Get Over It: The Early Church Wasn’t Baptist

My latest for RenewAmerica:

I appreciate the opportunity to respond to yet another RenewAmerica contributor promoting revisionist readings of Christian history. While I continue to believe RenewAmerica is not the best setting to have these particular debates, I am compelled to respond in a mode comparable to the initial accusations. Hence, this article.

I encourage my readers to review Mr. Tim Dunkins’s piece here, to which this article is a response. Just to be clear, the following arguments are not intended to be considered in isolation from my previous contributions to this discussion.

Let me begin with a few observations, as a student of history. The question of determining the creedal orientation of the early church is not one that can be resolved by reading any one Father, doctor, or saint in isolation from his broader religious context. One has to have a literate understanding of the early Church, not only the theological consensuses of early Christian teachers, but early Christian art and architecture, Christian liturgy, popular piety, and, of course, the Scriptures (a rather loosely defined canonical collection before the late 4th century).

When the Fathers as a whole, for instance, are so unanimous on an essential point of doctrine, and another Father appears to be teaching contrary to this unanimity without incurring any scandal or controversy, one has to at least consider the possibility that the appearance ought not to be taken at face-value.

This is not special pleading on my part, but sound historiography, one to which Christian believers (Catholic and Protestant) adhere to all the time, when we contest secularist or leftist-Christian assertions of multiple Christianities taught by the Apostles, for instance the oft-repeated claim that the religion of Paul differed from that of James and/or other Apostles, or that the Apostles themselves misunderstood Jesus, manipulating His teachings without anyone raising so much as a wimper in protest.

I don’t know of any historian who claims that the early Church held to a symbolist understanding of the Eucharist. The consensus on this matter was summed up by the late Protestant church historian J. N. D. Kelley thusly:

Ignatius [of Antioch] roundly declares that . . . [t]he bread is the flesh of Jesus, the cup his blood. Clearly he intends this realism to be taken strictly, for he makes it the basis of his argument against the Docetists’ denial of the reality of Christ’s body. . . . Irenaeus teaches that the bread and wine are really the Lord’s body and blood. His witness is, indeed, all the more impressive because he produces it quite incidentally while refuting the Gnostic and Docetic rejection of the Lord’s real humanity.

Hippolytus speaks of ‘the body and the blood’ through which the Church is saved, and Tertullian regularly describes the bread as ‘the Lord’s body.’ The converted pagan, he remarks, ‘feeds on the richness of the Lord’s body, that is, on the Eucharist.’ The realism of his theology comes to light in the argument, based on the intimate relation of body and soul, that just as in baptism the body is washed with water so that the soul may be cleansed, so in the Eucharist ‘the flesh feeds upon Christ’s body and blood so that the soul may be filled with God.’ Clearly his assumption is that the Savior’s body and blood are as real as the baptismal water. Cyprian’s attitude is similar. Lapsed Christians who claim communion without doing penance, he declares, ‘do violence to his body and blood, a sin more heinous against the Lord with their hands and mouths than when they denied him.’ Later he expatiates on the terrifying consequences of profaning the sacrament, and the stories he tells confirm that he took the Real Presence literally.

Eucharistic teaching, it should be understood at the outset, was in general unquestioningly realist, i.e., the consecrated bread and wine were taken to be, and were treated and designated as, the Savior’s body and blood.

{Early Christian Doctrines, 197-198, 211-212, 440}

For more articulations of this consensus, from Protestant sources, see: “History of the Doctrine of the Eucharist”

Note again what I am not asserting. I am not arguing that each and every orthodox Christian Father before the late Middle Ages would, absent a solemn definition by the Church, have framed their Eucharistic doctrine in terms of the Aristotelian metaphysics presupposed in the word transubstantiation, no more than these Fathers necessarily would have regarded each and every book of our present New Testament as canonical Scripture to the exclusion of all others. Nor should we expect them to. The entire history of the Church is one of organic development, with theological language and doctrinal minutiae the subject of much of it. One does not determine the “denominational” allegiance or orientation of the early Church by picking up 16th century Catechisms and looking for a precise fit from those who lived 13, 14, and 15 centuries prior. One looks at the overall character of the early Church and asks, Which church(es) today best represent the organic outgrowth of the earliest churches?

When one considers the overall orientation of the early Church (liturgical worship, monarchical episcopate, realist understandings of the sacraments, veneration of saints and relics, flourishing representational art, an ever-developing Mariology, Roman primacy, a robust conciliarism, prayers for the dead, distinctions between mortal/venial sins, salvation by faith and works, etc.), the picture painted is not primitive Protestantism, but primitive Catholicism. That is my point.

But I don’t wish to exaggerate it, and neither should Mr. Dunkin. As our colleague Dan Popp would have to agree, considering his excellent studies on the issue, the early Church did not exactly come into being with a robust Trinitatian Christology. The Church reached her dogmatic conclusions at Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon through organic development, and not a little debate, but it would clearly be erroneous to claim, as secularists and Biblical Unitarians do, the Christ’s divinity was strictly “unsettled” before, say, the year 325. Historical revisionism notwithstanding, none of the early Fathers regarded Jesus to be an ordinary man. No one denied his divinity, but there was plenty of debate regarding the theological implications of this divinity: how it related to that of the Father, and how a distinction within the Godhead was to be squared with monotheism. Many of the pre-Nicene orthodox Fathers embraced language which would be unacceptable to Christians of later ages — not because they were heretics, but because they lacked a precise theological vocabulary with which to frame difficult doctrines, and it was left to them to crystallize the implications of the Apostolic teaching, and bequeath Christological formulae that orthodox Christians today take for granted.

And so with the Eucharist. It simply is not the case that any Father (as far as we can tell, anyway) evinced a strictly symbolist understanding of the Eucharist. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church summarizes the evidence succinctly:

That the Eucharist conveyed to the believer the Body and Blood of Christ was universally accepted from the first. The Eucharistic elements were themselves commonly referred to as the Body and Blood. During the patristic period some theologians wrote as if they believed that the bread and wine persisted after the consecration, others as if they held that they were no longer there; there was no attempt at precise definition. After the controversies arising from assertions by Paschasius Radbertus in the 9th century and Berengar in the 11th, definition was felt to be desirable. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) used the term “transubstantiation” to assert the Real Presence against the Cathari.

{From the entry “Eucharist”}

To argue that that the symbolist understandings of Radbertus and Barengarius illustrate the orthodoxy of symbolist Eucharistic theology is facially fallacious. That’s like saying the emergence of the dualist Cathari (Albigensians) is proof-positive that monotheism was not settled doctrine by the 13th century, or that the presence of heretical pastors and teachers in today’s conservative denominations (who deny any manner of orthodox Christian teaching, especially with regards to sexuality) proves that fundamental Christian teachings are still considered up for grabs by the traditional denominations, or that they have not been historically settled.

Br. Dunkins’s cherry-picked citations do no violence to the scholarly consensus I have referred to, when the theological background is kept in mind. That Pope Saint Gelasius I caused absolutely no uproar, absolutely no controversy over his articulation of Eucharistic doctrine strongly militates against a symbolist understanding of his words. Given the historical context, it’s rather obvious that he is speaking phenomenologically, not using the words “substance” and “nature” according to Aristotelian categories, usages which would have been absolutely foreign to most minds of the Latin Christian West in the late 5th century. In any event, St Gelasius is clearly not a symbolist. Look again at his words, in their larger context, which Dunkins omits:

Surely, the sacrament we take of the Lord’s body and blood is a divine thing, on account of which, and by the same, we partake of the Divine nature; and yet the substance of the bread and wine does not cease to be. And certainly the image and similitude of Christ’s body and blood are celebrated in the action of the mysteries: it is therefore shewn to us evidently enough that the same is to be felt by us in the Lord Christ Himself which we profess, celebrate, and are. Just as they [the bread and wine] pass into the Divine substance by the operation of the Holy Spirit, while nevertheless remaining in the peculiarity of their nature, such is the principal mystery itself [the Incarnation] whose efficacy and virtue they truly represent.

The most anti-Catholic reading one can possibly take from this is that the 5th century Pontiff subscribed to what would later be termed consubstantiation, namely that the Eucharistic bread is somehow mystically joined to the Body and Blood of Jesus, and truly contains It. If this is the case, it should not scandalize any Catholic, but neither should Baptists with an axe to grind appropriate Gelasisus’s teaching as their own. I have long been impressed with the reverence Baptists show at their Eucharists, what must for them be a mere piece of bread. But no educated Baptist I know would speak of the Eucharist in remotely Gelasian terms. The Pope’s teaching is a lot closer to that of 13th century Catholicism than it is to 16th century anabaptist memorialism.

The same is to be said for the teaching of Saint Theodoret. Again I give some more context:

For even after the consecration the mystic symbols are not deprived of their own nature; they remain in their former substance, figure and form; they are visible and tangible as they were before. But they are regarded as what they have become, and believed so to be, and are worshipped as being what they are believed to be.

Dunkins’s citations of Augustine are a little more egregious, as they ignore completely the Bishop of Hippo’s other passages where his understanding of the Eucharist is shown to be emphatically Catholic. He also repeats Br. Popp’s error of regarding the word spiritual as somehow antithetical to the Catholic and Orthodox Eucharist. So let me reiterate:

The Catholic Eucharist is spiritual! It is an act of divine grace! Christ’s communication to believers of his incorruptible Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity under the forms of bread and wine is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit, whom we invoke during the Eucharistic Prayer (and all throughout our liturgies) for this very purpose! Christ did not expect his disciples to chase after him with forks and knives, or to grill his crucified flesh for a communal Bar-B-Q after they took him down from the cross and the women anointed it with a bottle of A1. That is the carnality for which Jesus rebuked his disciples in John 6; that is true cannibalism. The Catholic Eucharist is not even remotely that.

