Thank God For the Magisterium

Many modern people have the notion that the principal mission of the Catholic Church is to impose belief on unbelievers. The reality is that most of its time is spent trying to restrain belief in everything from spoon-bending to the aliens who allegedly speak to us through a cat in Poughkeepsie.

The riptides and cross-currents of religious enthusiasm in American culture are kaleidoscopic and dizzying. Cradle Catholics can be forgiven for just ignoring the whole thing and many of them do. But it’s still worth taking into account because some religious trends can have decided real-world effects.

For instance, after five centuries of being told by Protestant polemicists that we “Romanists” do not trust the saving grace of Jesus Christ and ignorantly seek salvation by the works of the law, it is a weird thing for a Catholic to see the spectacle of kooky apocalyptic Protestants eagerly excited about the birth of red heifers because this will (they hope) be the prelude to rebuilding the Temple of Solomon and the re-institution of the Mosaic sacrificial system. Just how that Temple will be rebuilt when the Dome of the Rock is situated on the site of the Temple is not quite as clearly worked out.

Recently, James Dobson, a leading Evangelical and a usually sensible man, hosted on his show one Joel Rosenberg, author of something called Epicenter: Why Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your Future. Rosenberg claims to know “what the Bible says” about what is happening in the Mideast and is not shy about making “predictions regarding the fate of the Middle East regarding issues such as Iran’s nuclear threats against Israel, the arms race and ultimately ... Armageddon.” Here’s a snippet:

Dobson: “Well, Joel, let’s explain to everybody how Ezekiel 38 turns out, because Israel is about to be attacked, and a huge number of troops from Russia and Iran are coming toward Israel to destroy it, and what happens?”

Rosenberg: “Well, God is going to move. You won’t find in the Scriptures that the United States is coming to rescue Israel or the European Union, but God says he is going to supernaturally intervene — we’re talking about fire from heaven, a massive earthquake, diseases spreading through the enemy forces. It is going to be such a clear judgment against the enemies of Israel that Ezekiel 39 says that it will take seven months to bury all the bodies of the slain enemies of Israel. “

Such standard-issue Evangelical prophetic cocksureness is an excellent example of why a magisterium is so useful and necessary.

Not only does the magisterium help us know what is essential to the faith, it also helps us remain free of what is unessential. For the various species of Protestantism, in addition to denying real biblical truths such as the Real Presence or infant baptism, also have a tendency to invent “biblical truths” that do not exist and impose them by means of a sort of cultural pressure via charismatic preachers with pet theories who, in their own sphere, are granted an infallibility the Pope could never dream of.

Now, a Catholic is quite free to have a kooky private reading of Ezekiel 38-39 as a prophecy of the “coming resurgent Soviet Union” and its alliance with Muslims, communist Chinese or whoever, all in a vast Cecil B. DeMille battle against Israel. The Church has all sorts of room for eccentrics, and everybody needs a hobby.

But a Catholic is not free to go around telling everybody that “this is the clear teaching of the Bible” and demand it be believed. For the fact is, this kooky theory is emphatically not the clear teaching of the Bible, nor does it have any sanction whatsoever from the Church, the tradition, the Fathers, the councils or the popes. It is a pure novelty we can and should ignore.

What we should not ignore is Rosenberg’s claim that, “Given the events going on in our world today, people at the Pentagon, people at the CIA, people at the White House are asking to sit down and talk about these issues, to understand the Biblical perspective, because it is uncanny what is happening out there and it deserves some study.”

I suspect that Rosenberg is exaggerating his clout with the big cheeses in DC. I doubt that the Pentagon’s intel meetings are dominated by exegeses of Ezekiel 38.

But I do think it matters if a significant portion of the American polity drinks in such bizarre theories as if they were God’s revealed Truth.

Crazy ideas about the Middle East, backed by the force of arms, stand a better than average chance of killing millions.

Query:
Okay, is THIS fair to say – this is what I’m hearing you say:
You do NOT view your “mission” or purpose in these discussions to communicate, to share, both as recipient and giver, in knowledge. Your primary mission, in choosing words and colors and all – all of which which experience shows, meet with an angry response to be to change those who disagree with you.

You are here, in other words, to control, in the name of God, to be sure, but, the purpose is not to understand what we think or why we think it because you know both what we think and why and you want us to stop.

You view your role to be like that of the rooster: a humorous and humiliating noise which should bring to our minds our failings.

If we find this objectionable it is our fault. It is our spiritual shallowness and our whineyness. We should rejoice at your crowing.

Further, you know, you are confident, you are absolutely and unquestioningly certain that you know the way God works so well that there is no question that you are the one to slaughter sacred cows.

So, again, if we find what you write and the way you write it objectionable and painful, your view is that we need to grow spiritually and to let our sacred cows go.

(I’m just typing and trying to summarize as I go slowly through your post.)

We ALL do this to some extent, but your mission is to use mockery rather than reason when Catholics do it, to resort to bright, visually noisy, and difficult to read posts to break Catholics free from their bondage.

And besides, Catholics did it to you, so tit for tat.

So you set out, on what amounts to a mission from God, to mock us and to slaughter what you are confident are sacred cows, and when I find this painful and objectionable it is human but not God’s highest. But you are imitating Christ in what you do.

