In his Newsweek article “Christianity in Crisis” Andrew Sullivan encourages us to leave the Church and follow Jesus. Andrew Sullivan doesn’t know what he is talking about.
On the road to Damascus, Saul, who was zealously persecuting Christians, has a supernatural encounter with Jesus Christ who asks Saul,”Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” And he said, “Who are you Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting…” (Acts 9: 4-5) Jesus as anyone could quickly understand was already crucified by this time. Yet Jesus asks Saul why he persecutes Him, Jesus.
Saul was actually persecuting Christ’s Church and Christ makes it apparent here that there is no difference between the Church and Himself; so one wonders aloud as if Andrew Sullivan were listening, “How would one leave the Church and follow Jesus?” One goes schizophrenically, as has become normative in our culture.
In his 1907 dystopian masterpiece “The Lord of the World” Robert Hugh Benson asserts, “Men do recognize at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else but the beginning of disintegration.” For later in the novel priests are drawn away from the Church by the lure of the prevailing Humanist movement. Father Francis is one of them and Father Percy Franklin accepts his resignation in the paragraph below,
“Percy had nothing to say. He had talked to this man during a period of over eight months, ever since Father Francis had first confided in him that his faith was going. He understood perfectly what a strain it had been; he felt bitterly compassionate towards this poor creature who had become caught up somehow into the dizzy triumphant whirl of the New Humanity. External facts were horribly strong just now; and faith, except to one who had learned that Will and Grace were all and emotion nothing, was as a child crawling about in the midst of some huge machinery: it might survive or it might not; but it required nerves of steel to keep steady. It was hard to know where blame could be assigned; yet Percy’s faith told him that there was blame due. In the ages of faith a very inadequate grasp of religion would pass muster; in these searching days none but the humble and the pure could stand the test for long, unless indeed they were protected by a miracle of ignorance. The alliance of Psychology and Materialism did indeed seem, looked at from one angle, to account for everything; it needed a robust supernatural perception to understand their practical inadequacy.”
Secularized faith is what Andrew Sullivan proposes through Jefferson and his neatly cropped Bible and through, my patron saint, Francis of Assisi. Jefferson is misguided in his appreciation of God and man; it seems that Jefferson’s secular God is conjured up as man’s personal moral and secularly philosophical guide of which he is quoted in the article as articulating, “Above all: give up power over others, because power, if it is to be effective, ultimately requires the threat of violence, and violence is incompatible with the total acceptance and love of all other human beings that is at the sacred heart of Jesus’ teaching.” The revelation of this statement must have been extremely personal as Jefferson was a slave owner. Sullivan’s myopic slant bends humorously as he states,” Jefferson’s point is crucially important. Because it was Jesus’ point. What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand?” Umm… slaves, does he not see the slaves? Hello? Jefferson… slaves… ownership of living God created persons… Thomas… Jeff…oh never mind. Sullivan will simply prop up his vision of Saint Francis and really pound this home or so he thinks.
The Francis depicted in the article is embraced through the fact that he would surely be called insane in the modern world of acute mental diagnostics, but Sullivan doesn’t also touch upon the fact that Francis was unfailingly Orthodox in the living of his faith. The article has Francis reclusively kicking around with his friends and this is how his order, the Franciscans or the Order of Brothers Minor, began. The Francis of history, however, sought the permission of Pope Innocent III to form his order as there would be no point in having an order dedicated to God which was separate from His Church.
A Church which believes that Jesus actually said, “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Who believes there is importance in the fact that although Jesus had many followers he chose twelve to give special authority to and from those twelve we have apostolic succession; except Judas of course who killed himself and was replaced one for one through the authority of the other eleven. Is all of this scripture too obvious? Does Sullivan want to follow the simple biblical Jesus or not? He says he does, but then the Church becomes indispensable.
Saint Francis also lived in a time of religious politics, as much of the middle class was clerical as a form of revenue and not piety or service to God. Francis refused to be anti-clerical, even towards priests who were well know adulterers. He knew that the person of the priest was the vessel by which Jesus delivered the grace of the sacraments and even if the vessel was flawed the vessel was indispensable. Francis’ sentiment is still valid today; regardless of individual feelings, God has chosen his means of providing sacramental grace to His world.
Andrew Sullivan suggests that Francis lived his faith outside of the public square, as we all should. Francis, however, was more often in the public square than out of it. He would cover himself in ashes and shout out his sins in the piazza tearfully begging the people who happened to be there for forgiveness. He would then move the audience to tears as he recited Psalm 51 his wet ashen eyes lifted to Heaven. The crowd was then itself compelled to seek the sacrament of reconciliation, though not right there in public. Francis did say, “Preach the Gospel always and when you have to use words.” That however does not eliminate the need to verbally preach the Gospel; Saint Francis daily saw the need to actually use words in that respect.