I’ll let Augustine’s words speak for themselves otherwise:

And he was carried in his own hands. But, brethren, how is it possible for a man to do this? Who can understand it? Who is it that is carried in his own hands? A man can be carried in the hands of another; but no one can be carried in his own hands. How this should be understood literally of David, we cannot discover; but we can discover how it was meant of Christ. For Christ was carried in His own hands, when, referring to His own Body, He said:This is My Body. For He carried that Body in His hands.

. . .

I promised you, who have now been baptized, a sermon in which I would explain the Sacrament of the Lord’s Table, which you now look upon and of which you last night were made participants. You ought to know what you have received, what you are going to receive, and what you ought to receive daily. That Bread which you see on the altar, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the Body of Christ. That chalice, or rather, what is in that chalice, having been sanctified by the word of God, is the Blood of Christ. Through that bread and wine the Lord Christ willed to commend His Body and Blood, which He poured out for us unto the forgiveness of sins. If you receive worthily, you are what you have received.

. . .

What you see is the bread and the chalice; that is what your own eyes report to you. But what your faith obliges you to accept is that the bread is the Body of Christ and the chalice the Blood of Christ. . . . How is the bread His Body? And the chalice, or what is in the chalice, how is it His Blood? Those elements, brethren, are called Sacraments, because in them one thing is seen, but another is understood. What is seen is the corporeal species, but what is understood is the spiritual fruit. . . . You, however, are the Body of Christ and His members. If, therefore, you are the Body of Christ and His members, your mystery is presented at the table of the Lord, you receive your mystery. To that which you are, you answer: Amen; and by answering, you subscribe to it. For you hear: The Body of Christ! and you answer: Amen! Be a member of Christ’s Body, so that your Amen may be the truth.

[In other words: You are what you eat!-ed.]

{Source}

I will conclude with a short reflection:[1] Too many American Christians are grossly ignorant of the existence of the Eastern Churches, made up of Christians belonging to the historic churches of Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Asia Minor, India, and Eastern Europe. If it is the case, as some polemicists assert (explicitly and implicitly) that “transubstantiation” is late medieval innovation, how does one possibly explain the doctrinal unity of these Eastern churches with Catholicism? How on earth did the Popes and Western Bishops pull that one off?! Why does not a single one of these churches (whether Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, or Assyrian) scream Innovation! when they themselves have never framed their doctrines in Aristotelian terms, and yet are one with their Western Catholic brethren in professing a very realist understanding of the Eucharist? The answer is obvious. The doctrine of the Real Presence is a direct inheritance from the Apostolic Church; Fundamentalist Protestant conspiracy theories to the contrary ignore the historical record in favor of ideological abstractions dangerously reminiscent of leftist Constitutional hermeneutic.

I’ll leave my colleague Dan Popp to rebut Mr. Dunkins’s aberrant ecclesiology. Looking up the word “church” in any mainstream Bible dictionary is enough to rebut the silly assertion that the word never refers to the universal communion of all believers. To my knowledge, Dunkins’s understanding is not even shared by the vast majority of congregationalists, and it is completely foreign to how the Christian Church has always understood its own Scriptures.

Christian denominationalism is a subject which fascinates me, but I simply have no time to keep up with every theological fad that pops up in these “New Testament” assemblies, fads which somehow always end up affirming the political and/or cultural prejudices of the one reading the Scriptures with “itching ears.”

The Church of the New Testament is Christ’s Mystical Body and Bride; orthodox Christianity knows only one Jesus, and he’s no polygamist.

NOTES:

[1] (This, by the way, is also a very powerful apologetical point to make against secularists and others who assert that other commonly-held Christian fundamentals are late inventions by Machiavellian Pontiffs and Emperors.)

The Fathers and the Real Presence: Further Clarifications

My second-to-latest piece for RenewAmerica.com:

I appreciate yet another opportunity to contribute to clarifying the teachings of the Church Fathers via-a-vis the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and of offering further correction to what I continue to believe to be my colleague Dan Popp’s misconstrual of said teachings.

I wish to start by making clear my appreciation for the nobility of Br. Dan’s endeavor to popularize the writings of the earliest Christian teachers. Every Christian denomination (mine own included) has its “original sins,” and one of popular Protestantism’s is its utter disregard for the Patristic inheritance, as something “unbiblical,” even apostate. I hope my colleague’s series contributes to the correction of this most unconservative (and, I would argue, unbiblical) tendency.

(For an understanding of what follows, readers are urged to follow the previous exchanges: here, here, and here.)

Let me address some of Dan’s more persistent objections to a realist understanding reading of the Father’s Eucharistic doctrine. Regarding the early Church’s practice of mixing wine and water in the Eucharistic chalice (a practice maintained to this very day by every church which predates the Protestant Reformation):

Eric’s explanation — that “every Mediterranean household” (emphasis his) did the same with their ordinary wine — only raises another question: if this was the mundane practice, why is it mentioned at all, much less so frequently by the “Fathers?” Besides, some of them seem to indicate that the water is an important part of the sacrament — not something incidental, unavoidable and inconsequential. For example Irenaeus, in Book 5 Chapter 1.3 of Against Heresies writes, “Therefore do these men reject the commixture of the heavenly wine, and wish it to be water of the world only….” Here (though the emphasis is on the wine) the water is necessary for the “commixture,” which to reject is to put one in the camp of the heretic.

There’s no if about this. As I documented in my original response, it was customary in the ancient world (among both Jews and Greco-Romans) to dilute the house wine with a little bit of water. Such dilution helped the highly-concentrated wines of the Mediterranean to taste better, and to mitigate the concentration of the alcoholic content. To my knowledge, this is not something disputed by any historian of classical antiquity. The Scriptures themselves presuppose such a practice (e.g., Proverbs 9:1-5, a favorite text of the Fathers when discussing the Eucharist).

Readers will note what I iterated earlier: Very soon, the early Church would attach mystic symbolism to an originally utilitarian rite. The early Church’s conservative instincts, combined with a charming penchant for allegorical reading of the Old Testament, made the Fathers very sensitive to any perceived novelties in liturgical celebration, even on matters subsequent generations would consider nonessential (i.e., subject to the dictates of ecclesial legislation). The early Church’s heated controversies over the date for celebrating Easter are a more dramatic case in point.

Gentle or not, my colleague’s rib that if [Eric] really believes that wine + water = wine, he probably should avoid a career in the food service industry just reeks of ignorance. While not exactly a wine connoisseur, take it from a red-blooded Papist: wine includes water! Depending on how concentrated one’s base is, one can add water and it’s still what most people would consider wine. This is true, by the way, for a number of drinks, broths, etc. A liquid brew may be over-diluted, and so change the very substance of the mixture, but adding a few drops of water to table wine does not render the drink something completely different. This point is so obvious that to waste time debating it borders on parody.

Finally, do note that the heretics against whom Ireneaus is writing are Hydroparastatae, or Aquarians, who celebrated the Eucharist with water alone.

When all is said and done, wine mixed with a little bit of water is still wine. When, and if, the elements of the chalice are changed they are changed into the same substance.

As for Br. Dan’s exegesis of the word spiritual, again he does not do justice to what I wrote earlier: While the word spiritual may connote immateriality, it does not invariably do so. The same is true, by the way, of the word carnal, (or the Biblical expression, the flesh). In the Scriptures, the “flesh” often does not connote the physical body as such, but the entire man living under the regime of sin and death. I’m assuming both my colleague and my readers are sufficiently acquainted with the Scriptures that I do not need to belabor the point with countless citations. A similar dynamic is at work in the word spiritual, as I illustrated earlier. Something is spiritual when it pertains to the supernatural, particularly to God or godliness, not necessarily because it is immaterial. When the Apostle Paul tells us the “spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” he is not literally positing a body-soul dichotomy, as if the physical body is the only part of a person affected by the Fall. Such misunderstandings lie at the root of Jehovah’s Witness misunderstandings of many Scriptures, such as the following: So also it is written, The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Corinthians 15:45) Does Christ not presently have a human body?

It is this theological background which must be kept in mind when reading the Fathers. I promised my readers I would not inundate them with laundry lists of Patristic citations (other writers have already done so, and I see no need to reinvent the wheel), but I feel I must provide Ireneaus’s Fragment 37 in its entirety, to proffer the context denied by my colleague:

Those who have become acquainted with the secondary (i.e., under Christ) constitutions of the apostles, are aware that the Lord instituted a new oblation in the new covenant, according to the declaration of Malachi the prophet. For, “from the rising of the sun even to the setting my name has been glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice;” {Malachi 1:11} as John also declares in the Apocalypse: “The incense is the prayers of the saints.” Then again, Paul exhorts us “to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” {Romans 12:1} And again, “Let us offer the sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of the lips.” {Hebrews 13:15} Now those oblations are not according to the law, the handwriting of which the Lord took away from the midst by cancelling it; {Colossians 2:14} but they are according to the Spirit, for we must worship God “in spirit and in truth.” {John 4:24} And therefore the oblation of the Eucharist is not a carnal one, but a spiritual; and in this respect it is pure. For we make an oblation to God of the bread and the cup of blessing, giving Him thanks in that He has commanded the earth to bring forth these fruits for our nourishment. And then, when we have perfected the oblation, we invoke the Holy Spirit, that He may exhibit this sacrifice, both the bread the body of Christ, and the cup the blood of Christ, in order that the receivers of these antitypes may obtain remission of sins and life eternal. Those persons, then, who perform these oblations in remembrance of the Lord, do not fall in with Jewish views, but, performing the service after a spiritual manner, they shall be called sons of wisdom. {Source}

It’s fairly clear from this passage that the “spiritualness” of the Eucharistic sacrifice is not in its immateriality. This is obvious from the fact that it involves an offering of bread and wine, physical elements. Also note the connection with the Christian’s being exhorted to offer his body as a living sacrifice. Is the body not physical? For Ireneaus, the offerings of the Jews were not properly spiritual, not because they involve physical elements, but because the Jews (as a people) did not possess the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and so could not offer God the sacrifice of Christ. He’s more explicit in his Against Heresies:

Inasmuch, then, as the Church offers with single-mindedness, her gift is justly reckoned a pure sacrifice with God. As Paul also says to the Philippians, “I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things that were sent from you, the odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, pleasing to God.” {Philippians 4:18} For it behooves us to make an oblation to God, and in all things to be found grateful to God our Maker, in a pure mind, and in faith without hypocrisy, in well-grounded hope, in fervent love, offering the first-fruits of His own created things. And the Church alone offers this pure oblation to the Creator, offering to Him, with giving of thanks, the things taken from His creation. But the Jews do not offer thus: for their hands are full of blood; for they have not received the Word, through whom it is offered to God.

