have raised much less, only about a million dollars for the first quarter of 2004.

527's are named after the relevant section of the US Tax Code. Their purpose is described in detail here. A list of the Major 527 Organizations and the amounts they've spent is here.

In light of this news, you might want to consider donating money to the Bush Campaign,

Donate to the Bush-Cheney Campaign

If you're interested in donating to a Republican allied 527, go to one of the links below:

The Club for Growth Donation Page

The College National Republican Committee

This is one John Kerry supporter with whom I could probably agree.

More Blogdom of God Interviews

The Blogdom of God interview with LaShawn Barber has just been posted.

Don't forget to check out previous interviews done with Josh Claybourn, Adrian Warnock, and Fr. Jim Tucker.

Don't forget to check back, more are on the way...

Let The Spin Begin

I'm sure Bob Woodward's book, Plan of Attack will be blogged to death so I'm not going to get into any kind of detailed analysis. Instead I'll offer a summary based on the fact that I've read some of Woodward's other books, Bush at War and The Commanders, and I've also read the three excerpts that are currently available from The Washington Post,
Excerpt #1: Behind Diplomatic Moves, Military Plan Was Launched
Excerpt #2: With CIA Push, Movement to War Accelerated
Excerpt #3: Cheney Was Unwavering in Desire to Go to War
Excerpt #4: Blair: Steady in Support
Excerpt #5: US Aimed for Hussein

So far, the excerpts offer much less controversy than is being trumpeted by the press and by John Kerry. ..

In previous books, Woodward has been a fairly balanced reporter. He might have a left-leaning bias and sometimes he blows things out of proportion for dramatic effect, but by and large I think he accurately reports the substance of what he's learned. I'm sure some will try to insist that he's an apologist for either Kerry or Bush, but he isn't.

Bush is portrayed as a strong leader who pursued a peaceful resolution to the Iraq War as long as he could realistically do so. The level of deliberation and active discussion reported in the Bush Cabinet is what you would expect, actually what you would want, from senior decision-makers. As each excerpt is released, the press, including the Washington Post, will publicize potentially controversial passages. Keep in mind, the Washington Post is trying to sell as many copies of this book as they can.

However, when all is said and done it appears there is much more smoke than fire. People who read the book should come away with a positive impression of George W. Bush. There will always be those who see a conspiracy under every bush (no pun intended), but most reasonable people will see a positive portrayal of the president. It's interesting to note that both the Kerry and Bush campaigns are urging people to read the book.

It looks interesting and I imagine I'll be reading it too. In the meantime, though, be prepared for a lot of bluster and sensational headlines that don't amount to much of anything. The political consultants will be spinning for all they're worth. A presidential campaign isn't known as the "silly season" for nothing.

If you're looking for yet more information on the book, you can check out the transcript from the live online interview available, here.