Friday, 03 July 2009

• The Protestant Deformation = suicide of Christianity.

  I often wondered what lay at the root of my intense dissatisfaction and unhappiness with my religion as a child - I was raised as an evangelical Protestant - and my subsequent rejection of that form of religion for Catholic Christianity. I have since sorted that out, and am able to articulate the journey in a cohesive way. What spurred my thoughts that follow was listening to Conversion stories on YouTube - to Islam.

  There is a common thread among all the interviewees - a dissatisfaction and unhappiness with their lives, an emptiness and lack of direction, and some disillusionment with a completely secular culture that values people for all the wrong reasons. The majority seem to be women, raised in nominally Protestant "churches" but losing any deep connection to a tradition they felt left them with more questions than answers - a form of religion that seemed disconnected from their day-to-day existence - being more a Sunday morning social Event. More importantly none seemed to have received a deep and comprehensive catechesis in basic theology - and I can vouch that this is so in my own experience as a Protestant...the focus is entirely on "a relationship with Jesus" and prayer is "spending time with Jesus" and Bible reading is "spending time in the Word". It is a therapeutic religion of baubles and sentimentality couched in vague cultural terminology that leaves one not inspired but bored and irritated - as one would be being forced to play with childish toys and being told "that is all there is".

  I am a convert to Catholicism, and so perhaps share something with these Muslim women - leaving behind something, and facing the misunderstanding of family and friends, losing friends (or people I had thought were friends) - and the discovery of a system, a disciplined life of faith, morals, prayer, worship, and sacrifice, that encompasses and embraces all of our life and ties everything together in a meaningful whole. The Cradle Catholic may not appreciate all that he or she is receiving by virtue of their Baptism, and may in fact completely fail to grasp what the Catholic Faith requires of those who would follow that Way to God. Woe to the clergy who sound a muffled or unclear signal!

  Perhaps the most telling aspect of these conversion stories is the relationship their faith has to the way the attire themselves and conduct themselves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLzg43NNNOM  I'm always frustrated when I hear these comments...beacuse the unintended accusations they level against secular society, and their former "church" acquaintances and friends/family, are true. The notion that Christians, especially Catholic Christians, can dress immodestly, behave in undignified ways, and hold ourselves to low moral standards is utterly foreign to both Scripture and Tradition.

  The wearing of modest clothing, especially the covering of the head and neck, is not exclusive to Islam. If the truth were told, it was regarded in Christendom as sinful for a Catholic woman to be seen uncovered except in the rarest of circumstances up until shortly after the so-called "reformation" era. Every woman wore some form of head covering according to local custom - it varied with time, place, and a woman's age, - but no one can deny that the uncovered woman was a rarity. The same can be said for forms of attire. The revealing and immodest forms of attire which have developed and become popular in the last 100 years are explicitly and implicitly condemned in Scripture and Canon Law (now mostly repealed, but that is another symptom of decline)

  If one wishes to understand what the Church sets forth as suitably modest attire for those women who would pursue a holy religious life, you merely have to look at a traditional nun's habit with veil, wimple, etc. If one wishes to understand what a modest religious man ought to wear, according to the Church, you have simply to look a a traditional Monk's habit. The repeal of regulations governing Religious Life - under the fallacious heading of "renewal" - has lead to a deformation, a twisting, of  thought on the part of the Church in this area; but it by no means alters earlier authoritative pronouncements on the subject. The Protestant Deformation has culminated in the present day Liberal Catholicism which is, in my estimation, the leading cause of a failure to attract converts. Why would a young person desire to "convert" to a religious syetem that panders to the zeitgeist?? If he or she is wanting to give their entire selves to God in a solemn and permanent way, then of what value is a chameleon-like religion of superficiality and tackiness dancing to the tune of every pied piper who comes along?

