Strike One for "Trey" on Homosexuality

A comment from "Trey" on my post regarding homosexuality writes that "The number 1 reason why God doesn't need you to worry about other people's sexuality: 1. Because he is God, and can judge us individually."

Typical of today's rationalistic mentality, Trey seems to believe that because God is the one who ultimately judges our hearts, we should back off in trying to guide one another from paths of spiritual destruction.

The truth is, however, that we are each responsible for speaking for truth and reminding others to avoid sin. It is not our place to judge another person's heart. It is not even our place to judge our own hearts, as Paul makes clear in his epistles. However, it would be silly to infer from that that we shouldn't step in when we see another engaging in behavior that is destructive to himself.

I'm sure that if Trey knew a friend of his was viewing child pornography, he wouldn't be so cavalier as to say, as he did in his comment, that God does not need us to "add to the pile of condemnation flying about on any given topic."

If he found out his own son or daughter was cheating on a spouse, would he really take the attitude that it isn't his problem because God is the only one who (again, as his comment suggests) should "guide our lives".

If Trey had read my post carefully, which he obviously did not, he would see that I absolutely did not encourage a condemnation of people with homosexual tendencies. I also did not encourage a condemnation of people who chose to act on such tendencies. What I did condemn, however, was attitudes such as Trey's, which tell us to ignore the teachings of Scripture and Tradition on homosexuality. I did write that the most unchristian thing we could do when a friend or relative is battling homosexuality is to withhold the truth of Christ from that person.

People who are tempted by sin do not need Trey's indifference. He may be perfectly content with allowing them to fall into sinful behavior. Maybe it is just easier for him to allow others to face judgement without his support and Christian guidance. Perhaps he even thinks he knows better than the Church, which was entrusted by Christ to uphold a moral standard.

He wouldn't be the first to make that assumption either. That credit goes to Adam and Eve, who chose for themselves the right to decide right and wrong.

Trey ends his comment with a snide suggestion that perhaps, instead of worrying about those who are slipping into sin, I should, "Go do some work for an elderly person instead." The hypocrisy here is that, in attempting to chastise me for condemning others, Trey, himself, condemns me (and anyone else who would uphold a moral standard), assuming that our adherence to truth means that we are callous individuals who do not contribute to social welfare. How, exactly, does Trey know my own personal contributions, either monetarily or physically, to charitable works? I have observed it to be a mark of his own brand of moral superiority that such an indignant attitude would be displayed to anyone who chooses Christian morality over a trendy political correctness. Is he not able to take to heart his own suggestion that God does not need him to "add to the pile of condemnation flying about on any given topic?"

Finally, his comment is evidence that the age of indifference in the Christian church (assuming Trey is Christian) is marked by a characteristic promotion of the social gospel to the exclusion of our first duty, which is to be God's tool in bringing others to salvation. The Christian mandate isn't a sum-zero proposition. We can be concerned for the less-fortunate (and Trey seems to assume that anyone who is elderly is less fortunate), and speak the truth of Christ and his Church.

Trey may not be willing to take on this responsibility. As he suggested in his comment, though, God will hold each of us individually accountable. I am not in a place to judge Trey's heart, but I am curious how he will explain to Christ his unwillingness to defend the teachings that Christ, himself, passed on.

What Goes Up ... Just Keeps Going Up

Here's our national debt clock:

The Gross National Debt

It's like watching a fire burn, isn't it? For some strange reason you just can't take your eyes off it.

Figuratively Speaking

One of the things that non-Catholics are most surprised about when they really begin studying our faith is how literally Catholics take much of Scripture. Perhaps the clearest example of this is in the Last Supper passages, where Christ says of the bread, “This is my body”, and of the wine, “This is my blood.”

Often, however, when Catholics bring these verses to the attention to someone who does not believe in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the conversation goes something like this:

Catholic: “Christ says, ‘This is my body’. Why can’t we take him at his word?
Non-Catholic: “Because Christ also calls himself a vine (John 15:1) and a door (John 10:7), among other things. Are we to believe he is actually a plant or a thing on hinges?

It’s interesting to see how an otherwise literalist student of the Bible suddenly turns figurative when it comes to reconciling his rejection of a distinctly Catholic doctrine.
The point such a person would be making, of course, is that Christ often spoke in metaphors to help his followers understand the full scope of his being. Why, the non-Catholic might ask, would we believe that the Last Supper discourse is any different?

To be fair to this perspective, here are several more “things” that God (in the person of Christ or otherwise) compares himself to through inspired Scripture:

• The Branch (Zech. 3:8)
• The Bright and Morning Star (Rev. 22:16)
• The Chief Corner Stone (Eph. 2:20; 1Peter 2:7)
• An Eagle (Deut. 32:11)
• A Fountain (Zech. 13:1)
• The Lamb (John 1:29; Rev. 5:6)
• The Rock (1 Cor. 10:4)

This line of reasoning has never really made sense to me. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that, for the last eleven years, I spent a great deal of time teaching eighth graders grammar and figurative language.

There’s something of a verbal sleight-of-hand trick happening when non-Catholics try to equate the institution of the Eucharist to Christ’s many metaphorical statements about himself.

A metaphor works this way. The subject of the sentence is joined by a linking verb to a seemingly different predicate nominative, which reflectively describes something unique about the subject. A literal truth about the predicate nominative describes a figurative truth about the subject. For instance, in the sentence, “My dad is an ox”, the subject (dad) is probably big and hairy, given his resemblance to the predicate nominative (ox). It is important to note that, given the structure of a metaphor, “ox” is describing “dad”, not the other way around. The ox literally weighs near a thousand pounds and is literally covered from head to foot with hair; my dad is only figuratively an ox in that his size and hair exceed that of the average person. To understand it more clearly, one can take the metaphor and turn it into a simile by adding “like” or “as”: My dad is like an ox.