Finally, my colleague’s accusations of begging the question are unfair. Some of them are outright non-sequitors. He brings to this discussion a very narrow understanding of words such as spiritual, memorial, and symbol, understandings which are far from axiomatic, and in fact are very modern in theo-philosophical connotation. Reading his expose of the Fathers’ Eucharistic doctrine, one would never know that Catholic and Orthodox Christians routinely refer to the Eucharist as a memorial, as something spiritual, and as consisting of symbolism. My reading of the Fathers does not presuppose Catholicism (my obvious biases notwithstanding); I have already admitted that one should not expect the true Church in the first centuries to perfectly resemble the true Church in the 21st. I do insist, however, that the Fathers be accepted on their own terms, and in their broader historical, theological, and ecclesial context. When, for instance, they refer to a visible rite (i.e., the Eucharist) as something spiritual, it’s best not to assume that they are referring to something completely and utterly invisible!

Likewise, when there exist today a handful of Christian churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Oriental, and Assyrian) which can lay legitimate claim to institutional continuity with the earliest Christian communities, it’s not completely anachronistic to examine whether their contemporary Christian doctrine and praxis (which, by and large, they share among themselves, despite their vast cultural diversity) might shed light on that of their spiritual forbearers, men (and women) whom these churches venerate as saints, and but for whose veneration their writings would not have come down to us as those of the Fathers.

The Early Church Was CATHOLIC: A Response to Dan Popp’s Eucharistic Revisionism

My latest column for RenewAmerica:

Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God; consider the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings. {Hebrews 13:7-9a}

RenewAmerica.com is unique among mainstream conservative news-commentary outlets in that among its political advocacies are goals explicitly religious. While eschewing and repudiating any tendency toward vulgar statist theocracy, the founders and contributors to this enterprise operate under the assumption that the source of America’s political ills is a spiritual rot, which has infected every sphere of civil society. This rot is secularism, the doctrine that the state must be functionally atheistic, that the demands of a pluralistic society necessitate a polity where law and policy-making is conducted etsi Deus non daretur. [1]

We at RenewAmerica know better. We know, as our Founding Fathers did, that discernment of, and obedience to, the laws of nature and of nature’s God are at the heart of our convictions concerning the transcendental dignity of the human person, and the rights and duties he enjoys because of it. We expect that voters, and their representatives, will formulate public policy with the divine law in mind, as it is known through reason and through our Judeo-Christian inheritance. (As good conservatives who shun abstractive “paper-logic,” we’re also well aware that civil society must accommodate fallen, sinful mortals, and so the state must always tolerate some vices.)

And so it came as no surprise to me that my colleague, Dan Popp, had started a series of columns examining the doctrines of the early Christian church, initially to rebut oft-repeated leftist accusations that the core doctrines of orthodox Christianity postdate Jesus and the Apostles by centuries, and are in fact the product of Machiavellian political maneuvering on the part of post-Constantinian bishops and emperors. Dan’s first two contributions, on the divinity of Christ and on abortion, serve as good introductions to the Patristic teaching on those subjects.

From the time of my own conversion/reversion to Catholicism in high school, patrology has been something of an intellectual hobby of mine. I claim no expertise in the subject, but consider myself to be in possession of more than a modicum of literacy in the subject, and in church history in general. And so it came as something of a shock when I visited RenewAmerica’s homepage, and came across brother Dan’s latest piece, “The Early Church, the Bread, and the Wine.” Having previously surmised my colleague’s Protestantism, I just knew where an article by that title would be headed. Sadly, my expectations weren’t disappointed.

I don’t know why Dan decided to go ahead and publish on a subject that would be so divisive among conservative Christian activists, on a conservative site that is Christian, but not sectarian. Many (I suspect a disproportionate number) of RenewAmerica’s contributors (including founder Alan Keyes) are Catholics, and surely Dan knew his piece would invite a response from one of them. I am happy and honored to make that contribution.

Far be it from me to impugn the integrity of Br. Dan’s motives, or of his scholarly capabilities. But reading through his survey of the Church Fathers, it seemed rather apparent to me that my colleague did so with a preconceived agenda, determined not to read these Christian teachers on their own terms, but with an eye to “reclaiming” the early Church in support of doctrines that have their origin in the 16th century, fifteen centuries removed from the founding of the Christian Church by Jesus of Nazareth and his twelve Apostles.

Before I address some of Dan’s mis-citations, some prefatory remarks are in order. My colleague very skillfully exploits his Protestant readership’s ambivalence to the term transubstantiation, knowing full well that this particular word is not contained in the canonical Scriptures, and so is discredited to many a Protestant a priori, well before the term can be explained or critiqued.

Let me spare Dan’s readers the trouble. The word transubstantiation represents the late medieval Church’s attempt to explain the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Eucharist in language derived from Aristotelian metaphysics. That Jesus, the Apostles, and the early Fathers did not describe the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist in these terms should not scandalize us, no more so than the fact that much of the language of standard Trinitarianism is derived from the categories of Greek philosophical speculation, or that the Apostle John, alone among the four Evangelists, endeavored to present Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of Greek antiquity’s understanding of the Logos. [2] The Apostle Paul on several occasions illustrated his teachings with citations from Greek philosopher-poets, [3] and the early Fathers, and the medievals after them, did not hesitate to do likewise.

Secondly, while I insist that the early Church was Catholic [4] in its doctrine, worship, and ecclesiastical polity, I must take some time to address a common tactic by Protestant apologists who set out to refute what every unbiased student of church history [5] knows to be the case. The Protestant will rightfully point out that the early Church, particularly in its externals, was not an exact carbon-copy of modern Catholic/Orthodox Christianity. Therefore, the early church was . . . Protestant! This reason is fallacious for a whole host of reasons. For starters, it presupposes that institutional continuity precludes organic doctrinal development, a supposition that was not shared by the early Christians, and is odious to reason. Like any society, we should not expect the church of the first centuries to look, feel, and taste exactly like the Church in the 21st. The Church, like any body, grows and develops, maturing while remaining ever the same. To ask whether the Church Fathers believed precisely in “transubstantiation” is like asking whether they had a canon of New Testament Scriptures, with all 27 books uniformly recognized as inspired, to the exclusion of all others. Just as the New Testament is the product of centuries of post-Apostolic development, so the doctrine of transubstantiation. Still, as I will endeavor to show, the early Christians uniformly subscribed to a realist doctrine of what would later be called the sacraments, the Eucharist particularly. The early Christians were adamant in professing their belief that the true Body and Blood of the risen Jesus Christ was present in the Eucharistic elements, and would have found 16th century symbolist understandings abhorrent to an orthodox understanding of the matter.

Let me begin my addressing what I believe is Dan’s silliest objection. He seems mystified by the fact that it was customary in the early Church to mix the Eucharistic wine with water while the gifts were being prepared at the altar.

That, it seems to me, raises an objection to the Transubstantiation view: if the bread turns into flesh and the wine turns into blood, what does the water turn into? The readiest explanation for the addition of water is that it represented the water that flowed from the Lord’s side after death (John 19:34). But if it is a representation, then the other elements must also be symbols, not transmuted substances.

My colleague’s puzzlement at the early Church’s practice of the “mixed cup” illustrates well the dangers of approaching Patristics (any historiographical endeavor, really) with an ideological axe to grind, ignorant of the cultural context. While the “mixed cup” may be a mystery to a Protestant teetotaler attending Pastor Billy Bob’s Bedside Baptist, such a practice is to this day known to most of the Christian world: Catholics, Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrians. All of these churches mix water into their wine-filled chalices at the Offertory (i.e., before the bread and wine are consecrated), and each of these churches holds to a very realist doctrine of the Eucharist.

The reason the early Church diluted their chalices with water is simple. You see, they lived well before the 19th century, when some Protestant churches in England and America introduced into Christianity the practice of substituting grape juice for wine at the Eucharist. The early Christians diluted their wine for the same reason every Mediterranean household did (and indeed, many continue to do so): house wine is very strong in its alcoholic concentration, and most people find the dilution makes it taste better, and mitigates the inebriation. The early church did not worship with grape juice (sorry, Thomas Welch!), and so they followed customary Judeo-Greco-Roman practice. [6]

Very soon, the early Church would attach mystic symbolism to an originally utilitarian rite. Dan indicates one such symbolism, and there were others. The answer to his objection, “what does the water turn into?” is obvious. Wine mixed with a little bit of water is still wine, and so “the water” is changed into whatever the wine is changed into, if indeed there is a change.

And the early Church was unanimous in its conviction that such a change did occur, once the Eucharistic bread and wine were consecrated by the presiding bishop(s) and/or elder(s). My colleague, however, has set the terms of the debate in such a way that any citation from the early Church will invariably justify his position.

[A] statement like “We eat the body and drink the blood of Christ” by itself doesn’t give us any clues as to whether the speaker is using metaphors.

So, no matter how adamant the Fathers are in their realism, Br. Dan will always retort that they are only employing very adamant metaphors! How convenient! With such a hermeneutic, one suspects two thousand years from now the Dan Popps of the world will read the decrees of the Council of Trent and the modern Catholic Catechism as advancing symbolist views: “Transubstantiation? C’mon, they don’t mean that the substance of bread is really changed into the Body and Blood of Jesus! The substance is changed metaphorically! Catholic genuflections before the Sacrament? That’s just a symbol for their devotion to the Body of Jesus as it sits at the right hand of the Father! etc.”

