Hadley Arkes
Posted on 06/01/2010 9:52:44 AM PDT by NYer
Hadley Arkes
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Catholic Church’s voice for the littlest among us got even stronger last month.
Hadley Arkes, professor of Jurisprudence and American Institutions at Amherst College, and one of the foremost Pro-Life legal scholars in the country, received the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and first Communion at the chapel of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. on April 24.
Born and raised a Jew, Arkes said he views his newly-embraced Catholic faith as a fulfillment of his Jewish faith. Rather than a departure, he sees it as accepting Christ as Messiah.
More than a decade ago, Arkes realized that there was something special about the Catholic Church as a “truth-telling institution.” When the Church stood against the currents of opinion in the world, he was inclined to believe the Church was right, he told The Anchor.
Before he embraced the Church’s faith, he had embraced the Church’s respect for human reason. In an article about his conversion for The Catholic Thing, an online periodical, he described his appreciation for the Church’s tradition of defending and promoting the natural law, with regard to the Pro-Life issue and in general. “The natural law we know through that reason that is natural for human beings. The Church’s moral position here did not depend on faith or belief. One didn’t have to be Catholic to understand it. And that was precisely the teaching of the Church.”
He told The Anchor, “I found myself explaining the Catholic position to Catholics.”
Robert George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, wrote about his friend Arkes’ conversion on Mirror of Justice, a blog dedicated to the development of Catholic legal theory. He noted that, although the Catholic Church’s moral witness on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sex has made the Church a “sign of contradiction” to many of the most powerful in contemporary Western culture, that same witness drew Arkes to the faith. Despite the failings of many of its members and leaders, especially in the wake of the sexual abuse crisis, Arkes recognized that the Church is indeed “a truth-telling institution,” he said.
“In teachings that many find to be impediments, Hadley found decisive evidence that the Church is, indeed, what she claims to be,” George wrote.
Friends have said that Arkes has remarked that it is not a surprise that a faith that believes God himself comes under the appearance of unleavened bread is sensitive to the dignity of human life in even its tiniest form.
Joe Reilly, a former executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, told The Anchor that Arkes is a “deep thinker” and one of the most brilliant men he has come across in his work to defend life. He says he has long helped the whole Pro-Life movement think more deeply about the legal and philosophical principles at play.
Former students of Arkes have thanked him for leading them to the truth found in natural law and, well before Arkes became a Catholic, for helping them to become better Catholics.
One former student, Ned Desmond, who grew up on Cape Cod and graduated from Amherst in 1980, said that Arkes’ course on political obligations was “very clever” and “really steadied my hand and my mind as far as what I believed and what I thought was right,” he told The Anchor.
Arkes taught that abortion can never be justified, and Desmond said he was struck by the “deep saneness” of natural law theory. He later made the connection between the theory and Catholic teaching, which brought him closer to the faith.
“He helped so many Catholic students get their bearing at Amherst,” said Desmond, who now lives in Maryland where he is the president of Go Sportn, Inc, and a former executive at Time magazine.
Many leading Pro-Lifers give Arkes credit for some of the biggest recent achievements of the Pro-Life movement. Arkes helped write the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002 and calls the legislation proof that “you don’t have to wait for the court to do everything.” He regularly contributes to journals and has written several books. He is currently working on a new book while on leave from Amherst, where he has taught since 1966.
Although he accepted the teachings of the Church, Arkes waited to convert. Concerns about how family members would take the news held him from taking the leap right away. He did not want to hurt his family nor seem to disrespect the Jewish faith.
He found that many Catholics respected Jewish tradition. They, like him, believed Abraham made a covenant with God. He saw the connection between the manna in the desert and the Eucharist. “You can read the Old Testament without the New, but you can’t really read the New Testament without the Old. Everything is predicated on the Old,” he told The Anchor.
Last year in October, after the Red Mass for members of the legal profession in Washington, Arkes and his wife Judy were approached by Father Arne Panula, the director at the Catholic Information Center where Arkes would be baptized. Father Panula provocatively asked him what was preventing the most famous non-Catholic at the Red Mass from coming into the Church. Arkes responded in the tradition of “The Wizard of Oz’s” Cowardly Lion, “c-c-c-courage.” In a homily one month later at a Mass at which Arkes was present, Father Panula said what the first reading and the Gospel of the Mass showed was the need for “c-c-c courage.” For Arkes, that illustration and inside joke “was the hook that finally worked.”
In a letter to friends after the baptism, Arkes wrote to thank them for their continued support.