The simile approach emphasizes that it is impossible to flip the comparison around without outright changing the meaning. “My dad is like an ox” becomes outright weird when we flip it to say, “An ox is like my dad.”

Let’s take the metaphors of Scripture and state them in simple declarative sentences (using the generic “God” to simplify the process):

• God is a vine.
• God is a door.
• God is the branch.
• God is the bright and morning star.
• God is the chief corner stone.
• God is an eagle.
• God is a fountain.
• God is the lamb.
• God is the rock.

Now, notice the problem when we look at the institution of the Eucharist:

This [bread] is my body.

Or, to make the comparison easier, I’ll substitute the word “God” for the words “my body”:

This [bread] is God.

Or, to be specific:

This [bread] is Jesus.

It would make no sense to flip the comparison (unless one’s grammar resembles that of Yoda):

• A vine is God.
• A door is God.
• A rock is God.
• A lamb is God.

These last four don’t make sense because, in the figurative examples above, God is always the subject. The predicate nominatives describe qualities of God. God is a source of life, like a vine. He is our entrance into Heaven, like a door. He is the foundation of our faith, like a “rock” or “cornerstone”. He was sacrificed for us, like a lamb.

This is how metaphors work, which is why it is outright silly to claim that in the last supper narrative, when “God” or “my body” becomes the predicate nominative. To do so would mean that we are using the divine figuratively to describe a literal truth about the bread. How is this possible? Is the bread in anyway omniscient? Omnipotent? Omnipresent? To illustrate, let’s turn our “metaphors” into similes:

• God is like a rock. Makes sense.
• God is like a lamb. Makes sense.
• God is like a vine. Makes sense.
• God is like a door. Makes sense.
• This bread is like God. Huh?

Even the original text would fail this test (This [bread] is like my body). The reason? By putting God as the predicate nominative, the metaphor serves to exalt bread to something divine by comparison. This makes no sense and has no place in the unity of Scripture unless

Unless it wasn’t meant to be figurative …

Which would mean it was literal …

Which would mean that the bread isn’t bread anymore.

Let' Be Frank II

A while back, a reader named "Frank" made the accusation that the church's unwavering opposition to pro-abortion Catholic candidates (e.g. John Kerry and Ted Kennedy) was simply a ploy to support the Republicans in national elections.

People like Frank, who are die-hard stuck in support of the party of their choice, have a hard time seeing that it might be the other way around - that many Catholics choose their party because if its respect for life, rather than choosing their view on life because of their party.

Another thing that Frank might have a hard time explaining is, if the pro-life stance is little more than a straw man for supporting the Republican party, why do so many pro-life Catholics want to have nothing to do with the Republican Rudy Guliani (click here), who shows some of the greatest promise for keeping a Republican in the White House.

A political party is by and large defined by the most prominent member of that party, especially if that person happens to be in the office of president, which is why we hear reference to Reagan conservatives so often. If a pro-abortion (his donations to planned parenthood rule out the "pro-choice" label) and gay-rights candidate like Rudy happens to get into the white house, it is going to be awfully hard for Republicans to consider themselves the pro-life party anymore. That line will have been officially and irrevocably crossed.

A lot of conservatives, such as Sean Hannity, have sold out on this issue and seem comfortable with suggesting that we have to start looking beyond abortion and gay rights and consider the big picture, most of which is filled (in their minds) with national security. Unfortunately, this seems to be the game plan for much of the Republican agenda in recent years, to "look beyond" one issue after another until it has become a party that nobody recognizes anymore.

The same thing happens often in our churches. In a desperate attempt to attract members, churches (Catholic and Protestant) begin secularizing their services and trying to make them "hip" to bring in a crowd (especially a younger one). The doctrine and practices become so watered down that these churches lose the identities that defined them in the first place. In addition, their short-term gains turn into long term loses because it is simply impossible for churches to compete with the entertainment and social atmosphere of the secular world. Once they have trained their members to feel that worship is about external stimulation, those same members eventually drift to where that external stimulation is stronger and less contrived.

I genuinely believe that people generally want their worship to be an experience that is distinct from their worldly lives. Music in church shouldn't sound like what we can find on the radio on the way home. Worship shouldn't be so saturated with fellowship that it resembles a class reunion. The homily shouldn't be replaced with a motivational speaker. We want to be transported, during the Mass, to a place that no human-devised gimmick can take us. The fact that this isn't happening in many of today's churches can be seen by the trend for people to seek "communion" through holding hands and sharing doughnuts, overlooking the fact that the most miraculous communion takes place during the reception of the Eucharist, and nothing can come close to competing with that.

Not to downplay the Mass by returning to the metaphor, but as long as the Republican party continues to water-down its positions, trying to compete with the political correctness and feel-good politics, it will slowly see its conservative base drift away to other "churches", so to speak. Being Republican will no longer carry without it any sense of identity, other than one of impotence. If the Republican party says it is okay to be pro-choice, one might as well side with the party that has been doing it longer. If the Republicans continue to allow the government to swell out of control, one might as well switch to a party that does this as a matter of philosophy. If the Republicans continue to edge toward a welfare state, one might as well edge to the other side of the fence.

Luckily for Republicans, there are candidates out there who are remaining true to the conservative values (and have been for more than just the last couple years). If we are truly pro-life, we cannot let this issue be reduced to a peripheral issue on the political radar. And we cannot let a pro-life party be redefined by a man who