The realism of the Fathers’ teaching is readily apparent when one reads their statements with a little more context. For instance, Saint Ignatius of Antioch:

But consider those who are of a different opinion with respect to the grace of Christ which has come unto us, how opposed they are to the will of God. They have no regard for love; no care for the widow, or the orphan, or the oppressed; of the bond, or of the free; of the hungry, or of the thirsty. Let us stand aloof from such heretics. They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. {Source}

How much more explicit can Ignatius (a disciple of the Apostle John, and who was ordained bishop of Antioch in the 60s AD) possibly get? The Eucharist is “the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ,” the very same flesh that “suffered for our sins” and which the Father “raised up again.” When do Protestants ever speak thusly of the Eucharist? What Christian leader today would be most likely to speak such things of the Lord’s Supper: Billy Graham, or Pope Benedict XVI?

I encourage all my readers to read the entire Epistle from which that extract is taken. Ignatius is a Catholic bishop through and through, refuting Docetist heretics who believed that Jesus Christ did not possess a real, physical body. He draws a subtle, but clear, connection between denial of the true bodily passion and resurrection of the Lord, and denial of His bodily presence in the Eucharist. Also note St Ignatius’s clear allusion to John 6:54, in that last sentence. If the heretics wish to “rise again” to new life, they had better “treat [the Eucharist] with respect.” How? By “confess[ing] the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.”

Dan thinks he’s found a smoking-gun in Athenagoras’s relative silence concerning the Eucharist, and his oblique reference to it as the Christians’ “bloodless sacrifice.” Athenagroas’s silence regarding the Lord’s Supper is not at all surprising to anyone familiar with the early Church’s disciplina arcani, [7] which my colleague apparently is not. In keeping with their Lord’s command to not give what is holy to the dogs, or cast one’s pearls before swine, the early church was very reticent to commit its most sacred beliefs to writing, especially when these writings might find their way into pagan hands. Tertullian’s witness to this discipline is representative:

I must not omit an account of the conduct also of the heretics — how frivolous it is, how worldly, how merely human, without seriousness, without authority, without discipline, as suits their creed. To begin with, it is doubtful who is a catechumen, and who a believer; they have all access alike, they hear alike, they pray alike — even heathens, if any such happen to come among them. That which is holy they will cast to the dogs, and their pearls, although (to be sure) they are not real ones, they will fling to the swine. {Source}

Dan also thinks he’s found his symbolist smoking gun in the fact that the Fathers frequently refer to the Eucharist as a bloodless sacrifice. This, he imagines, refutes conclusively any notion that they believed the Eucharist to contain the true Body and Blood of Jesus. But given how adamant the Fathers otherwise are in their Eucharistic realism, and in their insistence that the Eucharist is indeed, a sacrifice, such an interpretation is untenable. Let me let my Protestant brother in on a little secret: To this very day, Catholic and Orthodox Christians continue to refer to the Eucharist as a bloodless sacrifice! Are you therefore going to assert that we don’t believe in the Real Presence (i.e., transubstantiation)?

The Eucharist is called bloodless for two reasons: a) In our everyday talk we frequently use what scholars call phenomenological language: we refer to things by their appearances, even when we know the appearance does not correspond precisely to reality. It’s why we moderns continue to speak of sunrises and sunsets, why Scripture can refer to disguised angels as men (Genesis 19, Luke 24, Acts 1, etc.), and why the Fathers, and even today’s Catholics and Orthodox will frequently refer to the Eucharistic elements as bread and wine, even after they have been consecrated. The Eucharist does not have the sensible characteristics of human blood, and so it is, in that sense, bloodless. b) The Eucharist is also bloodless in that it does not involve ritual killing, i.e., the shedding of blood. Contrary to anti-Catholic mythology, Catholics and Orthodox do not believe that Jesus is recrucified at their services, and neither did the early Fathers.

All this is what informs the Fathers’ insistence that Christians do not practice cannibalism. Mere mortals consuming the glorified and risen flesh of the God-Man is not cannibalism, mortals consuming the flesh of mortals is.

The remainder of Dan’s objections betray a grossly simplistic understanding of what it means for something to be symbolic, memorializing, and spiritual. For starters, of course the Eucharistic bread and wine are symbols! The point that Catholics and Orthodox make is that, by divine ordinance, the sacramental signs actually convey the graces they signify. And this is precisely what the early Fathers taught: The waters of baptism symbolize cleansing, and that is what baptism actually does: cleanses from sin; the bread and wine of the Eucharist symbolize the Body and Blood of the Lord, and that is precisely what they convey to the believer. Oil symbolizes strength and health, hence the Apostles cured men (physically and spiritually) by anointing with oil, as do all the churches today which predate the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Laying on of hands symbolizes the conveyance of an office, and such conveyance is actually effected by the laying on of hands!

A similar dynamic is at work in the concept of memorial (i.e., anamnesis in the Greek), a word so loaded in the ancient Judeo-Greco-Roman world that it does not signify a mere mental recollection of some past event. Rather, it means making present in the here and now the thing recollected. Orthodox Jews call this zakhor, and a basic grasp of the concept (as well as some rudiments of Greek Platonism) is absolutely necessary to appreciate the full import of the concept of memorial for the early Christians. [8] Something else that should be brought to Br. Dan’s attention: To this day, Catholic liturgies and catechisms still refer to the Eucharist as a memorial. Do we not believe in transubstantiation?

Finally, my colleague’s harping on the use of the word “spiritual” to refer to the Eucharist is most easily dismissed. In Catholic circles, the Eucharist all the time is referred to as the Church’s spiritual sacrifice, the offering in spirit and in truth, the logike latreia (“rational worship,” as opposed to carnal worship). Strangely, Dan is employing an understanding of the word spiritual in a sense that is not Judeo-Christian, but rather Gnostic. Spiritual does not necessarily mean disembodied, immaterial, or unreal; in fact, most often the word does not carry those connotations at all. Was Christ’s redemptive work in the flesh not spiritual? Was his bodily conception in the womb of the Virgin not spiritual? When we say someone is a spiritual person, do we mean that he is, in fact, a disembodied spirit? Likewise, how is the change from ordinary bread and wine, to the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, of the Living God-Man not a spiritual act?

Up to now my defense of the Fathers’ realist position has been almost entirely negative, i.e., I have offered rebuttal of my colleague’s anachronistic interpretations of some key concepts, rather than offer my own laundry-list of patristic quotations demonstrating the Fathers’ Eucharistic realism, a realism that would scandalize any Protestant if it came out of the mouths of their own pastors, but language which is right at home in any Catholic setting. In the interests of brevity, I am not going to provide such a list, as they are readily available online to anyone with a search engine. [9] I also would rather my readers go through the Fathers themselves, faithful to the Pauline injunction (Hebrews 13:7-9a), with the aid of some good secondary sources. [10]

Of course, for many of my Protestant readership, the content of these discussions is immaterial, for the only doctrinal norm is the Holy Scriptures, as they are interpreted by the individual under the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit (i.e., sola scriptura). Suffice it to say I, along with most of the conservative Christian world, do not subscribe to such a hermeneutic, but RenewAmerica is not (I believe) the proper forum to engage in such a debate. I’ll simply insist, as a matter of simple historiography, that the manner in which the earliest Christians understood their own Scriptures, the way they understood the deposit of faith they received directly from the Apostles and their immediate successors, should weigh heavily on how we understand those Scriptures. In precisely the same way we expect our Judges and Justices to take into account original intent when discerning the meaning of the Constitution. We would all do well to ask ourselves how the early Christians understood their own Scriptures, the nature of revelation, the constitution of the Church, etc. And we do justice to our conservative instincts in weighing these understandings against traditions of men which don’t go further back than, say, the 1500s.

We’re free to dismiss the Church Fathers, and all Christianity before the 16th century as heretical and apostate. But to claim these men for the doctrines of modern sectarians is intellectually dishonest, and most unconservative.

NOTES:

[1] “as if there were no God.” I addressed the allegations on the “divisiveness” of religion in my previous column, “God: The Soul of Conservatism”

 

[2] Our Bibles’ translation of Logos as “Word” (John 1) does not do justice to the word (no pun intended). For elaboration on this point, do a bit of Googling, or look up the entry “logos” in the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

 

[3] See: “Pagan Quotes in the New Testament”

 

[4] For purposes of this column, I include Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Assyrian Christians in my use of the term “Catholic.” These churches are united with the Catholic Church in virtually every element of doctrine, the Papacy excepted.

 

[5] See: “When Was the Catholic Church Founded?”

 

[6] For two brief historical surveys, see “Wine and Water” and “How Wine Was Drunk in Ancient Times”

 

[7] i.e., “discipline of the secret”

 

[8] For an excellent introduction to this subject, see Dave Armstrong’s “Passover in Judaism: ‘Past Events Become Present Today’”

 

[9] Readers can begin here: “The Real Presence“

 

[10] The three I recommend, as starting points, are Mike Aquilia’s The Fathers of the Church: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers and The Mass of the Early Christians, and the late J. N.D. Kelley’s Early Christian Doctrines

 

God: The Soul of Conservatism

My latest for RenewAmerica:

Readers of both RenewAmerica and American Thinker should pay careful thought and scrutiny to Mr. Shane Corsey’s recent contribution to the latter’s pages: “God, Conservatism, and Values.” Mr. Corsey’s piece is a welcome stimulant to a discussion conservatives need to have among themselves regarding the metaphysical underpinnings of their philosophy and their policy proposals.

Corsey is an agnostic, and it his aim to promote a conservatism that is religion-neutral, though not value-neutral:

One of the reasons I am a proud conservative is because it comes closest to the belief of what our Founding Fathers had in mind for this country, and the values of that system give an equal shake to anyone who wishes to come here. Religion in my opinion is not as forgiving, and can be as big of a divider in this country as race.