And my/our problem is that we take ourselves too seriously.

You say you see that sometimes “Charismaniac” is accurate, though not an adequate term to use for the entire charismatic movement.

Though we might be discussing the role of the Magisterium in the divine work of salvation and in the working out of the Church’s apostolic call, you are called to divert the conversation to the dependency issues some people have with allowing other people to do their religion for them. That is. Not all charismatics are maniacs. (Presumably) not all RCs are delegating their religion to people “up-line”. But if people are discussing the role of the Magisterium in general, it is legitimate to divert the conversation to the matter of the “dark side” of the Magisterium – and to use mockery, satire, and the rest to do so, WHETHER OR NOT IT ACTUALLY CHANGES ANY MINDS. You are doing it in obedience.

But we take ourselves too seriously.

(backing up, owing to weirdnesses in MSFT word)You characterize this as “a rowdy intellectual religious …. Exchange”. I disagree. Rowdy, yes. Intellectual, no. And it would be an exchange, if we all used the colors and mockery, only in the sense that artillery engage in exchanges.

Oh, Bro, I think more than one or two RC’s have put it that we are NOT PART OF THE REAL Church.

Maybe so, -- YOu have spoken of the vision of the Father, but when someone reported a Catholic nun claiming such a vision a bunch of Protestants said it was impossible, but you don't catch me saying YOU think it's impossible or all Protestants think it's impossible -- but many of us have repeatedly corrected that view with what Lumen Gentium and Ut Unum Sint say: that you are members of the Church, but not fully. If you are going to tar all of us with the brush handed to you by people who articulate it incorrectly then how is that different from somone's calling all charismatics charismaniacs?

And I have NEVER agreed that the victim of an attack is responsible for the attack or its painfulness. He may be able to mitigate or avoid some of the pain. But I think it is the talk of aggressors and sadists to blame the pain they cause on the victims of it. Yes there are ways the victims can exacerbate the situation. The aggressor is not the one to be giving advice on that. It won’t be heard, at least not before the account balance generated by the aggression is cleared. “Here, now that I’ve told you that you should defend yourself, it’s okay for me to shoot at you again.” I just do not agree. Never have, never will.

That people sin is not an excuse for sin. To counter an argument that such and such behavior is wrong with the rebuttal, “You’re too upset about and by it,” is essentially to change the subject and it suggests, "My behavior is unimpeachable, let’s talk about YOUR problem which leads you to be upset by it."

Nevertheless, it's also merely an assertion of my experience—that the most fair-minded, logical etc. folks I’ve known who’ve said anything in the ball park, have come down on the side of XYZ.
“Also merely”? From a psychologist? It’s also merely irrelevant and a diversion. It leaves open the possibility that SOME thiking, objective, and fair-minded folks could hold an opinion shared by some unthinking, subjective, unfair minded folks. So let’s talk about the opinion, not its holders. It’s still an observation which ups the emotional ante and obscures the issue. It is a diversion to personalities.

For the record, I am against whining in general and especially against whining with pathological background.

I’m always intrigued when “pathological” is used as a pseudo-moral condemnation. It is the ravings of the sane that trouble me. The ravings of the ill are pathetic. -- or maybe the disease metaphor is inadequate.

That [our humanity] makes it troublesome to keep distinctions clear.

That’s no excuse for blurring them.

My expectation is this, more or less: We are discussing issues which demand the best from our will and our minds as each of us offer them to God and ask Him to bless our work. We all know, or should know, that raising the emotional temperature by mockery and personal assault, by careless and disparaging misstatement, and the rest is more than likely to obscure communication and to hinder thought, and to make charity less likely. Yet it seems that many of us, on all sides, bring to the table only rhetoric which vastly diminishes the probability of true communication in charity. I’ve done it myself. I’m trying HARD not to do it. This is hard work and it is important work.

Some come to the table, as you seem to do, adopting the role of therapist, almost of Zen master, trying to break others free of what you and some others consider their delusions. I personally have seen no delusion shedding resulting from this kind of rhetoric. What I have seen is a raising of the emotional temperature, an increase in hostility, and a hardening of adversarial positions. I think that maybe the crack about insanity being the repetition of old behavior in the hopes of new results MIGHT apply here.

I personally am tempted to stop reading or listening when somebody starts with “This is what’s wrong with what you think,” and then goes on to describe something I don’t think. I have said repeatedly “lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds” and “the worst is the corruption of the best” as counter arguments to charges like the Magisterium enables the kind of delegating dependency I discussed earlier. I have said that the best hospitals often have the highest death rates because they get the sickest patients. It may be time to stop beating my head against the wall – NOT, I hasten to add, the wall of people continuing to disagree with me, but the wall of people articulating their disagreements in such a manner that I can only conclude that they do not wish to converse but to win, to dominate, to control, to change people into what THEY presume to think is the best ort the only way to relate to God.

1323 words! I couldn't give this the time it, uh, deserved? I hope it's a little clear. For thouse of you who think this is personal, it's not. It's about how people of differing religious views can have a discussion. If we can't do it, we'd better not be too surprised when islamists can't.

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