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KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER
TOPICS:
READER'S ROUNDTABLE
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Welcome to the start of a new fiscal year--unless you work for the
federal government, in which case you have to wait until October 1. But
today marks the start of Catholic Answers' fiscal year, and we always
look upon July 1 as a chance to make a new beginning. Some day, I vow,
this non-profit will stun the world and will turn a small profit.
In the meantime we can recall these lines from "David Copperfield":
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six,
result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty
pounds ought and six, result misery."
Dickens was perceptive. It doesn't take much to make us happy, and it
doesn't take much to make us miserable.
My test for successful management of home finances is simple: If I'm
paying the mortgage on time, I'm a happy camper. I have no need of
megabucks and in fact would feel burdened if I had immense wealth, on
the principle that the rich have an obligation to die poor (or
reasonably close to it), and arranging for that can occupy the whole of
one's time. There are lots of ways to be hampered by money, and one is
to be forced to spend your waking hours figuring out how to give it
away. There are advantages to earning and spending just twenty pounds a
year (adjusted for inflation, of course).
Okay, to something more substantial. It's time for another Readers'
Roundtable. As you know, I don't solicit replies to this E-Letter. I
actually discourage them since I don't have time to reply to the
replies. Still, each week I receive e-mails from readers--sometimes lots
of e-mails. Herewith a few of them, plus my comments...
FIRST, THE BASICS
Let's start with something upbeat. Fr. Laurier Harvey, S.J., writes: "I
am 78 years of age now, and a Jesuit for 48 years. It is true that many
things are becoming much clearer to me than when I entered the Society
of Jesus, and all those years of training to the priesthood did not give
me all that I wished to know, and only now am I getting to know the full
truth of Jesus Christ and his Church. And, I must say this, the more I
get to know him the more I realize how little I know him! My desire is
to get to know him even more. This I do in contemplation, and mostly in
silent contemplation before the Blessed Eucharist."
A good reminder for all of us.
CARTOGRAPHY
In response to my June 3 E-Letter, which was a meditation that started
with redrawing our country's borders and ended with a look at
multiplicity within the Church, Mike Lojo wrote, "I must admit that your
e-mail letters are so different from listening to you on the radio."
Hmmm. I'm not sure whether this is a mere observation or a criticism. If
the latter, is it my radio or my written persona that Mr. Lojo likes the
less? He isn't clear, and, come to think of it, maybe his comment isn't
meant as a criticism at all. Maybe it's actually a compliment. Maybe he
is immeasurably impressed with each persona and doesn't know which he
prefers but just notes that they differ from one another. Then again,
maybe not.
That June 3 E-Letter struck some readers as disorganized. I received
solace from Denise Mullarkey's comment: "You may have a what is called
'the hyperactive mind.' Most of us creative folk have this tendency. We
can find links and commonalities that few others in the world would see.
We also struggle with not being able to organize our thoughts, with the
conundrum being that the harder we try to force ourselves the less we
can achieve."
Thanks, that makes me feel better--and that's no malarkey.
Matt Stull is a cartographer and geographer. He wrote, "I really enjoyed
your discussion on geography and the Church. Many people overlook the
importance of geography in our lives and that means our spiritual lives
too. Your proximity to a holy shrine, apparition, or 'good' parish can
have dramatic effects on one's spirituality."
Good point, but I go further than that and note that our faith is
particular: The Savior came at a particular time, in a particular place,
to a particular people, into a particular culture, under a particular
political system. And after that the Church he established spread in a
particular way, and its spread was both internal (spiritual) and
external (geographical).
We can walk where he walked, we can see the places the earliest
evangelists went, we can pray in churches that are not just old but that
have historical significance for our faith. We can know our faith better
by immersing ourselves in its particularities.
Hilaire Belloc said he could write best about the great battles that
determined Christian history if he first walked the battlefields. To
understand the movements on the field he had to traverse the field.
Battles do not occur on textbook pages but in real settings that might
be quite misunderstood by historians who have not been there.
