We Want It All.

[The following apologia/meditation comes from our friend, Diane, and could have the title “Why I am not leaving the Catholic Church.” It echoes my mind precisely and I couldn't have put it better myself. Thanks, Diane.]

Jesus, I Want It All!

by Diane

Years and years ago, I worked at an ad agency in downtown Winston-Salem. Every Advent, one of my colleagues there used to don a sparkly red graphic sweatshirt with the message: “Santa, I want it all!”

I hereby claim a variation on this message to sum up my allegiance to Catholic Church: “Jesus, I want it all!”

I want the fullness. Both-and, not either-or. Both East and West. Icons and statues. Iconostases and stained-glass windows. The Eastern Fathers and the Western ones, too. All the saints – every single one. Seraphim of Sarov and Francis of Assisi. Pre-Schism. Post-Schism. The whole enchilada. Byzantine chant and Gregorian chant. Russian choral music and Renaissance polyphony. And, yes, even the operatic Masses of Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns. Not to mention the immortal Western religious art: the Annunciation frescoes of Fra Angelico, the bas reliefs of Andrea della Robbia, the Madonnas of Raphael. How impoverished life would be without them!

And there's the rub. That's why I could never, ever be Orthodox. Especially not Convertodox – a member of the vocal, polemical online convert community.

I cannot believe that Jesus was incarnate, crucified, and resurrected for a small part of the planet composed of Greece, Russia, and a few areas in the Middle East. I cannot believe that East Is Right and West Is Wrong. I cannot believe that the “phronema” is limited to one spirituality, one cultural expression or one theological perspective. Or even to just a few.

It has been said that the West can accommodate the East better than the East can accommodate the West. In my experience, this is abundantly true. Personally, I know no Catholic who doesn't love icons or who feels weirdly out of place during the sanctuary tour at the local Greek Festival. We are open to all that stuff, the icons and iconostases and Pantocrators, the Jesus Prayer, the mysticism. We love it all. We just don't happen to believe that it's all there is – or that everything else is wrong.

Moreover, we want the “everything else”. The rich diversity of Catholic spiritualities. The countless ways to pray, from Rosaries and Novenas to wordless contemplation to charismatic praise and worship. The endless variety of religious vocations – from the austere ascesis of the Carthusians to the baroque mysticism of the Carmelites to the charity-in-action of the Franciscans. Not to mention the varied charisms of the many Catholic women's groups, lay and religious.

Jesus, I want it all. I don't even want to exclude the best of Protestant culture and spirituality. I've lived here in the Bible Belt for 25 years, and I've come to appreciate the gifts our separated brethren possess, which we would do well to emulate: evangelical fervor, zeal for souls, ardent love of Jesus, intimate knowledge of Scripture, fearless willingness to preach Christ Crucified. I love much of Protestant hymnody, from the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal (still the gold standard in my opinion) to Southern Gospel (black and white) to the Sacred Harp “shape-note” tradition.

Moreover, as a Catholic, I am free to appreciate these authentically good elements of Protestantism. I don’t have to reject them all out of hand as hopelessly heterodox or as rife with “prelest”. As a Catholic, I believe that our separated brethren are incompletely—yet genuinely—joined with us Catholics, and that what is true and beautiful in their traditions is true and beautiful for us as well. This does not mean that I accept everything indiscriminately or that I blindly adhere to anything that contradicts Catholic Church Teaching. No way. But, as the Decree on Ecumenism states, many elements of Catholic grace and truth exist outside of the Catholic Church's visible bounds. I rejoice in this.

Jesus, I want it all. I reject what von Balthasar called the “anti mentality”: us against them; East versus West. The great sin of schism is the lack of fraternal charity, and the anti mentality epitomizes this. In my experience, the typical polemic employed by Online Convert Orthodox is indistinguishable from the old saw about olfactory fatigue. Thanks, but no thanks.

Jesus, I want it all. Sun-bleached Greek monasteries and French Gothic cathedrals. Ancient chants and baroque Masses and even shape-note fuguing hymns. I want everything that is true and good, everything that comes from You, in this whole big wide world (East and West) in which You were incarnate and for which You died.

Jesus, I want it all. I could never join a communion that would force me to reject my statues and Holy Cards and Rosaries and stained glass and Benediction hymns and Renaissance Madonnas. You would have to pry that Rosary out of my cold, dead hands. Or drag me away from that statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. In the immortal words of the old Gershwin song, “No, no, you can't take that away from me.”

Jesus, I want it all.

And that is why I am Catholic.

