Slouching towards the “American Jesus” – part II

Up from the rancho, straight into heresy

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!” That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. “It doesn’t matter what country you’re from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank,” Garay said. “You don’t have to say, ‘God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.’ The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!”

Pastor Garay, 48, is short and stocky, with thick black hair combed back. In his off hours, he looks like a contented tourist, in his printed Hawaiian shirts or bright guayaberas. But he preaches with a ferocity that taps into his youth as a cocaine dealer with a knife in his back pocket. “Fight the attack of the devil on my finances! Fight him! We declare financial blessings! Financial miracles this week, NOW NOW NOW!” he preached that Sunday. “More work! Better work! The best finances!” Gonzales shook and paced as the pastor spoke, eventually leaving his wife and three kids in the family section to join the single men toward the front, many of whom were jumping, raising their Bibles, and weeping. On the altar sat some anointing oils, alongside the keys to the Mercedes Benz.

-Hanna Rosin, from the December 2009 issue of the Atlantic

The narrative popular amongst those who reflect on the phenomenon of Christianity in Latin America is that while Catholicism was imposed by Spanish colonialists as the mandatory religion of the people, “Jesus” was never preached to the natives there. Thus, Latin American Catholics, especially the rural, “ignorant” type, were not really Christians, but “Christo-pagans”. Even many Catholics in this country, aghast at the prevalence of “superstitions” among the “brown peoples”, cannot but secretly breath a sigh of relief when such people finally leave Catholicism altogether to enter into the broad movement of Protestant evangelicalism. “At least they are moving past their superstitions and closer to the Jesus of the Gospels” is the thinking behind such a paternalistic attitude.

Slouching towards the “American Jesus” – part I

With friends like these…

Ordinarily, I don’t read Protestant blogs, especially those of the “Catholic friendly” type. So places like the Internet Monk rarely see my virtual shadow graze their screen full of pixels. One post on Josh S.’ blog did link to a post on this other blog, and since I have of late thought that I am being unfair to Protestant religious culture and the brave Catholics who venture to “dialogue” with it (mostly converts themselves), I decided to take a gander. From my understanding, the owner of this popular website is ambivalent towards Catholicism and Orthodoxy since his wife has converted to the one True, Roman Faith. So apparently, he really wants to know what we think, and people far more patient than I am have tried to explain it to him. In spite of these efforts, the Protestant blogger has to conclude the following:

I appreciate the worship, reverence, holiness, sacrifice, devotion and prayerfulness I see in Catholic Christians. In the category of Jesus shaped spirituality, there is much to affirm about the Catholic way of being Christian…

What continues to haunt me, however, is not the resolution of my own differences with Catholicism. I’m quite satisfied that, minus some devastating alteration in my own view of faith, God and the church, I’ll be a Protestant on the bus with the “Happy Enough” Protestants till the end of my ride.

We traded the errors of Rome for what we have now. I can be glad we do not believe in the assumption of Mary or in indulgences, but from there, I’m left sad that I can go weeks without hearing the Gospel, but never a day without moralism, culture war idolatry and consumer church.

On the margins of theology – IV

The curious case of St. Guinefort

For those who fancy themselves cultured and somewhat versed in the more bizarre points of history, the case of St. Guinefort is perhaps one of the more exotic and colorful stories at which to gawk. For those few who do not yet know the story, it begins in the castle of a nobleman whose name is now lost to the erosion of time and lore. Upon returning from a trip, he hastily killed his loyal greyhound after thinking that it had mauled his newborn child to death in his crib. After finding a dead snake and the child safe and sound, the nobleman realized what had really happened: the dog had once again presented itself as “man’s best friend”, having ferociously killed the snake that was stalking the bed of the newborn. The nobleman buried the dog and planted a tree at its burial site to commemorate its heroic actions. The castle itself was eventually leveled, the family departed, and a grove of trees came up in its place. But the locals did not forget the “martyrdom” of that greyhound, and little by little, the tree at which it was buried became the site of pilgrimage, particularly for mothers with sick young children.

This was the state in which the devoted Dominican, Stephen of Bourbon, found this area of the world in the 1200’s. Hot on the trail of heresy and witchcraft, the educated city dweller entered the countryside looking for anything that did not cohere with the “orthodoxy” that was triumphantly established in the great cathedrals and universities of the age. When through much prodding the friar found out that the local saint was a dog commemorated at a sacred grove, he began a campaign to eradicate the blasphemy from the region. He preached against the “rites” performed by the mothers there who would bring their sick children as a “sacrifice” to the fauns, passing them through the trunks of trees and leaving them exposed to the elements. Finally, he preached at the place itself, and had the bones of the dog dug up and burnt, and leveled the place to the ground. Unforunately here as well, Holy Mother Church was not able to eradicate completely the superstitions of the local “cafeteria” Catholics, and the cultus to St. Guinefort lasted well into the early 20th century.