Notwithstanding Corsey’s repeated invocations of conservatism, it is difficult to see what is distinctly conservative in his philosophy. He may be forgiven for not laying out a conservative primer, such not being the object of his article, but one should expect conservative principles to at least seep through his heartened plea for understanding. Instead, one finds tired clichés on the supposed “divisiveness” of religious dogma, and some empty platitudes about keeping “divisive” subjects like race, religion, and sexual orientation out of the public schools. What little of Corsey’s political worldview shines through can be described, perhaps, as social libertarianism, but almost certainly not conservatism.

A far cry is this worldview from that articulated by the godfather of American conservatism, the late Russell Kirk, in his magnum opus The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot. Dr. Kirk opens his tome with a delineation of fundamental conservative principles, the cornerstone of which is “belief in a transcendent order, or body of natural law, which rules society as well as conscience.” Now, make no mistake: No one man can take it upon himself to define a political philosophy, and impose that on the rest of that system’s adherents. But the strength of Kirk’s work is his gift to distill and synthesize a doctrinal consensus from the great luminaries of the Anglo-American conservative tradition, a tradition that is rooted in the more ancient world of Greco-Roman Judeo-Christianity.

Corsey justifies his “proud conservatism” on the grounds that “it comes closest to the belief of what our Founding Fathers had in mind for this country,” yet even a cursory review of our nation’s founding principles shows that, on the whole, they are rooted precisely in the doctrine Kirk articulated above, namely, that the cornerstone for well-ordered liberty is a republic founded on the laws of God, which are knowable by reason and reinforced by the dictates of religious faith. The convictions enshrined in our Declaration of Independence typify this consensus: “[A]ll men are created equal, [] endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” (emphasis added) As has been copiously documented by many, the Declaration is not unique in this affirmation. This conviction is enshrined in federal and state monuments, oaths of office, Sabbath legislation, and the writings, official and private, of the 200 or so men who constitute the nation’s Founding Fathers.

Whether the Fathers were justified in their conviction is another discussion. The point is, they cannot be dismissed simply because their convictions are “divisive.” Truth is always divisive, dividing good from evil, right from wrong, the degenerate from the beautiful. Every ideological assertion, in fact, is divisive, politics and law most of all! Would Corsey suggest we stop trying to reform the legal and political order, on the grounds that “politics and law are different to everyone”?

Corsey’s perspective of religious faith rests on a grossly simple-minded understanding of how religious thinkers justify their beliefs. While blind fideism may be common among the rank-and-file, this is as true of their political and cultural assumptions as it is of their religious. In fact, no historically informed observer could possibly reduce religious conviction to a battle of “he said, she said,” any more than he can so trivialize the dialectic that constitutes the Western philosophical tradition. It is a fact that, for centuries, theists have deduced and induced God’s existence from a variety of non-religious philosophical considerations: chiefly cosmological, but also ontological, historical, psychological, and experiential. And when it comes to Christianity, America’s de facto national religion, there is no shortage of scholarly apologetic which defends the historic foundations of that belief in rational terms accessible to those with no religious faith at all. Atheists and agnostics are free to contest the validity of these arguments, but to dismiss them outright or prevent their informing public discourse is intellectually lazy.

Corsey’s atheistic libertarianism makes little sense of the conservative values he wishes to uphold. For his worldview (such as he lets his readers in on) is predicated on a very concrete moral framework; he wants his readers to believe it is morally wrong for government to intrude into certain spheres. But conservatives have traditionally been of the opinion that it is next-to-impossible to derive moral imperatives if one assumes that all reality is nothing more than the summary, random combination of matter and energy. They’ve also been skeptical that a creature that is nothing more than the product of random mutation and survival-of-the-fittest can be the bearer of any kind of metaphysical rights, let alone the inalienable dignity on which the Western tradition insists. If human rights are not rooted in a governing intelligence that transcends the visible world, than they must be rooted in the things of this world, and if they are so rooted in earthly institutions, then those rights are anything but inalienable.

These fears are not simply the musings of an abstractive law student with too much time on his hands: There has not been a single country that has embraced state-sponsored atheism that has not committed genocide or other crimes against humanity, far paling anything ever perpetrated by the most depraved of Christian regimes: Jacobinism, Nazism, Fascism, Communism, anyone?

Yes, there do exist atheists and agnostics who are “good persons” (whatever that means), who do not believe that all morals are relative and/or conventional. But this they believe in spite of their ideology. For no matter how hard they try, they are functionally Judeo-Christian, taking for granted the ideological battles fought for and won by their religious predecessors.

Is there a place in the conservative movement for the irreligious? Sure, so long as they are honest with themselves, willing to face up to the fact that they are an ideological aberration on the radar of human thought, and that they ought not to expect the greater part of humanity to subscribe to their godlessness. From George Santayana and Oriana Fallaci, to Jurgen Habermas and Marcello Pera, conservatism has been, and continues to be, blessed by the presence of such “Christian atheists” who don’t demand that their religious comrades keep their devotions and beliefs in the closet. If nonbelievers want to be respected in any mainstream social setting (faculty lounges and cocktail parties don’t count), they should put aside their anti-religious prejudices, and stop demanding that the great mass of mankind pretend that the spiritual dimension of the human experience has no public implications whatsoever.

Archbishop Favalora KNOWINGLY Employed Boy-Raping Priest?

My latest at RenewAmerica:

My latest piece for RenewAmerica.com raised a few eyebrows around the blogosphere and elsewhere, as I put forward my call for the resignation of Archbishop John Favalora of Miami, and gave my (well-documented) reasons for doing so.

Several objections were raised to this call, most of them variations of the theme “Pray, pay, and obey.” In many conservative Catholic quarters, holy obedience is identified with blind servility that admits of no public criticism of one’s pastors. Often, Catholics tell themselves that “we receive the pastors we deserve,” and while there is some truth to this, it cannot justify indifference to pastoral abuse, no more than the commandments to honor one’s parents, one’s husband, or one’s government justifies pacifistic indifference to child abuse, spousal abuse, or tyranny.

In short: One can be obedient to one’s legitimate spiritual authorities in those things which pertain to their offices, without thereby resigning oneself to silent acquiescence when that authority has been abused. One can call for the resignation of a bishop, while remaining obedient in the interim. I believe one of the reasons this is such a sensitive subject for conservative-minded Catholics is the fact that, all too often and for far too long, public criticism of the Church’s pastors has been the purview of the Catholic far-left (modernists) and far-right (radical traditionalists). Conservative Catholics are also wary of falling into a kind of protestantism where every believer is in effect their own pastor, subject to no spiritual authority other than their own personal whims and preferences. (When surveying the landscape of Protestant schism — hundreds of disparate denominations, many of them nearly identical doctrinally — one gets the impression that the origin of many of these sects is in everyone’s desire to be their own pastor.)

But such objections are self-fulfilling prophecies. If Catholics are to reclaim the mantle of legitimate self-critique, they must engage in it, and publicly, or else it will remain the privileged prerogative of dissident sectarians.

What I have written here of Catholics applies to conservatives generally, which is why the Tea Party movement is so historically unique. For conservatives by their nature tend to eschew revolutions, content as they are to tolerate temporary abuses and misfortunes rather than potentially overthrow a fundamentally sound institution. Conservative revolutions don’t happen often (the American and Mexican wars of independence being two notable examples), but when they do they are marked by a spirit of prudence, measured activism, and prayerful loyalty to fundamental principles.

In that spirit of loyal and prayerfully obedient opposition, I reiterate my call for Archbishop Favalora’s resignation, reiterating my insistence that this would be in His Grace’s own self-interest: “Favalora’s chickens are coming home to roost, and there will be more scandal to come to light in the years ahead. . . . The sooner he resigns, the less embarrassment he gets to experience when the full truth of the moral state of his clergy is no longer an open ’secret.’”

This “prophecy” is already unfolding, as the Miami Archdiocese is hit with yet two more sex abuse lawsuits, both naming as plaintiff Miami’s counterpart to Boston’s John Geoghan: the Rev. Neil Doherty. For the following history, I am principally indebted to the sadly forgotten exposé by Mr. Thomas Francis of the Broward New Times, “Lambs to Slaughter”. I am sheltering my readers from the report’s more graphic details.

Fr. Doherty is no stranger to sexual molestation allegations. Since 1971, a mere two years after his ordination to the priesthood (against the counsel of his seminary director), the Miami Archdiocese, under three successive archbishops, has regularly received complaints credibly alleging drug abuse and sexual molestation on the part of Doherty. The Archdiocese’s official story is that the present occupant of Miami’s episcopal throne, John Favalora, only became aware of all these allegations in 2002 when, in the wake of that year’s startling priestly sex-abuse revelations, the Archbishop proactively combed through the files of every priest in active ministry, and removed Doherty straightaway, thereby tacitly conceding the validity of 30 years’ worth of grotesque allegations.

There is much, however, which is amiss in this tale of heroic episcopal foresight: It’s only half-true. Favalora received the See of Miami in December 1994, the very month his Archdiocese gave $50,000 in hush-money to one of Doherty’s victims, “Tony.”

Favalora claims to have been ignorant of this settlement, yet in 1995, he had a letter, bearing his signature, read from the pulpit of Margate’s St Vincent parish during Sunday services. Therein, Archbishop Favalora said he had personally examined parishioners’ allegations of Fr. Doherty’s financial improprieties and found them to be without merit. He went on to say: “Likewise, I examined personal accusations made against Father Doherty and found them baseless,” (emphasis added) an apparent reference to a report involving a male prostitute.

Before 2002, there were no other allegations made publicly against Fr. Doherty.

Here’s where Catholics, civil authorities, and Favalora’s ecclesiastical superiors need to start connecting the dots: Are we really to believe that when Archbishop Favalora personally investigated (as he claimed he did) the sexual and financial improprieties alleged against Fr. Doherty, the one place he did not look into was Doherty’s personnel file with the Archdiocese? Does this seem reasonable? And if what was in that file was not so damning in 1994/1995, why did it merit Doherty’s dismissal from active ministry in 2002 when the file was looked into then?

Isn’t it, rather, more likely that Favalora discovered these credible allegations back in 1994, or 1995 at the latest, thought nothing of them, and only took action on the matter in 2002, fearing fallout from the Boston sex-scandals?

