Obama Nation

Tomorrow marks Barack Obama’s inauguration as U.S. President. No one can deny the historic nature of the event, and Obama’s undeniable personal charisma. Let’s face it, the man is Mad Men cool.

I’d enjoy hanging out with the guy – his two favorite sports are basketball and golf, same as mine. But it’s more than a tad ironic that he shoots lefty, because Obama fouls out when it comes to his views on morality.

No one has adressed the problem better than Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press, over at the Ignatius blog:

My Augustinian side is not so pronounced as to deny the possibility and indeed the reality of social progress. It is social progress that a nation such as ours, which once constitutionally allowed some people to buy and sell other people, no longer does.  It is progress that half the population, which could not vote a hundred years ago, possesses suffrage today. However, my progressivism is not so naïve as to pretend that the diabolical is not at work within history.  Two steps forward and one step back.  Or is it one step forward and two steps back?  In any event, we have gone from constitutional protection of people buying and selling people, and half the population being disenfranchised, to people legally killing their unborn babies in the name of freedom and equality of gender.  And on a day when a symbol of triumph over the evil of slavery and racism is celebrated with the anticipation of the first black American, on the following day, to take the highest elected office in the land, the American victory is tainted by the man’s commitment to upholding the legal right of mothers, in the name of freedom and equality, to destroy the next generation.  As a lover of my country, I cannot but rejoice and take pride in the fact that Barrack Obama represents the triumph of our nation and our political process over the grave evils of slavery and racism.  That is not to be gainsaid.  And as a lover of my country, I cannot at the same time but weep and hang my head in shame that more unborn children will die during a single year of Mr. Obama’s term in office, with his support and his invocation of the rhetoric of rights to sanction the evil, than deaths on both sides during the entire Civil War. Those who say there is no devil at work in history are only slightly less foolish than those who say there is no God.

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Tim Tebow, the Philippines, and the Catholic Church

Just a couple of nights ago, I returned home from teaching the Bible Study class at St Justin Martyr, and, exhausted, flopped down to watch the end of the national championship game for U.S. college football. The University of Florida Gators, led by quarterback Tim Tebow, last year’s Heisman winner, defeated the University of Oklahoma Sooners. 

Tebow, a devout Evangelical Christian, wore eyeblack with “John 3:16” written across it in white letters (see photo). From all accounts, Tebow is sincere in his beliefs. He was actually born in the Philippines, where his parents are missionaries. They run, among other things, an orphanage. Tim himself often travels there to help out and preach to the kids there about Jesus Christ.

The only problem is, he’s defeating his own purpose.

No doubt most of his “converts” are Catholics. The Philippines, as most are aware, is a heavily Catholic country. During my Evangelical years, my own pastor and his family would travel to the Philippines and conduct crusades. I still possess a coffee mug he brought home for me. It says, “Reaching and touching Filipinos for Christ”. My wife (whose parents were born in the Philippines) and I still laugh about that mug. But we could just as easily shed tears. That’s because, as sincere and as well-intentioned as my pastor – and Tebow – are, they are sincerely wrong.

Unaware that the Catholic Church was founded by Christ and is the true Church, they, in convincing Filipinos to leave it, are unwittingly drawing them further from the touch of Christ.

And sadly, because some Filipinos (like many Catholics everywhere) are not well grounded in the reasons for their faith, they’re easy pickins’ for these movements.

If only they and their would-be evangelizers would heed the words of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, writing in his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans (c. 107 AD), echoing the words of Jesus in John 6:

Take note of those who hold heterodox opinions on the grace of Jesus Christ which has come to us, and see how contrary their opinions are to the mind of God … They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, the very same flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes. 

It is by the Eucharist, safeguarded in the Catholic Church, that we are physically reached and touched by Christ himself.

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Saint Josemaria and the Infant Christ

During these final days of the Christmas season, and particularly today, when so many throughout the world are celebrating the Epiphany, I thought I’d share with you this video clip. It’s a window into the devotion of Saint Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, to the Infant Jesus. From the Opus Dei website, www.opusdei.ca: 

As a young priest, St. Josemaría was especially fond of a small statue of the Infant Jesus. He would hold the Child in his arms, sing and even dance with it. “I’m glad to see you as a small Child,” he would say, “because it makes me feel you need me.” 

Watch the clip: Saint Josemaria and the Infant Jesus

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Mary, Mother of God

Today is not only New Year’s Day, but also the feast of Mary, Mother of God. It’s one of only two Holy Days of Obligation for Canadian Catholics other than Sundays (the other being Christmas).

The dogma of Mary being the Theotokos, or God-bearer was formally defined by the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431. Ephesus, many believe, was the city in which Mary lived after Christ gave her into the care of the Apostle John at the foot of the cross (see John 19:25-27). The definition needed to be made because of the heresy of Nestorius, a renegade bishop who had been denying the unity of the two natures, divine and human, in the one divine Person of Christ. Under his view, Mary only gave birth to the human Jesus, not the divine Son of God.

But Mary did not birth a nature, but a person. When the bishops in Ephesus formally promulgated the truth that Mary is the Mother of God, the people were so exultant that they carried the bishops aloft on their shoulders in a jubilant torchlight procession through the town!

Despite all this, the doctrine often comes under heavy fire from non-Catholics who misunderstand it. Many believe that we Catholics worship Mary as some sort of a goddess. But the Mother of God is in no way God the Mother. Mary is a creature, like you and I, although she is far more exalted than any creature, even the angels. For, although the angels always behold the face opf God, Mary contained in her womb he whom the universe could not contain. God made his dwelling within her, and she was not consumed (this is why the burning bush of Exodus has been seen as an Old Testament type or prefigurement of Mary).

Common sense alone would dictate to any orthodox Christian that Mary is the Mother of God. After all, Jesus is God, and Mary is his mother. Put two and two together…

Scripture, as well, teaches this truth. Matthew 1:23 says, “The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” -which means, ‘God with us'” (NIV). The Virgin Mary’s son is none other than God the Son.

It may surprise people to know that the original Protestant, Martin Luther, and another key leader in the Protestant movement, John Calvin, also held firmly to this doctrine, although their spiritual progeny have largely abandoned it:

Luther: “She is rightly called not only the mother of the man, but also the Mother of God … It is certain that Mary is the Mother of the real and true God” (Martin Luther’s Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], volume 24, 107).

Calvin: “Elizabeth called Mary Mother of the Lord, because the unity of the person in the two natures of Christ was such that she could have said that the mortal man engendered in the womb of Mary was at the same time the eternal God” (John Calvin, Calvini Opera [Braunshweig-Berlin, 1863-1900], Volume 45, 35).

Luther actually supported in his writings every Marian dogma held by the Catholic Church – not only her Divine Maternity, but her Perpetual Virginity, Immaculate Conception and the Assumption (the latter two not even formally defined until after Luther’s death). Calvin was also a staunch believer in the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, reserving some of his most vitriolic comments for those foolish enough not to believe the doctrine.

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