“Judy and I are still dealing with the after-glow. It lingers, magically, and we aren’t inclined to snuff it out right away and get on with other things,” he said. “We can’t thank you all enough.”
Arkes and his wife, Judy, met in high school and have been married 48 years. Judy is Jewish, and Arkes said he could not have joined the Church without her support.
In a second Mirror of Justice blog entry, David Forte of Cleveland State University School of Law and a consultor to the Pontifical Council for the Family, said that Arkes was like Jesus in ministering to those who reason. Arkes, he said, “has never entered a debate to debate, much less to ‘win.’ Rather, he prepares for contests by seeking to understand, and he enters the lists seeking to persuade.”
“For all of his adult life, Hadley Arkes has followed in the steps of the Master. He now walks along side of him,” he added.
No, your sects' twisting of those scriptures make it seem like it is the case.
Whenever that is posted I laugh and laugh. Reformation Mills!!
Wonderful news!I have always liked reading him.
Rather than take the approach of excerpting out of context quotes and citing the revisionist interpretations that Protestants do of Scripture you are going to have to read and study the Catechism AND the Scripture AND open your heart to the divine authenticity of Apostolic Tradition to obtain all of the revealed Word of God. This is required of YOU because to gain YOUR salvation because the entire heresy of Calvin's TULIP is insufficient.
Excellent news. I have always admired Hadley Arkes, and I’m glad to see him coming home.
One of the curious contradictions of the post-Vatican II Church is that while many Catholics have lost their way, betrayed by dissident priests, bishops, and teachers, many Evangelicals and Jews and others have come home to the Church, recognizing the truths that it teaches.
I’m hoping for a Great Awakening, when Catholics too will hear these truths from the pulpits in their parishes. The Church has gone through difficult times often in the course of the past 2000 years, but always has been renewed. I am hoping that that time is approaching once again.
And I am hoping for a Great Awakening among the Mainline Protestant Churches, so that those who don’t come home to the Catholic Church at least will return to their Christian roots. And among all those who have fallen away from church attendance entirely.
Actually, the Church teaches that baptism is a sacrament, that requires proper matter, words, and intention. But it can be performed by a layman, in an emergency or unusual circumstances.
So it is perfectly possible to be baptized into a Protestant church and have it be valid. That happened to me, since I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, and therefore only had a conditional baptism, just in case, when I became Catholic. But there was little doubt that the original baptism was valid. It requires water, and the words “I baptize you N., in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost)”.
The words, of course, are specified by Jesus in the Bible.
Timothy said tradition and scripture.
Traditions such as the Trinity. Father, Son, Holy spirit. For without the traditions, every man is his own church, and without the gospel, the Word is lost.
No, not every Catholic is baptised. Some, like myself are confirmed only.
The Catholic church will not baptise those already baptised, only those, as in this case, who have not been baptised.
“I quote from the scriptures that were borne out of Antioch, Syria, where people were first called Christians...”
Which books did they include?
ROFL!! I attend a Maronite Catholic Church which traces its ancestry back to Antioch. Our priests are fully Catholic. Perhaps you are quoting from the Gnostic gospels.
You only wish he said that...The fact is, he said OR...Your own Catholic father Jerome attests to this...
All you had to do was change one little God breathed word and prestomundo, you have your very own proof text for your unbiblical tradition...
“Only Satan himself could be in the heart of someone who, when presented with a story of conversion to Christ, spews venom.”
Actually this is a story about a conversion to Catholicism, not Christ.
Iscool:
So I guess you should be on Star Trek as it seems somehow the scriptures got transported down thru the centuries to you. Antioch is where the Church was called Catholic in 105 AD [See St. Ignatius of Antioch] and all of those Churches in that region look “Nothing like your little protestant sect” in backwoods USA or wherever you happen to reside.
Those Churches then, as now, are Catholic or Eastern Orthodox and have no stains of the any of the various Protestant Heresies.
Origen argued for a multiple sense of Scripture approach, which included the Literal and Alllegorical, which was used before him by the Fathers such as St. Justin Martyr and more so by St. Irenaus (i.e. the Racipulation Theology of Christ as the New Adam, whihch further developed St. Pauls theology of the first Adam and Christ as the second Adam, etc and Mary as the New Eve, among two examples)
And Origen only proposed the 4-Sense of Scripture methodology, among which include the Literal Sense of Scripture. So you are dead wrong, as usual.