Why did Archbishop John Favalora of Miami keep in his pastoral employ, for almost ten years, a man he knew (or should have known) was a child rapist, one who had cost the archdiocese at least tens of thousands of parishioners’ hard-earned dollars?

These are not questions conservative Catholic individuals, institutions, and news outlets feel comfortable asking. But they must be asked: the institutional credibility of the Church is at stake, as, if Catholicism is correct in what it professes about God and the human condition, is the salvation of immortal souls.

Florida Bishops OPPOSE Personhood Amendment

My latest piece for LifeSiteNews:

Florida pro-life activists suffered a major setback last week in their efforts to garner support for a Personhood Amendment, which would enshrine the right to life of every human being into their state constitution.

In their fight against the proposed amendment, the state’s pro-abortion lobby is receiving indirect support from some unexpected quarters: the chanceries of all nine bishops who direct the Florida Catholic Conference.

The Conference, which serves as the official public policy voice of the Florida bishops, released an email alert Friday afternoon, alerting supporters that, “although the bishops of Florida clearly share the desire for our state laws to recognize all life from its very beginning to natural end, after careful consideration and deliberation with legal counsel, the bishops do not support this current amendment effort.”

The same email noted that signature collection would not take place in any parish or diocesan entity in the state.

The same correspondence included a link to a more thorough statement by the bishops, which may be accessed on the Conference website. The statement, dated September 19, affirms the bishops’ collective commitment to “the full legal recognition of the right to life of every unborn child and the defense of human life in all its stages, from conception to natural death.”

However, the statement continues, “it is our opinion, and that of the legal experts with whom we have consulted, that passage of this amendment would not achieve the goal of overturning Roe v. Wade.”

The bishops first note the unlikelihood of such an amendment passing, given Florida law’s stipulation that constitutional amendments be approved by at least 60% of voters. Furthermore, the federal courts would almost certainly strike down such an amendment as unconstitutional, and the bishops express fear that, should the case be heard by the United States Supreme Court (which is presently dominated by pro-Roe justices) it might well “lead to a reaffirmation of Roe.”

The bishops go on to reaffirm their view “that it will be more prudent to pursue incremental measures that add to existing protections in law and help change hearts and minds.”

In an interview with LifeSiteNews (LSN), Shaun Kenney, executive director of American Life League (ALL), stated that Florida personhood organizers were “disappointed, but undaunted” by the memorandum.

“Planned Parenthood committed over $3 million opposing personhood in Colorado,” said Kenney.  “While those advising the bishops argue that state personhood amendments will not hold up in federal courts, if state personhood amendments aren’t legally viable, Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby wouldn’t be committing the millions of dollars in resources opposing it.”

Dr. Mike McCarron, executive director of the Florida Catholic Conference, elaborated on the bishops’ reasoning, telling LSN in an interview: “Without question, extensive energy and money would be spent and false hopes would be raised by this personhood amendment effort.  I say this with true respect for those attempting it.”

McCarron added, “If Roe were reaffirmed now it would not only set back the prolife movement but it would make its eventual overturning even more difficult, or worse, enshrine into the law of the land a federal right to privacy, complicating the situation further.”

When asked whether representatives from the American Life League (ALL) and Personhood Florida had had opportunities to present their case to the bishops, McCarron replied, “Yes, ALL visited our office before the media roll-out; organizers connected with Florida Personhood (but not the primary spokespersons) approached us and we spoke with them.  They were aware of the bishops’ position that they would not actively support it.” McCarron added, however, “The bishops hope to avoid divisive interactions with the organizers of the amendment.”

McCarron made it clear that the differences between the bishops and the amendment organizers were matters of prudential judgment, not principle, and that the bishops did not intend to impose these prudential judgment in a binding way on their Catholic faithful. Hence, pro-life Catholics are still free to support or oppose the amendment.

McCarron added, “The bishops of Colorado, Montana, Georgia, and North Dakota have taken positions substantially the same as the Florida Catholic Conference when personhood debates were underway in their own states.”

Kenney, however, remarked on a singular difference between the position of the Florida Catholic Conference and other state initiatives. “While Colorado and other states are much more permissive about pro-life activities within parishes, the outright ban against organized efforts in Florida is somewhat disheartening for Catholics to see.”

Kenney also responded to the arguments of the bishops about the prudential aspects of the amendment, saying, “While both approaches are committed to prudence, the clear difference between personhood and incrementalist arguments is the alarming tendency of the latter to conflate prudence with proportionalist ethics, accepting a lesser evil to achieve a greater good.

“Almost four decades of false prudence have cost Americans over 51 million innocent lives lost through abortion,” stated Kenney.  “Personhood is the best strategy for ending that tragedy.”

Representatives from Personhood Florida were unavailable for comment before this story went to press.

Powerful Rebuke of the Papacy

Dear readers:

I wish to call attention to a new piece, published by Anthea Butler of Religion Dispatches, about the growing scandals in the Miami Archdiocese and where they fit in the overall decay of the Catholic Church:

“Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See”

I suspect Ms. Butler and I wouldn’t see eye-to-eye on a whole host of philosophical and theological issues, but she’s right-on in her analysis, and is to be commended for calling a spade a spade, calling attention to the fact that the Catholic emperor’s got no clothes.

Some choice excerpts:

A few years back, Chris Rock dropped a nice spoken word ditty called No Sex in the Champagne Room. I am 100% sure Father David Dueppen, a priest in Miami, Florida, has never heard it. Why? Because not only did he spend $1800 dollars in the champagne room of a club called Porky’s, but he also had a sexual relationship with the stripper he spent the money on, Beatrice Hernandez.

And if that weren’t fascinating enough, she claims that he promised her she would be cured of demons if she would have sex with another woman while he watched. If you think this is a script from a porn movie, think again: this is the latest escapade from the Archdiocese of Miami, encapsulated in the headline from the Miami Herald “Ex Stripper: Priest is my baby’s father—and I want him to pay.”

Before I go south and start to write this whole piece with quotes from songs (“That’s Just My Baby Daddy” comes to mind) I am struck with disgust about where the Catholic church, and lately Miami’s Archdiocese in particular, finds itself in matters of church discipline. Between the former Father Cutie and his recent marriage (props to him, at least he left and got married like a normal person), to Father Dueppen’s $1800 dollar visit to a strip club (and follow-up role as abusive father), the church finds itself in the throes of a Maury Povich-style DNA paternity case show.

Add to that news that slipped through the cracks about Cardinal Roger Mahony of the Los Angeles Archdiocese ordering a subordinate to delay reporting of sexual abuse claims to the police until the priest in question could be defrocked, and you have set of players that would rival a mafia movie. The malfeasance and criminal behavior is shocking to say the least—and all, incidentally, coming to light during the “Year of the Priest” declared this year by Pope Benedict XVI.

Outsiders might be tempted to think that all of these issues are about sex, and in one sense, that is true. The deeper issue within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church surrounds bureaucracy and a corporate fealty that is designed to protect the institution at all costs; even when the corporation’s clients (parishioners) are being abused. The shake and shuffle of the bishops and hierarchy to send its miscreants to other parishes to inflict pain and suffering, while ignoring the fact that little or no true discipline is meted out by the church, is appalling.

While Pope Benedict calls for a “Year for Priests” to commence on July 19 of this year, the day devoted to prayer for the sanctification of priests, anything but sanctification is happening. May I suggest the hierarchy of the Catholic Church start anew by taking a page from the Episcopal diocese in Philadelphia? The diocese has deposed Bishop Bennington from office, and rejected a request for a new trial regarding the concealing of the abuse of an underage girl 35 years ago by his brother, John Bennington. That is church discipline done properly, and from the offshoot root of the Catholic Church.

I am not calling for a conservative Catholicism; far from it. What I am calling for is a return to real church discipline, not corporate slot-shuffling. Discipline is not only for the priests in question, but also for the bishops who are worried more about covering their tracks than paving the way for justice.

. . . When bishops are prosecuted for their duplicitous roles in lying about clergy abuse, and their shuffling about of the bad “seeds” about their diocese, then I can seriously begin to believe all the other drivel they are shoveling about to keep the stench of perfidy rising from their offices.

These words are harsh, even stinging, but Catholics need to realize that this is how the non-Catholic world pereceives us!

And unfortunately, the “orthodox Catholic establishment” turns a blind-eye to it. You will never find InsideCatholc, Ignatius Press, Mark Shea, Catholic Answers, American Life League, Human Life International, Catholic World News, faculty at any of the conservative Catholic universities or any other orthodox Catholic outlet call for bishops to resign, or respectfully demand accountability from their bishops, especially not from their Pope.

This writer has personal experience of this. In orthodox circles, criticism of the bishops–especially of the Pope–is met with charges of radicalism, unrighteous anger, schism, disobedience, dissension, and divisiveness. All followed up with exhortations to “pay, pray, and obey,” pious piffle to the effect prayer and fasting are the only way to exorcise these demons.

Witness my controversial article calling for a halt to John Paul II’s canonization proceedings. Not a single  Catholic news service would so much as call attention to the piece. A priest at a prominent conservative Catholic law school, with whom I had established warm relations from the time I defended one of his articles in one of my own, refused me any help when I sought his advice on employment, so scandalized was he by my criticism of the late Pope. (It turned out I also had the temerity to cite favorably a book which criticized this priest’s suggestions that Catholic clergy should not be prosecuted in civil courts.)

As I’ve noted elsewhere, for all too long serious criticism of the Catholic hierarchy has been the purview of the Catholic far-left and far-right. Not any more! Catholics may never have anything like the Tea Party movement, but it’s time for mainstream orthodox Catholic media outlets to remove the tail from between their legs and start demanding their clergy do what they’re paid for: teach the faith, discipline the obstinate, and remove perverts and their abettors from the clerical state.