Theological mercenaries

Henry Karlson has written an essay entitled, Academic Theology for the website Inside Catholic, in which he criticizes the attitude of treating theology as one modern academic discipline among others. As a student of theology in a contemporary Catholic school, he complains that there is a great deal of pressure to write “something unique” rather than uphold and defend what has always been believed:

Theologians, because they are tied to universities, are required to write according to the dictates and expectations of academia. This can be problematic, as academia loves novelty, while theology should be about preserving the faith and avoiding empty novelty.

The academic exercise of theology must also be tied into a vibrant spiritual life, and he cites such figures as Hans Urs von Balthasar as examples still being able to “engage theology today”.

More on faith and culture

The following is a slightly edited version of an essay I originally posted here.

Rather than attempting to build Christianity upon the natural virtues of Inca religion in the Andes, the Jesuits in Juli had come to see Andean customs and beliefs as a serious hinderance to the faith of Christ. The sixteenth-century emphasis on the interior experience of Christianity, which created much higher standards for native converts than had existed in preceding centuries, meant that the Jesuit’s disillusionment with the native potential for Christian evangelization would be experienced throughout the Peruvian church. Eventually, the conviction that they native peoples were not truly “Christian” would lead to episcopal campaigns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to extirpate idolatry, as well as to modern notions that Andean peoples are “cryptopagans” even when they profess a belief in Christ.

Dr. Sabine Hyland wrote a book a few years back entitled, The Jesuit and the Incas, on one of the first mestizo clergy in Peru, Fr. Blas Valera. A son of one of the conquistadores and an Inca noblewoman, he was one of the first scholars to do a comparison of ancient Incan civilization with the European classical world, and created a world view quite favorable to the conquered empire. It was Fr. Valera’s contention that Inca religion was quite close to Christianity, down to an almost Christian idea of an incarnate God named Viracocha, and an absolute creator god named Illa Tecce. Valera wanted the Spanish clergy to begin to use these names for the Christian God and Jesus Christ, but to no avail. In the end, Fr. Valera was framed on charges of fornication and imprisoned by the Jesuit order for four years. Scholars now believe that he was really imprisoned for syncretic heresy. Only through the intervention of some influential Jesuits was he finally freed and sent to Spain, where he died in a pirate assault on Cadiz in 1597.

The laity and the Church

Once upon a time, there was a Church that didn’t need the laity. Well, it knew that it was there, but it wasn’t like it mattered or anything. The only non-clergy who actually mattered were the ones who had the swords and the guns; as long as they were on the clergy’s side, the Church could basically do whatever it wanted. Thus, the liturgy remained in the same language for sixteen hundred years, even if the people had long stopped speaking that language. Ceremonies were basically performed in a whisper, or in a rushing series of clerical incantations to which most of the people in the church were completely oblivious. Meanwhile, the laity had to “fend for themselves”, taking what the clergy told them and trying to fit it into how they perceived and lived their daily lives. Sometimes, the clergy themselves assumed many of the popular beliefs of the people (after all, clergymen in that Church didn’t just bud out of other clergymen like hydras), and sometimes they had to go to scold the people for their “superstition” when they found certain practices objectionable. But the point was that the clergy had a captive audience, and the laity had to accept whatever it said, like it or not.

The myth of “interiority”

I read the other day a post on the Lonely Goth’s blog concerning the Khrist Bhaktas or Indian devotees of Christ who are not baptized into the Church. Apparently, according to an article linked to on this site, a great number of people who make pilgrimages to Christian shrines and fills the pews on Sunday are not technically “Christians” as we would call them. They are devotees of Christ who do not seek baptism, since “receiving baptism is perceived as relinquishing one’s entire social and cultural patrimony and becoming assimilated to an alien culture”. Some Catholic priests even encourage this type of devotion to Christ, saying that they are there not to baptize people, but to “preach the Gospel”.