Real Thing vs Counterfeit

Father Longnecker spells it all out with regard to the real divide with clarity. Excerpt:

“You believe the old, old story of a loving God and a rebellious humanity. You think the church’s main goal is to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, to heal the broken hearted and set the prisoners of sin free. You believe in the saving, precious blood of Jesus and the threat of hell and the hope of heaven. Right?”

“Of course” he grinned.

“Well, those other people don’t believe in all that. They think the Christian faith is simply about making the world a better place. They believe no one will go to hell because God is completely merciful. They therefore do not think it is necessary to preach about repentance of sin and salvation of souls. Consequently, their religion is one of social work and political activism. They are passionate about inequality and see people as victims rather than as guilty souls.”

“So the argument is theological?”

“Every argument is theological.”

“We’re really believe two different forms of Christianity.”

“It is more true to say that you believe in Christianity. They believe in something else which they have mistaken for Christianity.”

The facade goes so deep in the world that the counterfeits appear to be actually more real than the real thing at times.

What a lot of people don't realize is that when bishops like Cardinal Burke try to keep Catholics like Nancy Pelosi from receiving communion, what they are attempting would primarily redound to these Catholics' own good. There might be secondary effects which would be prevented, like the scandal caused by a pro-abortion politician acting like it's no biggie what they support. But scandals aren't eternal — hell is. I'm not the first or greatest person to suggest this.

If traditional bishops and priest keep their intentions pure, they can truly state that they are "loving their enemies", even if they are portrayed in the media as grouchy old men with a penchant for fancy clothes. Whereas these others who do not truly believe are using the Catholic religion in a most disingenuous way, and are almost always idealized as the best representatives of their "faith traditions". They are the nice Catholics. Volumes have been written about this phenomenon, and there are many times a place for prudence and suavity in the proclamation of the truth. But my main point is that some grouchy old dude might be the guy that saves your life—or your soul—and that smiling, attractive person might alleviate your conscience but take your soul straight down.

Former Conservative? Not so much.

The subject of this article, Bart Campolo and his Church of Christ Without Christ, is cause for pity as well as ridicule, but this first paragraph is sort of pitiable as well:

My new colleague and friend, Bart Campolo, is the principal investigator. Bart is the new Humanist Chaplain at the University of Southern California. A former evangelical Christian leader with a national profile in his own right, he is the son of Tony Campolo, the famous evangelical preacher best known as the personal spiritual mentor to President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky affair. Steadily, over a period of decades, Bart’s credulity in evangelical doctrine eroded away until his wife convinced him that he was theologically past the point of no return. He burst his way out of the conservative Christian bubble, leading to hand-wringing on the pages of Christianity Today, a major evangelical periodical.

OK, insofar as there is a "conservative Christian bubble", Bart Campolo was never part of it and didn't need to "burst his way out". His father is part of the Sojo Christian Left Mafia and that has been known for years. This is sloppy writing on Jim Burklo's part, who is a liberal Christian author, and the only excuse might be that he was thinking of Frankie Schaeffer whom he'd mentioned early. Otherwise I think he just wants to blame those awful, hypocritical conservative Christians for someone losing their faith altogether. As he states later:

Early in his tenure here at USC, I gave Bart a copy of my first book, OPEN CHRISTIANITY, and he read it. “If I had read this a few years ago, I might have become a progressive Christian instead of an atheist,” he told me. But neither he nor I regret it. The whole point of theologically progressive Christianity is that Christianity is not about turning people into Christians, or even making sure that they stay Christian. It’s about the same thing that Bart is about. It’s about love, and creating communities of love. If Bart can spread this love without Christian or any other religious content, I will holler a hearty hallelujia [sic]! His way is a good way, just as my way is a good way.

If Bart Campolo actually stated this verbatim, the obfuscating on his part here would astounding. "I might have become a progressive Christian," he allegedly stated. Campolo has always been on the Christian left! Burklo is illustrating the myth-making propensity of the left once again.

I don't know the man's heart, but I would suggest a more likely story would be that there was no foundation underneath the faith of his father beyond a sort of personality cult. His father is sort of a pope of his own church and his concerns are mostly political rather than theological. Even his Wiki page lists him as a sociologist first, then a pastor. I don't think Bart Campolo "burst out" of anything so much as "dropped down" into his own philosophical comfort zone the way a man sits down in his favorite recliner.

By the way, personality cult pretty much describes the situation with the Schaeffers as well. Francis Schaeffer more or less started his own church community becoming a de facto pope in the process. This is most often not a good environment for a child to forming his faith in, seeing your dad act like a bear at home and some kind of angel out in public. Both these cases are good arguments for the celibacy of the clergy.

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