  The next item I can relate to is the appreciation of a disciplined life of prayer and fasting - fixed times to pray, certain times of the year to be observed as times of abstinence etc. In my Protestant days I was given no suggestions, no direction as to how I might go about living such a disciplined life. I was floundering, and feeling somewhat in despair, as I felt obligated to be discplined in my praying. I wanted to honour God with all my life and be totally committed to following Him in concrete ways, but I could never find the way to do so, or concoct a plan that would enable such a life. It was discouraging having not the means to make any progress - my religion was of no assistance other than urging one to that life then withholding the means - a wretched place to find oneself.

  By the mercy of God I was brought out into the place of freedom and light, I have found that for which I had long sought. I can say with the blind man healed by Jesus "I was blind, but now I see!". The notion of daily fixed time prayer is very ancient, and the Church was quick to realise the value of this regime as a means of sanctifying one's day and making a continual offering to God in the midst of life. The Jewish day was divided up into hours set aside for prayer, and so the Church had soon worked out an efficient system of dividing out the days so as to allow the faithful to maintain a life of prayer in an orderly and disciplined manner. It was perfected by the early monks in Syria and elsewhere - and it is possible that Mohammed gleaned from this source - and continued right down through the Christian era until the present day. It now suffers from modernistic influences who seek to destroy  the age-old rituals and practices of Catholicism, but a few monasteries and convents retain the full form of the "Divine Office" as it is called.

  Pious lay people have always participated in this work, the "opus dei", of prayer with and on behalf of the whole Church. Many Catholics today pray the Divine Office throughout the day and  thereby sanctify their time, and their souls on the path to Heaven. The fact that few do so in public is due in large part to a sense of fear in today's largely anti-christian culture. However, the sight of a Muslim praying ought to be conviction to the Christian that it ought to be he or she who is bowing and kneeling before God... I follow a schedule - albeit with some variation due to work or other unavoidable situations - as follows:

  5:15am - Prime

  6-8:00a, - Mattins

  9:00am - Terce

  12:00 - Sext

  3:00pm - None

  6:00pm - Evensong

  8:00pm - Compline

  Bed - Night Office.

  Rosary is also said at some point. Taken as a whole it adds up to around 2.5 to 3 hours of prayer, praise and worship.

  As a Protestant I did none of this, and my prayers consisted of a series of "gimme's" or "give'ems" punctuated by "dear Jesus's". The all-day-long discipline of reciting Scripture and the Psalms and praising God and bowing and genuflecting was not something I had ever been encouraged to do until I became a Catholic. The same goes for the discipline of fasting and abstinence, there are two days we must Fast - which means one very light meatless meal and two small snacks (no flesh or fowl) and only clear liquids no alcohol or tobacco - which are Good Friday and Ash Wednesday. Days of Abstinence - which means no flesh or fowl (hence the term "fish eaters") - are the forty days of Lent, and all Fridays of the year except those falling in an Octave. There are certain other days, but I will not mention them as they require lengthy clarification. At any rate, the notion that Christianity is a religion devoid of structure and discipline that encourages immodesty and promotes sloth and immorality is an erroneous bastard child of the Protestant Deformation - a scourge inflicted upon the Church by disobedient and ungodly persons who shall reap in their own souls the just recompence of their deeds in destroying the Faith.

  The courage of these young Muslim converts, mostly nice intelligent young ladies, is something I applaud. It is to the Church's shame and discredit that  we have sounded such a weak and uncertain signal to the world over the past 60 years. The Church has presented a watered down, a weakened, a tepid caricature of the Catholic Faith which appeals to almost no one sincerely seeking the Truth of God and the Way to Heaven. It is noteworthy that Our Lady came to Fatima... In recalling the Church to once more proclaim the Faith whole and undefiled, our Blessed Mother chose that place to make Her requests known.  The decadence amongst Catholics especially the young, and the ignorance they evince in their disregard of Tradition, is surely a great deterrent to seekers such as I listened to as they related their discovery of Islamic life. The fact they chose Islam despite the admitted extremist factions who make the news - those who use religion as cloak to justify violence and hatred - ought to encourage beleaguered and heart-broken Catholics who mourn the pedophile scandals that blacken the image of their Church. There is nothing lost that may be found, if sought.