“Syncretic, cowardly compromise”, you might be thinking. The funny thing is, however, that Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, that bête noire of integrist Catholicism, when he was working in the Lord’s vineyard in French-speaking west Africa, almost did the exact same thing with many of the Muslim and animist populations. Realizing that many people due to tribal or marital circumstances (polygamy was common in many places) could not seek baptism, he created a class of “believer”, a sort of perpetual catechumenate, for those not quite ready to take the plunge of becoming an “official Christian”. His aim of course was to convert everybody, but he was realistic about what that really meant in practice. By creating a “third way”, he and other missionaries felt that some people were at least leaving the door partially open to the Church, and that such a committment should at the least be acknowledged by the hierarchy.

Stuff from around the Internet

Found at this site. No real comment.

No offense intended to Father, but really, since when have the “average Catholic laity” been obsessed with the meaning of life questions? And while I don’t really agree with the Spaniard, sometimes I can sympathize with the agnostic soundman’s condescension: “you poor naive Americans”. [Remember, I am just as American as all of you. The only difference is that my ties to the "old country" are much stronger.]

Finally, the article Sharing the Real Mary by David Mills. He seems to be a convert asking some deeper questions regarding the relationship between faith and culture. The comments of others are quite interesting, though they range from pious churchwoman-speak, to more sophisticated comments, to one cradle Catholic who says he has no devotion to the Virgin and finds nothing wrong with this. I found the last type of comment very annoying, and just demonstrative of how “naive” and ahistorical American Catholics outside of certain regions can sometimes be. Maybe they need to spend more time in botanicas…

An Evening with Robert Louis Wilken

AG and I went to a talk at Notre Dame Seminary here in New Orleans given by the noted Christian scholar, Robert Louis Wilken. A former Lutheran pastor and a convert to the Catholic Faith in 1994, Dr. Wilken this night gave a talk entitled, “Reading St. Augustine in the 21st Century”. Dr. Wilken, as many will know, is an expert in early Christian thought, having written and edited such books as Remembering the Christian Past and On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ. He is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of the History of Christianity at the University of Virginia as well as having taught at many notable universities around the world. He is also a New Orleans native, having grown up in the lower Ninth Ward, and gave a biographical prelude to his talk on how good it was to be back in his hometown. There was a good turnout for the event on a rainy Friday night, and the talk itself was followed by a lively and equally interesting Q & A session.

Dr. Wilken decided in his limited time to tackle perhaps the most prolific and influential of ancient writers, St. Augustine of Hippo. Wilken had to start out surveying the vast expanse of Augustine’s thought and writings, not to mention his equally impressive legacy on Western thought. He began with some rather broad yet profound themes that Augustine touched upon in his writings: time, memory, the self, and the soul. In these, what is most important is the “inner life” of man; it is the “most important part of being human”. In Augustine, above any other thinker in antiquity, we have a “turn towards the self”. In no other author then or now can we get a deeper sense of the “inner life” as it journeys towards the truth. For Augustine, reflection and the turn towards the self were a “step on the way back to God”. His task was to explore the infinitely vast universe within, of which the outer universe is but a mere shadow, and there find God.

Archbishop Weakland – the “after-article”

In case you haven’t seen it yet, here is my latest article for Inside Catholic that is a review of Archbishop Rembert Weakland’s autobiography, A Pilgrim in a Pilgrim Church. As expected, this article has led to a minor “feeding frenzy” over there of “conservative” Catholics venting their ire against the fallen liberal prelate. One criticism of my article is that I did not take seriously enough the sexual dimension of Archbishop Weakland’s downfall, which for many commenters was the main driving force behind his progressive agenda. I wouldn’t want to get into it here, but I will only reiterate what I said in my one comment over there: people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. We have the scandal of Fr. Maciel, who was apparently JPII’s best buddy, and then we have the traditionalists like Fr. Timothy Svea who fell into worse sins and crimes. What about that master of ceremonies of the current Papal court who got picked up by police in the red light district in Rome? I once knew an SSPX priest, Fr. Benedict Vander Putten, who I thought was on fire with the love of God. Turns out he was on fire for the love of underaged girls. Need I go on?

So here too I will steer clear of the “Fox News” culture of accusation and titillation and just argue the issues I set out to discuss in the essay. I think at times that I might have been too hard on the Archbishop, that maybe I have been guilty of the closed-mindedness that I accuse him of. But probing my own reading of the book, I really can’t say that the man has an ounce of real contrition for what he has done. As AG put it to me, the whole book could be summarized as, “yeah, I know I messed up on this one thing… but I am still a good person who did a lot of great things. And I could have done greater things if that darn John Paul II hadn’t persecuted me so much…” I did not get a sense from Weakland that the Church existed as something bigger than the walls of his head. It’s his ideas or the highway; the only reason he is staying Catholic is because he has a strong institutional tie to the Church. It’s all he really knows.