The Church does have an idea of how allegory is in the Scriptures. Typology, which used allegorical methods, is the main basis for Catholic Biblical interpretation and how it is read in the Liturgy. For example, in Genesis 14:18, the Priest-King Melchizedek made an offering of Bread and Wine and later the Psalms (110:4) make a prophecy that “you will be a Priest like Melchizedek forever.” This passages are typological in that they prefigure Christ, i.e. Melchizedek is a “type of Christ” and thus Christ fullfills the signs/actions/person of Melchizdek and Christ eternal priesthood is made forever present to his followers through the Holy Eucharist [i.e. Christ offering Bread and Wine as documented in the 3 Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians Chapter 10).
tsk, tsk,
If the Trinity was only a Catholic tradition, I wouldn't accept it...But since the Trinity is all over the scriptures, I accept it as truth...
Iscool:
Show me in the Scriptures where the Holy Trinity is “formally defined”, ie. that God is One Divine Substance, yet three Distinct Persons who are all Divine Persons but are in a perfect communion of Love and thus so intimately related that there are “not 3 Gods” but One God.
Show me in the Sacred Scriptures where Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is formally defined as “a Divine Person” who has both a “Full Divine Nature” and “Full Human Nature” and those 2 Natures are not at odds or in confusion and both fully function in the Divine Person who is Christ.
The Bible does not speak on its own, it had to be interpreted by the Church, which St. Paul describes as the “pillar and Foundation of Truth” (cf 1 Timothy 3:15) and the Church doing the interpretation via the Church Fathers and Councils of the Early Church (Nicea 325, Constantinopile 381, Ephesus 431, and Chalcedon 451) were the “One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church” not your local protestant ecceslial community in backwoods America.
So when Timothy says we should pass on the traditions we have learned, you reject it?
Or does the Gospel according to Iscool excise that portion?
What about where Christ says, “I am the living bread”
What about the part in scripture where it says, the father uncreated, the son uncreated, and the holy spirit uncreated?
You believe all these things?
If you're going to reject the Papacy because the word "Pope" isn't in the Scriptures, you ought to reject the Trinity for the same reason. Plenty of a "Bible alone" groups already do. What makes you right, and them wrong? Remember, they claim to go by the "Bible alone" just like you do.
Like the rest of Protestantism, you pluck bits and pieces of Catholic tradition that you like -- stuff like the Trinity, Sunday worship, and the canon of Scripture -- pronounce it "Biblical," and adopt it as your own. There's far more attestation for the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Papacy in the Scriptures than there is for any of the three things I mention above, but you reject both of them and accept the other stuff.
The ridiculous irony is that Sola Scriptura itself is not scriptural in any way.
And then you start out by quoting from Ignatius forged letters...C'mon, don't you something more credible that the so called writings of Ignatius???
and all of those Churches in that region look “Nothing like your little protestant sect” in backwoods USA or wherever you happen to reside.
I totally agree...And they don't at all resemble the churches in the scriptures...Bowing down to the successor of Peter who sits on a throne...Calling Peter's successor Holy Father...Peter would be drowning in his own vomit if he had to see what was going on in his name...
the Racipulation Theology of Christ as the New Adam, whihch further developed St. Pauls theology of the first Adam and Christ as the second Adam, etc and Mary as the New Eve, among two examples)
Ajpparently you guys will believe anything Catholic regardless of how ridiculous...
Paul's theology of the first Adam and Christ as the second Adam were partially developed by Origen??? Oh brother...
Now we know the Mary as the new Eve farce was developed by your religion...That's no secret...
For example, in Genesis 14:18, the Priest-King Melchizedek made an offering of Bread and Wine and later the Psalms (110:4) make a prophecy that “you will be a Priest like Melchizedek forever.” This passages are typological in that they prefigure Christ, i.e. Melchizedek is a “type of Christ” and thus Christ fullfills the signs/actions/person of Melchizdek and Christ eternal priesthood is made forever present to his followers through the Holy Eucharist [i.e. Christ offering Bread and Wine as documented in the 3 Synoptic Gospels and 1 Corinthians Chapter 10)
You guys need to rethink your typology...What are the signs, actions and person of Melchizedek that you are referring to??? The scriptures gave no hint that Melchizedek provided signs or actions...
No doubt that Melchizedek was not only a type of Christ but was actually Christ before the incarnation...
There in no connection between the bread and wine that Melchizedek and your Eucharist...
We believe in the Trinity because we can see it in the scriptures...If it wasn't there, we wouldn't believe it...
I can't say why you can't find the Trinity in the scriptures...Maybe it's a spiritual issue...
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