"BORN AGAINS" REVISITED
Stan Williams offered observations on my June 17 segment titled
"Fundamentalist vs. Evangelical vs. Protestant." Among them was this:
"David Russell converted to Catholicism during the writing of his
doctrinal dissertation on the history of Fundamentalist Christianity in
America. In an interview I conducted with David, he describes the major
Fundamentalist distinction as one of separatism. That is,
Fundamentalists are those that refuse to associate or fellowship, not
just with Catholics but even with other Fundamentalists who associate
with anyone other than their kind."
I didn't refer to the principle of separatism directly, though I did
mention that Fundamentalists, unlike Evangelicals, tend not to cooperate
even in social or political, let alone in religious, matters with people
who are not Fundamentalists. Mr. Williams is right to identify this as
an actual doctrine of theirs. They believe the Bible commands them to
keep separate from those who believe differently.
Mr. Williams, who is a convert to Catholicism, goes on to say, "You said
Evangelicals and Fundamentalists both believe in 'once saved, always
saved.' That is not true. There are two extremes here, reflecting the
Calvinist and the Arminianist arms of Protestantism. Inspired by the
Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609), Arminianism disagreed
with John Calvin and claimed that man's free will and God's sovereignty
were not incompatible.
"John Wesley was greatly influenced by Arminius, and consequently no
Methodists (mainline), nor any of the Evangelical off-shoots (Wesleyan
Methodists, Free Methodists, Nazarene, et al.) are of the once-saved,
always saved camp. I was Free Methodist and went to the altar rail every
Sunday to help ensure my salvation because I had sinned that past week.
(And yes, I confessed by sins to the pastor while crying my fool head
off. Interesting preparation for confession.)"
In my defense I'd draw a distinction between theoretical Evangelicalism
and practical Evangelicalism. I have spoken with hundreds (thousands?)
of Evangelicals over the years--I mean here regular pew sitters--and
they certainly seemed to believe themselves safely "saved."
Granted, unlike Fundamentalists, these Evangelicals admitted that their
salvation could be thrown away, but only if they sinned quite
grievously. The hitch is that they seemed convinced that they were
incapable of sufficiently grievous sins or that there are so few such
disqualifying sins that, in practice, almost no Evangelical commits
them. The result in practice, if not in theory, is "once saved, always
saved."
Even in saying this I am painting broadly, since I know Evangelicals who
believe just as Mr. Williams writes, even ones who never have heard of
Arminius.
"GIMME A BREAK!"
Steven R. Cope is a new E-Letter reader: "I am not a Catholic, but I
listen to you regularly (and Bishop Sheen and a couple other regulars on
Catholic radio). I love the Catholic Church so much and would perhaps
become a Catholic myself if not for a handful of doctrinal issues and
practices which seem pure nonsense to me. I keep asking the Lord, 'How
could truly spiritual men come up with that, and with that?'"
First of all, let me remind everyone of Cardinal Newman's distinction:
"Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt." Every Catholic,
including the most learned and the highest placed, experiences
difficulties in understanding the faith. A furrowed brow need not result
in a doubt, which is a denial.
There are many things internal to the faith that I do not understand as
well as I would like. Mostly it is a matter of my own negligence; I just
never have bothered to look up certain things.
What keeps my difficulties from becoming doubts is that I have
confidence in the overall unity of the faith. I know, almost a priori,
that it is true, and from experience I know that, if I spend enough time
hitting the books, I will end up with an answer that fits. Again and
again I have seen things fall into place, leaving no gaps.
I never have thought of any teachings of the Church as "pure nonsense,"
but, if I did have that impression of some teachings, I would know that
the impression would be nothing more than that--an impression--and that
the "pure nonsense" would turn into "perfect sense" if only I adjusted
my spectacles properly.
I don't think any belief needs to be shoehorned into the faith. I have
yet to find any extraneous belief proposed to me by the Church, and I
don't expect ever to come across one. Logic and experience argue against
that.
I hope Mr. Cope will take a deep breath and plunge into the right books.
I can assure him that there is a good answer to every question (even if
I may not be the one with the answer). For leads on those books he might
wish to call our staff apologists at 619-387-7200. I can assure him that
they do not bite.
FINAL QUERY
From Matt Breckler: "Already a subscriber. I just want to know how you
know so much stuff?" Easy, Mr. Breckler. I make it up.
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