Catholics, and others concerned about the fact of the world’s largest and oldest conservative religious institution, would do well to heed Ms. Butler’s prognostications, and consider what damage they do to the life of their church, and their own credibility, by their silent servility:

When theologians are silenced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for questioning Christology, while sexual abusers get a little counseling and reassignment for defiling children, becoming baby daddies, and spending the collection on strippers, I have to wonder why I (or any other sane person) stays with this church. My response lately is to say that I stay to advocate for the laity, not for the wolves in liturgical garments. I know many good priests and other religious leaders who struggle with sexuality (and other issues, as we all do) but they do not inflict their pain or struggles upon those who are weak and helpless. Nor do they spout sanctimonious words in the attempt to obfuscate the real issues of sin within the church ranks.

The real derailing of this train of organizational wrongdoing and shame will come surely, as many of the dioceses in the United States become uninsurable and the number of Catholic churches dwindles. As membership shrinks, the number of ordinations decreases, and the coffers dry up, perhaps the Vatican and its leadership will be forced to look at its decrepit, hierarchical structure, and fix it. I doubt it, however.

Like the spider who crawled across Pope Benedict’s robes this weekend in Prague, everyone except the Pope can see the real issues at hand.

Yes, let us pray and fast. But let us start demanding our Pope and our bishops start acting the part, that they begin to match their rhetorical hot-air with action.

Tallahassee: Traditional Choral Anglican Evensong

Dear readers:

As you all know, one of my intentions for this blog is to aid the renewal of Western civilization. To this end, I have used this blog as a soapbox to promote and encourage the inculcation of traditional Christian worship, the liturgies of which have birthed so many noble artistic accomplishments, the chief of which is so much of the classic musical tradition.

While I have in previous posts focused on Catholic liturgy, today I would like to shift gears and call everyone’s attention to a special liturgy to take place, very shortly, in Tallahassee: On October 11, 2009, St. John’s Episcopal Church (Tallahassee, FL) will be celebrating traditional Anglican evensong at 4:00 PM, preceded by an organ recital at 3:30.

St John’s choir is supposed to be the best Christian ensemble in the Florida capitol area; this liturgy will likely astound most visitors, Catholic and Protestant, who think they know proper Christian worship but in fact “ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Readers will have surmised that I don’t hold the modern Episcopal Church in the highest regard: some would argue it’s just barely a Christian denomination, nothing more than a hodge-podge of neo-Gnosticism, where one may enjoy the bells and smells of traditional Christian worship (or not), but subscribe to whatever doctrine one sees fit, whether he be lay or cleric. In short, the Episcopal Church, like so much of Anglicanism, has whored itself to the spirit of the age, and is a parody of a Christian religion.

Well, much of this criticism is true, but I gotta tell ya: the Anglican Communion has a lot of wheat growing alongside its weeds, and I can’t possibly judge the minds and hearts of every one of its members, the institutional flaws of this denomination notwithstanding. The Church of England, and her children, have bequeathed so much rich Christian spirituality (and humanitarian work) to the world that they deserve at least a little respect from their more . . . “orthodox” counterparts, no?

And the fact of the matter is, Anglican worship can be quite beautiful, and as a proud Papist I find the traditional evensong service to be quite Catholic-friendly. There’s no sacrament involved therein, so we get to avoid all sorts of qualms over validity and what-have-ya.

I spent six weeks studying at Oxford (UK) this summer, where I grew addicted to the Evensong service. This will be my first time assisting at one in the United States. Truly, truly I say to you: Evensong is crack for the soul!

For those that don’t know, the Evensong service is an amalgamation of the Catholic Officers of Vespers and Compline (evening and night prayer, respectively). As I noted, it’s very Catholic-friendly, and follows the Catholic liturgical calendar and is very much informed by Catholic ethos. It’s basically an English recension of the Roman rite of those Hours.

I want to invite cultural conservatives, and all others who are interested in preserving the musical heritage of the West, to join me that evening for that solemn prayer service. While you’re there, pray for an increase in communion between all Christian churches, especially the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. Ut unum sint!

More details on their website.

UPDATED: Why Favalora Must Resign

My blog post below has been expanded, with documentation, for my latest piece in RenewAmerica.com:

The Case Against Archbishop John Favalora of Miami: Why He Must Resign

RenewAmerica readers who have followed the column of my colleague Matt C.Abbott are well aware of the spiritual travails afflicting what Abbott has rightfully called “one of the worst — if not the worst — archdiocese in terms of the presence of non-celibate homosexual clergy.”

I thought of titling this article, “Call for a Catholic Tea Party.” For precisely what the Church in America needs is for Catholics, and all concerned Christian conservatives, to make their voices heard, to demonstrate and to petition for the removal of spiritually negligent pastors, especially the bishops. There are ways to do this without degenerating into schism or affiliating with “irregular” factions of the Catholic far-right.

For those who have not been following the tawdry saga, let me take the time to recapitulate it.

In 2004, a group of concerned lay Catholics of the Miami Archdiocese constituted themselves a lay “watchdog” organization, under the name Christifidelis. They were moved to do so by what they have alleged is a gay superculture running the archdiocese.

Attorney Sharon Bourassa, a member of Christifidelis, was counsel for The Rev. Andrew Dowgiert in a lawsuit filed against the Archdiocese in May of 2005. Fr. Dowgiert, on loan from a Polish archdiocese and soon to be incardinated in Miami, alleged that he was “fired” from active ministry in the Miami Archdiocese after whistle-blowing on homosexual activity by several pastors of the Archdiocese (particularly that of Fr. Anibal Morales of All Saints Parish [in Sunrise]).

In 2005 and 2006, Matt Abbott published several articles tracing developments in what became known as the “Miami Vice” scandal. Bourassa claimed that several “straight” priests were feeding her information on a culture of sodomy and theological heterodoxy on the part of priests of the Miami Archdiocese. Among the allegations: 70 to 90 percent of the Archdiocese’s priests are sexually active gays; Archbishop Favalora and Catholic Charities of Miami owned several thousand shares in stock for a liquid aphrodisiac popularly sold in gay clubs and strip joints; at least 70 percent of the United States bishops are sexually active gays; many parish priests were misappropriating parish funds to live exorbitant lifestyles, and Archbishop Favalora and vicar-general Msgr. William J. Hennessey are in some way implicated in this superculture.

The lawsuit was eventually dismissed, on the grounds that it involved “separation of church and state” issues. The court refused to determine whether a religious employer wrongfully terminated the ministerial employment of an ordained cleric. In dismissing the case, the court made no determination on the veracity of the above allegations.

This writer can personally testify to the truth of at least one of the above allegations, namely, that the vast majority of the Archdiocese’s pastors are homosexuals. Yours truly applied to the seminary formation program of the Miami Archdiocese in the Spring of 2005. I was immediately blacklisted as an ultraconservative “traditionalist” for my regular assistance at the Latin Mass Community at Miami’s St Robert Bellarmine parish.

During my course of interviews with priests from the Archdiocese’s vocations admissions board, one priest volunteered to me (with absolutely no prompting on my part) the fact that “if the new Holy Father [i.e., Pope Benedict XVI] were to get rid of every gay priest, this Archdiocese could run maybe . . . ten parishes.” The Archdiocese,at the time, operated at least 121 parishes and/or missions.

At the end of the day, I was refused admission to the Miami seminary, and advised to seek out a more “conservative” diocese or religious order. I applied, and was accepted, to the formation program of another Diocese, a “conservative” (read: orthodox) one in the Midwest. This Midwestern Diocese used to send its Hispanic men to the seminaries in Florida, but stopped doing so owing to the rampant homosexuality tolerated and inculcated, particularly at St John Vianney in Miami.

Two years ago I and several other Catholics sent to Rome an exhaustive report (hundreds of pages of text, documentation, eye witness accounts) detailing and documenting all these allegations and more. Rome responded to the report. I am not at liberty to divulge how she responded; I’ll simply note that all the above allegations were vindicated, and we were promised reforms would be forthcoming.

South Florida’s Catholics are still waiting.

[For my readers’ convenience, I append below an exhaustive compilation of all news articles documenting the corruption of the Miami Archdiocese. Read them, along with my personal testimonial, and come to your own conclusions.]

And now, a new breakthrough:

“The Priest, the Stripper, and Their Baby”

Yes, yet another sex scandal in the Miami Archdiocese–but take heart! The stripper Father David Dueppen’s been having an affair with . . . is a woman! Praise be to God! Te Deum Laudaumus!

By the standards of the Miami Archdiocese, this good Father is an ultra-conservative rad-trad! Maybe he will tapped to be Archbishop Favalora’s new coadjutor!

For my non-Catholic readers, I’m joking, but only in part. Let me let you in on a little in-house secret: I promise you that when most practicing Catholics in South Florida hear a priest has had an affair with a mistress, the first thing that comes to their minds is, Phew! Thank God it’s a woman! Once that novelty sets in, then we bemoan yet another scandal for our local church.

A sad, sad state we’re in.

And this latest scandal adds to the growing list of reasons why Archbishop Favalora should hang up his mitre and let the Pope appoint a replacement ASAP. Let’s review, shall we?

1) The Miami Archdiocese has a history of sex scandal, most of it homosexual in nature.

2) It is an open secret that the vast majority of the Archdiocese’s pastors are active homosexuals, and another open secret that this sexual corruption goes up to . . . ahem! . . . the very top.

3) The Fr.Cutie fiasco occurred under Favalora’s watch.

4) In the present story, Favalora’s Archdiocese of Miami coughed up $60,000 of parishioner’s hush-monies to Fr.Dueppen’s stripper, and then readmitted him to active ministry.

5) Since Favalora assumed the Chair of the Archdiocese of Miami in 1994, the Archdiocese has experienced no increase in numbers (in terms of statistical ration of Catholics to non-Catholics), no notable increase in level of evangelical fervour (ask your average South Florida non-Catholic what they’re experiences of Catholics is), no renewal in dynamic orthodoxy, etc.

6) In fact, the Church of the Archdiocese is barely clinging to survival, thanks to the influx of immigrants (for most of whom the Faith is mere cultural baggage).

7) Theological dissent thrives at the parish level and in both “Catholic” universities located in the Archdiocese.

