A Sound of Sheer Silence

Over at The Week , Damon Linker has written a thoughtful and heart-felt reflection on his own evolution away from a more conservative vision of Catholicism .  All I can say is that his experience is almost perfectly aligned with mine in this area--where once I saw the Politics of Certainty as the primary attraction of Catholicism, now I see it as the primary problem.  As Linker says so beautifully: The Catholic conservative doesn't want to live spiritually within a debating society or an ongoing, open-ended conversation. He wants matters to be definitive — done, settled, fixed for all time. Even if, considered objectively, the teachings of another authoritative Christian tradition in one area of doctrine appear more humane and less prone to alienating millions of parishioners. Because that's just not the way Catholics do it. We had that debate. It's over. End of discussion. I once wanted that, too — the Catholic Church serving as the final, infallible guardian and guara...

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, "The Christian of the future will be a mystic, or he will not exist at all." --Karl Rahner, S.J. (1904-84). For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:12). Evangelical Christianity gets many things wrong, at least from my perspective.  But there is one thing that they are absolutely correct to insist on, and it is something that the more hierarchical and liturgical churches need to recover.  Heck, it is something that the evangelical churches themselves often lose sight of, and need to remind themselves of their own core commitments. What evangelical Christianity gets right is that, at its most basic level, Christianity is not about doctrine (let alone any particular doctrine) and it is not about church (however church is unders...

Remember how I said that Jesuits like to lob intellectual grenades into the mix to see what happens?  Pope Francis just pulled the pin .  I will probably have a couple of posts about this amazing interview, but I have a couple of immediate reactions.  First, particularly if one reads the entire interview, you see the Jesuit-ness of Pope Francis come right to the forefront.  He has a long discussion of how Ignatian spirituality (the ideas of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits) influences his way of leading and thinking.  So, the take away for me is that he is more or less like all of the Jesuits I've met.  Second, I will be fascinated to see the reaction from the right-wing Catholic blogosphere and conservative Catholic media (EWTN et al. ).  The meme that "Francis is speaking off the cuff and is not serious," seems to be unsupportable by even those in the deepest of denial (Update: or perhaps not ).  It...

When I was exploring the idea of becoming a priest, there were really two groups that immediately resonated with me--the Dominicans and the Jesuits.  I chose the Dominicans, and in hindsight I think that was a mistake.  I am not saying that I would still a priest now if I chose the Jesuits, because ultimately I do not believe I could live celibacy in a healthy way.  But, I think I would have lasted much longer as a Jesuit than I did as a Dominican.  This intuition was confirmed when I spent three years at a Jesuit parish in Philadelphia.  It was, without question, the best parish experience I've had, and I came to respect and love the Jesuits very much. All of this is a longish way of saying that, while obviously I've never met Pope Francis, I have some sense of his fellow members of the Jesuit order.  If Pope Francis is anything like his brothers, and there is no reason to believe he is not, I think we can conclude a few things about the man. One con...