  Shame on priests and bishops who preach and teach a distorted semi-Protestant and relativistic version of the Gospel. Shame on monks and nuns who present a warped and twisted image of consecrated life to the world. Shame on Protestants who follow a formless pseudo spirituality empty of content of dogma while claiming it is Christianity. It is the lukewarmness which Our Lord indicated made Him desire to vomit it and purge it away. Let us end the watering down, let us put a stop to the compromises with the world the flesh and the devil. Let us take up arms once more in the fight for holiness, and salvation, in reconciling and restoring all things in Christ, that the world may see a shining, pure, and triumphant Church reigning in peace and justice, righteousness and truth having kissed each other in glorious splendour. That all nations may come in humble submission - the True Pilgrimage - and bring their tribute to the feet of Christ the King and Mary the Queen. May the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts triumph and draw all men into their loving embrace.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H9qBOQqOuE&feature=related

  A Footnote: I have been doing a lot of thinking about Islam, and trying to judge it by what I see as the ideal, and not the stereotyped news image. Here is what I see in Islam that is good and what I see that falls short of being a religion to which I could subscribe:

  First the good. As a general system of governing life - both individually and collectively - Islam is superior to anarchic atheism in that it provides a fixed moral framework around which to build a life and a society. The teachings regarding modesty, humility, helping others, purity etc are acceptable, if somewhat poorly theologised or philosophised. The fact that it, like fundamental Protestantism and Judaism, is a "religion of the Book" and based on a written text subject to myriad shades of interpretation from quite liberal to ultra hardline, gives it the characteristic "cafeteria" patina which most large religions share. People may pick and choose the teachings they like and dislike and dissidents can play along whilst going through the motions; this is common to Catholicism also.

  Now the not so good. Kind of related to the above. The notion that "God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Text" is the classical response of those who prefer to keep a safe "healthy" distance between themselves and the deity they worship. The conversion stories all tended to emphasise the "directness" with which they could now worship this "One God" without the nuisance of having to deal with Jesus, Mary, Saints, Priests, etc etc. They, like any Protestant, can go "straight to God" unencumbered. Just "me'n my Bible" becomes "me'n my Qu'ran". The lone Protestant Striver becomes the lone Islamic Striver struggling to obey Allah's commands.

  The missing piece, at least it seems to be missing to me, is the means of grace. What I mean by that is that in Christianity, we believe that God desired to provide a way by which He could impart His very nature, His love, His spirit, His very Self, granted in only part-measure in this life, and it was this desire to reveal Himself to us and restore lost communion with His creation that He entered the world, taking Manhood into God and becoming flesh miraculously in the womb of Mary, a virgin. Perhaps it is this miracle Muslims choke on? "Perfect God, perfect Man, of reasoning soul and human flesh subsisting..." (see the Athanasian Creed). This desire to restore what was lost in the Fall demanded a reparation for sin, and only a perfect sacrifice would do. This sacrifice was a gift of God - He gave of Himself - and so satisfied His own justice and now shared in humanity with those He wished to redeem. That they might have a Saviour fully acquainted with their own sufferings to whom they could approach.

  The means of grace I refer to are the channels through which God pours out upon us His mercy, love, and unmerited favour. God has chosen - for whatever reason - to work through human agents and visible means in accomplishing His works on earth. What takes place elsewhere and in heaven we are not given to know in any detail. We further believe that in and of ourselves men and women are unable to obey the commandments, and honour God, and live good enough lives to merit salvation from Hell: we can't do it. It is only by God's grace being infused into us as we cooperate with Him that we can move forward and journey through life safely towards salvation and Heaven. It is through our active participation in the life of Jesus Christ - an unending life - that we can attain the beatific vision. It is through the sacraments that we receive this infused grace, and most notably in the Sacrament of the Altar: Holy Communion - in which we believe that Jesus is really and truly present and gives us Himself - veiled as it is (His full glory revealed would most likely kill us as we are still awaiting our own glorified bodies and retain the remnants of sinful lives at this point) - and we receive this in faith, until the day when faith is done away and we see Him face to face.

