Matching Tracksuits

fun in fours

christianity

Clerical Error

Friday 11 February 2022

A curious story appeared in Newsweek the other day that highlights some of the quirks of Catholicism. Apparently, a priest there has been saying the wrong words during baptisms, which makes the baptisms invalid:

A priest with over two decades' worth of service to multiple congregations has resigned "with a heavy heart" in the wake of revelations that he incorrectly performed baptisms.

Father Andres Arango, who most recently served in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix, Arizona, was found to have used the wrong phrasing.

When performing the sacrament, Arango would say, "We baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

However, as the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made the diocese aware, the use of the word "we" made the baptisms "invalid." Instead, Arango was supposed to use the phrase "I baptize" rather than "we baptize." (Source)

So all these families have been taking their children to the priest to say the right words in order to remove the effects of the apple curse and safeguard their children from the horrors of hell, and this guy has been saying the wrong words! According to Catholic teaching, if they're not validly baptized, they're not saved. If they died still a child, then they go to limbo heaven -- I forgot, the Catholic church changed that teaching when enough people protested that the idea of infants going to limbo for eternity was unconscionable. (Does this mean that all the infants in limbo never were in limbo, or did they get a "Get out of limbo free" card?)

For the poor schmucks who made it to adulthood and thought they were freed of the effects of the talking-snake-induced apple curse, it's another story. These folks died in the assurance of heaven only to awaken in the next life to the surprise of, well, not just their lives but of eternity.

"Um, excuse me, I think there's been some kind of mistake," they shriek, doing their best to maintain some kind of professional decorum.

"No, no mistake," the demon idly pulling their intestines out and wrapping them around its forefinger says, almost sounding bored.

"Yes, I think there was. You see, I was baptized."

The succubus pauses for a moment, tightens the ringlets of intestine just a bit, yawns and says, "No, I'm afraid you weren't. You see, Father Arango said 'we baptize you' when all decent priests know the correct words are 'I baptize you.' A simple clerical error, to be sure, but nonetheless, an error."

"But, but!"

The demon becomes irate: "Now look here -- we don't make the rules about these or those magic words. We're just as bound to the formalities as you are." He gives a good tug, dislodging the large intestines. "You'd have to take that up with God."

"Where is he?"

"Not here," giggles the tormentor...

All joking aside, there are lot of people now unnecessarily mentally tortured with the thought that their loved one is in fact in hell because of a priest's mistake. Just how many people might be going through this?

Katie Burke, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Phoenix, told Newsweek that while the diocese has no exact number of invalid baptisms Arango performed, the number is "in the thousands."

Thomas Olmsted, bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix, wrote a January 14 letter to his congregation informing them of the invalid baptisms. He said it is his responsibility to be "vigilant over the celebration of the sacraments," adding that it is "my duty to ensure that the sacraments are conferred in a manner" consistent with the Gospel and the tradition's requirements.

I guess Father Arango should have realized the importance of using the proper words...

Fundamentalism and Democracy

Monday 07 February 2022

This is from about a year ago, but it is very much worth the time it takes to watch it. And anyone who watches this and is not terrified on some level…

At the heart of this, Jeremiah Jennings (who goes by the name Prophet of Zod on social media) points out that functioning society involves discussing disagreements with people while holding a few assumptions in mind:

He then goes on to point out, very convincingly, how fundamentalist Christianity doubts or even outright disputes each of these claims. The implications this civic breakdown has for democracy are frightening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lqaqp5TwnU

Barron’s Response

Monday 31 January 2022

On Bishop Robert Barron's minstry's YouTube channel -- Word on Fire -- he had a conversation with staff member Brandon Vogt after Barron's interview with Alex O'Connor in which they promised to go a little deeper in the responses.

Vogt points out that Barron and O'Connor went back and forth for a long time on faith, and invited Barron to elucidate a little. Instead, he just gave the same analogy, changing it from getting to know his interlocutors to getting to one one's spouse:

The analogy which I think is very illuminating there I often use is come to know a person. So you're coming to know another human being. