De Regno Christi

http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2010/bbirzer_newrepublic_feb2010.asp

I should’ve included two other excellent Catholic scholars from Hillsdale–Stephen Smith and Nathan Schlueter.

Ralph McInerny died this past weekend.

Death is, of course, as much a part of life as living is.  No one escapes it.  And, yet, we never get entirely used to or comfortable with it.  At least, I don’t.  Memories of the loss of a daughter and grandfather still haunt me.  And, yet, I love to walk through the cemetery across the road from my house—a stunning 19^th century cemetery full of mystery and hope and beauty.  Live lived fully, lives barely lived, complex stories each.

When I saw this past Saturday on Carl Olson’s Ignatius Insight Scoop blog that Ralph McInerny had passed away, I smiled.  I ran to the top of the stairs, yelled down to my wife that he had died, and then I smiled again.

I will fully admit, this is not my usual first reaction to hearing about a death.  But, McInerny seems a special case.  After reading Carl’s posting, my first image—even before hollering down to my wife–was that of McInerny meeting his own wife, Jacques Maritain, Aquinas, and Dante beyond the Gates.  I have a feeling the several of them have a lot of catching up to do; and I’m equally sure that the conversation will continue. . . eternally.

Though I consider one of McInerny’s sons, Dan, a good friend, I only had the privilege of meeting the father once.  Sponsored by our college Catholic Society, Ralph McInerney came to Hillsdale shortly after I arrived here (1999) and gave an excellent talk to a group of Catholic faculty.  I found him piercingly intelligent and equally kind.  His visit has stayed with me through the past decade.

Just writing this quasi-obituary, the smile returns.  What more could a Christian give to the world than what McInerny gave, short of martyrdom?

Surely, if there is justice, history will remember McInerny as one of the wittiest Christian thinkers and apologists of his age.  A pillar of all that is good at the University of Notre Dame—indeed, perhaps one of the three men (along with Fathers Bill Miscamble and Marvin O’Connell) who has served as Notre Dame’s conscience for years—a proper critic of the excesses of the culture surrounding Vatican II, a “Peeping Thomas” as he called himself, and a prose writer of considerable grace and imagination, McInerny offered himself as a citizen of the City of God to this City of Man during the entirety of his lifetime.

Now residing in Michigan, my wife (a Texan) and I (a Kansan) frequently and insanely pack five children into our Honda Odyssey (named “Aeneas” just to spite the Greeks) and venture to the middle and southern parts of the country to visit our respective extended families.  While the kids spill stuff (which will remain for this quasi-obituary undefined) on the seats and the floor of the van, push one another, and watch the landscape fly by, my wife reads McInerny novels to me.  Being more than a bit of an obsessive-compulsive, Germanic control-type of person, I drive.  I also listen.  McInerny’s works have been a central part of our family travels since our marriage.  I know his protagonists well—Roger Knight, Father Dowling, and Vincent Traeger.  They almost seem like family.

But, it’s not just McInerney’s mysteries.  I will never forget one drive when Dedra (my wife) read a particular passage from his 1991 novel, The Search Committee.  The passage involved a committee discussion about which minority/”outgroup” person would be most qualified to serve as a university chancellor.   The answer, stated with complete irreverence, was so funny, that at least ten mile markers flew by before we could stop laughing.  I’ll leave the answer for your own reading pleasure.

And, I’ll never forget the sobering and emotional (to the point of being gut wrenching) moments in Professor McInerny’s Connelly: A Life, the story of a “Spirit of Vatican II” priest re-evaluating his life and its meaning.

For years, McInerny served as the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at Notre Dame.  A proper and just title, indeed.  A professor, a writer, a wit, a father, a husband, a publisher, an editor. . . .

So, Professor McInerny, I continue to smile.  You give me great hope in the power of a Christian, a professor, a thinker, and an author to temper, to poke fun of, and even—through the gratuitous gifts of grace—to leaven this City of Man.

Ralph (if I may), enjoy the reunions and the conversations far beyond this world.  I hope to join you some day.

Have you seen this bru-ha-haa?  Here

Why is Palin consistently so quick  endorse and enforce the pseudo-morality of political correctness?

It scares me that Evangelicals are as likely to use the tools of political correctness as liberals.  I think it betrays common presuppositions based on a common cultural heritage.  Save us from the righteousness of the politically correct.

Some DRC readers may have noticed my other blog, The Upstate Conservative.  The Upstate Conservative was an irregular blog focused on New York politics.  I have enjoyed working on the Upstate Conservative but a blogger cannot serve two masters.

For months I have gone back and forth using what precious little time I can devote to blogging by paying too little attention to one blog or the other.  Therefore, I am going to reintegrate the sacred and the secular.  The DRC has always focused on the role of Christ’s Kingship over the both the church and the culture.  If I am an Upstate New York conservative, by conservatism is a defense of the Christian humanist tradition.  My musings belong here.

The DRC lives.  Long live the DRC.

Some excellent recent blogs/posts very much worth reading:

Phil Nielsen’s article, “Depicting the Whole Christ: Hans Urs von Balthasar and Sacred Architecture”

Winston Elliott’s blog, “The Christocentric Life”

Michael O’Brien’s “Twilight of the West”

Carl Olson’s “On the Feast of Epiphany”

And, on a more secular note, Jim Otteson’s most recent post at Forbes.com, “Get Rid of Government Experts”

Bill, thanks for the note on Mary.  I must admit, I’ve always been somewhere in the middle on this issue.  While I think many Catholics take their reverence of Mary too far, I’ve never understood the (general) Protestant reluctance to call Mary “The Mother of God.”  This, of course, is what Elizabeth says to her (“Who am I, that the mother of my Lord should visit me?”).  And, it seems to me very, very difficult to understand the Incarnation or the belief that Jesus was fully man and fully God without understanding the critical role Mary played in bearing him for nine months, nursing him, teaching him, raising him, and standing at the cross with him.  She practically forced the first miracle, performed at Cana, and Jesus’s words from the cross, in part, dealt with her (as St. John recorded it).  From the beginning to the end, His mother stood with him.

Anyway, Bill—just a long way of writing “thanks.”

My review of McCormick’s brilliant and beautiful new cd is here.  A blessed Epiphany to all De Regno Christi readers and especially to the fearless leader, Bill.

I have been thinking about Mary lately.  Quite a bit, actually.  In December I preached a sermon about Mary and a sermon about Joseph.  No longer preaching weekly, I also had the opportunity to listen to a sermon at our local CRC congregation about Mary.  Mary has got me thinking… and there is definitely something about Mary.

Among the things I have been thinking about Mary is how many inadequate sermons I have heard about her.  It seems that it is almost a Protestant Christmas tradition to either preach or hear (depending on ones station) a sermon filled with faint praise for the Mother of God.

You have heard the sermon I am talking about?  Maybe you have preached it? Maybe I have?  The sum is something like this..  ”well, Mary was a fine young girl, and God blessed her, BUT… blah, blah, blah, humbug” sermon.  Or the, Mary was a nice girl but…. fill in a long list of anti-Marian mutterings followed by a handful of egalitarian platitudes all justified as a warning for folks without the faintest notion of engaging in any form of Marian devotion from committing idolatry. Why?  The Bible says that all generations will call her blessed.  Why not embrace the biblical duty?

I am not saying Protestants should go out and buy rosary beads and start praying to Mary.  But, even if Roman zeal for Marian devotion does justify some Protestant response, what Protestants have to say about Mary must be more than a negative reaction to Rome.  Our relationship to Mary must not be defined by our controversies but by our understanding of the Scripture and by our unity with Christ.  What happens when we apply our biblical theology to the place of Mary in Scripture?

Can we really deny a biblical theological connection between Eve and Mary?  Why should Protestants deny that Mary is the second Eve?  Is Mary not THE woman whose seed crushed the head of the serpent?  Was she not the mother of Christ?  As we are Christ’s brothers and sisters, must she not be, in some way, our mother as well?  The New Creation, of which we are a part, burst forth into this age through her blessed womb.  In that sense, we are all her children.

As I consider this humble Hebrew girl, and consider that God chose her to be the Mother of Jesus Christ, I am awed.  This woman bore the Creator of the universe in her womb.  He clutched to her breasts as a babe.  She soothed his infant fears giving him the joy and comfort that a mother provides to her children.  The Second Person of the GodHead, the Eternal Son of God, owed (owes) to her all of the duties of the 5th Commandment, the Creator bound to honor His creature.  Mind-blowing.  And Blessed indeed.

Well lets not over-realize the eschaton.  Nonetheless, I thought this excellent comment from reader Matt should be highlighted as its own post.

Matt writes:

“This is a great conversation. I have always hoped to be able to have a conversation about justification with interlocutors who were aware of the diversity of views within Catholicism on soteriological matters. At any rate, I would suggest that, depending on what we mean exactly by justification, some Thomists (of the even more radically Augustinian variety like Banez and Zumel) said that justification was the root of our righteousness (even if they didn’t use that terminology). In Banez’s writings, “the justified” is one of his basic categories for different “states” of human beings. We have fallen man, the blessed, man in pure nature, man with original justice, etc., and man as justified. After the Fall, it is only someone in this state who can do anything righteous. Without being justified, one is incapable of doing anything even remotely pleasing to God.

When it comes to imputation v. infusion, he also has a very interesting perspective. He is concerned–as, if I may offer an interpretation of Banez here, many Reformed theologians are–that the infusion of grace is letting semi-Pelagianism in through the back door. We have received this grace in the past which now allows us to earn our salvation. He will not accept this view and disputes with some Thomists who may have. His argument is that the redeemed human being still depends at every moment upon the grace of God and the activity of the Holy Spirit in the soul. If this were not true, he says, why would the redeemed have to pray, “Lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil?”

Furthermore, he is much more concerned about the Protestant view (as he interpreted it, probably badly given, well, a whole set of reasons!) of the non-imputation of sins than the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. He thinks the former takes away from the proclamation of John the Baptist that Jesus “takes away the sins of the world,” the words of the Psalmist that God has removed our transgressions as far as the east is from the west, etc. I’ve rarely seen this distinction between non-imputation and imputation discussed between Protestants and Catholics, though I certainly may have missed it.

Thomas Aquinas and all of his followers say that justification happens instantaneously, which at least complicates the standard view that Protestants see justification as an event and Catholics see it as a process.

Finally (just so this doesn’t become *too* unwieldy), Cajetan interprets James 2 in a very interesting fashion (after giving a very straightforward interpretations of Romans 3). James says that, as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead. This has often been interpreted by Catholics in such a way that the works are like the spirit which makes the body alive. Cajetan rejects this view. He argues that the spirit must be like breath, which isn’t (he argues) the source of life but simply the sign or evidence that the body is alive. This was said long after his encounter with Luther, so he is well aware of the implications.

At any rate, I’m sorry if all of this has been covered in the previous threads. But I’m very happy to see what’s going on here. I hope at least some of these thoughts are remotely helpful!

Pax.”

Good news- real Christmas Trees are greener than those ugly, pre-lit, recycled coke bottle contraptions that they try to convince us are  Christmas Trees.

Turns out that the Chellis family has gone green… well bluish green… with a stately blue spruce in our living room and a little Charley Brown blue spruce on the third floor.  I tell those needles are sharp but well worth the pain.  It is tough being green but one has to sacrifice for the greater good.

Now I know that good Presbyterians do not have Christmas Trees at all, but again… some sacrifice is necessary for the greater good, right?