In many parts of the Archdiocese, the Catholic religion is dwindling, as evidenced by Favalora’s recent closure of some ten percent of the Archdiocese’s parishes.

9) Favalora has never been a culture warrior. He’s content to give eloquent lip service to Church orthodoxy, but is nowhere near the calibre of a Wenski (of Orlando) or Dewane (of Venice). Quite frankly, he’s a Chair-warmer, serves no purpose to his flock, is no appreciable standard-bearer of counter-cultural Christian orthodoxy. He has never given his flock any serious guidance on how they are to behave in the voting booth, and has never told pro-abortion,pro-gay Catholic politicians that they are barred from receiving Communion in his territory.

10) Finally, as my Sicilian mother always says, “Shit floats.” Favalora’s chickens are coming home to roost, and there will be more scandal to come to light in the years ahead. These latest stories are just the tips of the iceberg, and Rome knows this is the case. Rome also believes keeping matters quiet, and allowing Don Favalora to retire quietly when he turns 75 will bring less scandal to the faithful .Rome still hasn’t learned its lessons from Boston 2002. Very well, the ball’s in Favalora’s court: The sooner he resigns, the less embarrassment he gets to experience when the full truth of the moral state of his clergy is no longer an open “secret.”

Don “Ayatollah-Favalora” should step down as soon as possible, if there is any semblance of love for his Church left in him.

P.S. Did I mention that His Grace is no friend of traditional Catholic liturgy, let alone Pope Benedict’s liturgical “reform of the reform”?

What You Can DO!

1. Tell the Pope’s ambassador to America, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, why Favalora should be made to resign:

His Excellency Pietro Sambi
Apostolic Nuncio
3339 Massachusets Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008-3687
USA
202-333-7121
202-337-4036 FAX
email: nuntiususa@nuntiususa.org

2. Be sure to send a copy of what you write to the Nuncio, to Archbishop Favalora himself:

Archbishop John C. Favalora
9401 Biscayne Boulevard
Miami Shores, FL 33138
Phone: (305) 757-6241
Fax: (305) 754-1797
// mragosta@theadom.org and // information@theadom.org

3. If you do not receive a satisfactory response from the Nuncio within three weeks, write directly to Rome:

His Eminence Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re
Prefect, Congregation For Bishops
Piazza Pio XII #10
00193 Rome
Italy
011 39 06 6988 4217
011 39 06 6988 4300 FAX
011-39-0669-885303 FAX

4. If you still do not receive a satisfactory reply,after three weeks, contact the Pope directly:

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
Via Del Pellegrino
Citta Del Vaticano 00120
Vatican City State
011.3906.69.88.10.22
011.3906.69.88.53.73 FAX
av@pccs.va
BenedictXVI@vatican.va

ADDENDUM: Documenting the Corruption – (This list will be constantly updated, a standing testimonial to the episcopate of John C. Favalora of Miami)

1. Attorney E-mails Pope, Defends Fired Priest

2. Archdiocese of Miami Sued

3. Archbishop’s “XStream” Investment

4. Attorney: Archbishop Is Friend of Pedophile

5. Whistleblower Priest’s Lawsuit Dismissed

6. Attorney: Vatican Upset with Miami Archdiocese

7. Attorney: Pope Aware of Miami Priest’s Case

8. Attorney: Gay Priest Gave Dog Communion

9. CPA, Priest’s Attorney Spar in Miami

10. Accusations at Fever Pitch in Miami Archdiocese

11. Priest Drops Lawsuit Against Miami Archdiocese

12. Miami Priest, Deacon Guilty of Embezzlement, Extortion?

13. Attorney: Priests Claim 70 Percent of U.S. Bishops Are Gay

14. Catholics Continue to Clash in Miami archdiocese

15. Grievance Filed Against Catholic Attorney, Lay Activist, and Columnist

16. Girl, Parents Sue Miami Archdiocese

17. Wikipedia User Wrongly Cites Priest as “Accused Molester”

18. Seminary Mag’s ‘Gay’ Ads Cause Stir

19. Miami Archdiocese Sued

20. Catholic University to Give Award to Goddess-Worshipping Theologian

21. Lambs to Slaughter: Again and Again, Local Claims of Abuse Point to One Priest, the Rev. Neil Doherty, and the Catholic Archdiocese that Protected Him

22. Speak No Evil: When a Margate Priest Misbehaved, the Archdiocese Punished His Secretary

23. “Gay-Friendly” Miami Archdiocese Features Goddess-Worshipping Nun at Diocesan University

24. Miami Archdiocese Sponsors Concert by Gay Men’s Chorus

25. Monsignor Defends ‘Gay Chorus’

26. ‘The Virtuous One’

27. “The Priest, the Stripper, and Their Baby”

28. Ex-Stripper: Miami Priest Fathered My Baby

29.. Along Came a Spider: What the Pope Doesn’t See

30. New Sex Abuse Claims Against Fmr. Miami Priest

31. 2 Men File Sex Abuse Suits Against Miami Archdiocese

32. Did Archbishop Favalora of Miami Knowingly Employ a Boy-Raping Priest?

Archbishop Favalora of Miami MUST Resign

[or: "Time for a Catholic Tea Party!"]

This just in, folks: a new traditionalist Catholic priest found in Miami!

“The Priest, the Stripper, and Their Baby”

Yes, yet another sex scandal in the Miami Archdiocese–but take heart! The stripper Father David Dueppen’s been having an affair with . . . is a woman! Praise be to God! Te Deum Laudaumus!

By the standards of the Miami Archdiocese, this good Father is an ultra-conservative rad-trad! Maybe he will tapped to be Archbishop Favalora’s new coadjutor!

For my non-Catholic readers, I’m joking, but only in part. Let me let you in on a little in-house secret: I promise you that when most practicing Catholics in South Florida hear a priest has had an affair with a mistress, the first thing that comes to their minds is, Phew! Thank God it’s a woman! Once that novelty sets in, then we bemoan yet another scandal for our local church.

A sad, sad state we’re in.

And this latest scandal adds to the growing list of reasons why Archbishop Favalora should hang up his mitre and let the Pope appoint a replacement ASAP. Let’s review, shall we?

1) The Miami Archdiocese has a history of sex scandal, most of it homosexual in nature.

2) It is an open secret that the vast majority of the Archdiocese’s pastors are active homosexuals, and another open secret that this sexual corruption goes up to . . . ahem! . . . the very top.

3) The Fr.Cutie fiasco occurred under Favalora’s watch.

4) In the present story, Favalora’s Archdiocese of Miami coughed up $60,000 of parishioner’s hush-monies to Fr.Dueppen’s stripper, and then readmitted him to active ministry.

5) Since Favalora assumed the Chair of the Archdiocese of Miami in 1994, the Archdiocese has experienced no increase in numbers (in terms of statistical ration of Catholics to non-Catholics), no notable increase in level of evangelical fervour (ask your average South Florida non-Catholic what they’re experiences of Catholics is), no renewal in dynamic orthodoxy, etc.

6) In fact, the Church of the Archdiocese is barely clinging to survival, thanks to the influx of immigrants (for most of whom the Faith is mere cultural baggage).

7) Theological dissent thrives at the parish level and in both “Catholic” universities located in the Archdiocese.

8] In many parts of the Archdiocese, the Catholic religion is dwindling, as evidenced by Favalora’s recent closure of some ten percent of the Archdiocese’s parishes.

9) Favalora has never been a culture warrior. He’s content to give eloquent lip service to Church orthodoxy, but is nowhere near the calibre of a Wenski (of Orlando) or Dewane (of Venice). Quite frankly, he’s a Chair-warmer, serves no purpose to his flock, is no appreciable standard-bearer of counter-cultural Christian orthodoxy. He has never given his flock any serious guidance on how they are to behave in the voting booth, and has never told pro-abortion,pro-gay Catholic politicians that they are barred from receiving Communion in his territory.

10) Finally, as my Sicilian mother always says, “Shit floats.” Favalora’s chickens are coming home to roost, and there will be more scandal to come to light in the years ahead. These latest stories are just the tips of the iceberg, and Rome knows this is the case. Rome also believes keeping matters quiet, and allowing Don Favalora to retire quitly when he turns 75 will bring less scandal to the faithful.Rome still hasn’t learned its lessons from Boston 2002. Very well, the ball’s in Favalora’s court: The sooner he resigns,the less embarrasment he gets to experience when the full truth of the moral state of his clergy is no longer an open “secret.”

Don “Ayatollah-Favalora” should step down as soon as possible, if there is any semblance of love for his Church left in him.

P.S. Did I mention that His Grace is no friend of traditional Catholic liturgy, let alone Pope Benedict’s liturgical “reform of the reform”?

What You Can DO!

1. Tell the Pope’s ambassador to America, Archbishop Pietro Sambi, why Favalora should be made to resign:

His Excellency Pietro Sambi
Apostolic Nuncio
3339 Massachusets Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008-3687
USA
202-333-7121
202-337-4036 FAX
email: nuntiususa@nuntiususa.org

2. Be sure to send a copy of what you write to the Nuncio, to Archbishop Favalora himself:

Archbishop John C. Favalora
9401 Biscayne Boulevard
Miami Shores, FL 33138
Phone: (305) 757-6241
Fax: (305) 754-1797
// mragosta@theadom.org and // information@theadom.org

3. If you do not receive a satisfactory response from the Nuncio within three weeks, write directly to Rome:

His Eminence Giovanni Battista Cardinal Re
Prefect, Congregation For Bishops
Piazza Pio XII #10
00193 Rome
Italy
011 39 06 6988 4217
011 39 06 6988 4300 FAX
011-39-0669-885303 FAX

4. If you still do not receive a satisfactory reply,after three weeks, contact the Pope directly:

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Apostolic Palace
Via Del Pellegrino
Citta Del Vaticano 00120
Vatican City State
011.3906.69.88.10.22
011.3906.69.88.53.73 FAX
av@pccs.va
BenedictXVI@vatican.va