  God certainly can work invisibly apart from any human agency, and I'm sure He does, but the covenanted means of grace to which He has attached His guarantee and solemn promise are the Sacraments. If one presumes upon grace and rejects the sacraments it is like a small child running from his mother as she calls him to supper in the hopes a bag of candy will fall out of the sky into his hands...  It is this lack of a means of grace that stands out most sharply in Islam for me.

  Perhaps it is because I see religion not so much as laws to be obeyed, or teachings to be adhered to, but it is a way to enter into the very life of God and, as Jesus took upon Himself our humanity, we shall share in His glory - partly now and more fully later. What is Hell but the total absence of God? what is Heaven but the full and perfect Presence of God? Where He is is where we shall be, and the Way, or means, to this ultimate salvation is the Channel He has given us. In every sacrament we receive God's grace. It is God the Holy Spirit working invisibly through the visible signs and symbols of priesthood and sacrament who imparts to us this divine life of Jesus and ultimately it is this same Jesus who came and made the Way for us to return to the Father - through Him. It was He who bridged the gap between Heaven and Earth for us and this is the path we must follow. Any other path will leave us struggling on alone beating ourselves to death in law-keeping and grim-faced stoicism.

  The separation of one's idea of God from the idea of one's salvation and one's life now  and in eternity is a dicing and slicing that makes for intellectual chaos. The business of worshipping God properly is totally dependent on how we perceive God in relation to our own souls and the way we receive salvation. If we opt for a "Scoreboard" soteriology that has God chalking up all our good deeds and bad deeds in two columns and keeping a running tally to be used on Judgement Day, then we have nothing but to cringe in terror before God - at least if we acknowledge our own sinfulness. The sense of fellowship and oneness with God, feeling the strength of our connection with Him through the sacraments, and the consolation of our fellow believers and the Saints who are praying for us all here below, is like a strong shoulder to lean on when life seems dark and forbidding. It is this faith that makes sense of life and gives hope, prompts us to love beyond the natural level, and draws us further on and further in to the great mystery of God. It builds exponentially. As we live more deeply into our faith we are struck with the wisdom of God in His ways and in the designs He has laid out for the world and the worlds beyond our world. I like to compare it to a person entering a building and finding themselves in a small lobby, they pass through a door into a larger room, and walking to the other side they pass through a door into another room, and another and another, every room increasingly larger than the last, until the person finds theirself in the midst of an unlimited plain stretching to the horizon, this is what  it is like as we begin to know God and love Him and understand the Plan.  Worship in this case is a joy, and the sacrifices we are asked to make are far outweighed by the "weight of glory" which shall be revealed to us later. We are given a taste now, that is all.

  The obedience I give to the Church in praying the Divine Office and making the sacrifices they stipulate is done out of love for Jesus, not fear, nor guilt, nor any ulterior personal goal. My love is very imperfect, it often falls short of what I know it ought to be, but my faith rests not on my feelings on any given day, but on the fact of His love for me - as evidenced in the Incarnation. In this respect it really is Mary who serves as my Model in life - and whom I seek to conform myself to - as it was She who was obedient when it was certain that scandalous runours and misunderstanding would arise over her otherwise unexplainable pregnancy. It was She who remained humiliated and submissive to others as God's plan unfolded in her life. It was She who remained constant and devoted to Jesus all through her life and it was She who was finally received up into Heaven to be with Him - glorified and honoured as a gracious Queen and Mother ought to be. She is the archetype of the faithful - of the Church - and it is to Her I look as an unworthy sinner, asking for help in living as I must. Her title of "Mother of Mercy" Mater misericordiae is wonderful to have on one's lips and in one's heart. There is much I could say here, but this is just a sampling of what I see absent in Islam. It really hits me as a primitive and legalistic Code of moral and spiritual maxims, but not a full fledged system of theology or a religion that I could rely upon to not only get me to Heaven and save me from Hell, nor to satisfy my own intellectual, psychological, and spiritual aesthetic and philosophical sensibilities in the here and now.

   

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