Sullivan is proposing a soft Albigensian heresy; that saw the spiritual and physical worlds as being antithetical. Sullivan has flipped the dualism of the Albigenses, however, which saw the world as evil and the soul as pure and good. The Sullivan heresy proposes the world and it’s passions as good, any path which seemingly leads one to happiness being evidence of its inherent goodness. The soul on the other hand is the source of hypocrisy as it betrays the goodness the intellect seems to perceive in the world and calls it into question. One cannot be anything but a hypocrite for holding public or political conclusions in regard to one’s faith as one’s faith damns the asserter of said faith as soon as that assertion leaves one’s mouth. In the heresy the soul is subject to the body rather than the anti-thesis. Which is very often the case but this heresy asserts that it is inevitable so one must shut one’s pie hole; which is why he gave Saint Francis this lone saintly quality, which is the lone saintly quality, to always and ever to have his trap clamped.
The Church understands humanity’s propensity for concupiscence. It understands the propensity of sin and the glamour of sin. It understands its own sinful history but is not chained to that reality as perpetually pervasive, for itself or anyone. Knowing the truth and speaking the truth one may work towards the truth. Living the truth is a painful proposition but those who believe in that truth struggle on towards that singular light upon the horizon which is Jesus Christ. Unity with Him is the one true goal of our very existence.
Jesus gave us one command in John 15: 12, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” And to explain more clearly what that means Jesus had explained in John 15: 9-10, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments you abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”This love is not the love of man for one another or of his desires; no, this is the love of the Trinity and it calls us into perfect communion with that love. It is the love of self sacrifice. It is the love which illuminates the Gospels with meaning.
It is rightly taught that the sacramental life of the Church began as the blood and water poured from the heart of Jesus, opened by the soldier’s lance; the self sacrifice of God which saves the world was begun as the annunciation opened the very heart of heaven and placed the Kingdom of God within the womb of Mary in the person of Jesus Christ. God has always given everything of Himself; everything including his practical application of the truth which He came to witness to.
Christians of every stripe, outside of the Catholic Church, point to Jesus’ condemnation of the Pharisees and Sadducees as a condemnation of religion and of the “organized Church”, but those public condemnations of Jesus actually point toward our obligation to be Christians in the public square not away from it. For the Synagogues were the centers of public life. People have stated Jesus hated religion. Jesus came to perfect religion through himself not abolish it.
Jesus said to the twelve, “this cup is the New Covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:20) I have written above about how Jesus himself established His Church; I also want to show how personal that Church is to Jesus.
Paul continually describes Jesus as the head of the body of Christ, which is the Church. In much the same way, in the Gospel of John, Jesus illustrates the sentiment saying, “I am the vine and you are the branches.” We are to bear fruit in the world but we do so as a direct result of the nourishment of the vine. Jesus has provided His nourishment to the world through the sacramental life of the Church. What the Newsweek essay proposes is that we can easily bear fruit as independent and distinct branches separate from the vine.
For Thomas Jefferson or Barrack Obama, or even Andrew Sullivan, to say that their understanding of our religion should be sufficient for us is absolutely absurd. They criticize the fact that I have a Pope and hierarchy, instituted by Jesus Christ and upheld in historical reality for over 2000 years, and then substitute their own brand of totalitarian idea which is more far reaching than any Pope would be comfortable with. Alas, they are not Popes, they do not have the help of the Holy Spirit and the gates of Hell easily overtake their religious doctrines.
We see this with Darwin and Hegel’s help the Catholic Church has not been synthesized into the dust bin of history but those which have broken off and conform to the culture at large are synthesized and discarded like once fashionable socks. The Catholic Church’s numbers dip and soar from year to year but are over a billion members; the actual endangered species are the denominations, and the smaller the grouping of Christians becomes the more susceptible they become. In the evolutionary sense the fittest is still the first, the Catholic Church.
The more one separates oneself from that reality the easier one is to be picked off by the culture and made into a practical if not actual atheist; as one’s views become increasingly one’s own taste and have nothing to do with Christ and His Scriptures and are through that avenue contrary to Church teaching.
The Narrow Gate. 13 “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many 14How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.
False Prophets.15“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. 16 By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. 20So by their fruits you will know them.
The True Disciple. 21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ 23Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.’(Matthew 7: 13-23)
How can there be a narrow gate of our own creation? How can we lead ourselves on the narrow road and through the narrow gate? How could Jesus have left us without any direction until Andrew Sullivan’s saving words? The prospects are grim as we keep reading Matthew’s Gospel for those who choose for themselves or follow the latest self-serving Jesus fads; odd as Sola Fida would seem to give one an awfully wide berth, or what about the ever popular “once saved always saved” theory of justification?
Our service must be to Jesus hidden as He has told us “in the least” of us; the most defenseless, such as the unborn, the most in need, such as the poor or the unborn, and the most vulnerable, such as the illegal immigrant and the unborn.
The first to say, “I will not serve!” was Satan. May we, through the grace of God, not be the latest to say it. In order to assure this end one must not take the spiritual direction of Andrew Sullivan and his advocate Newsweek magazine, and say, “I will not serve!” in any arena though they be public and/or political. Jesus has called us to serve and the unadulterated lives of His saints reflect that truth; regardless of the heresy of Andrew Sullivan.
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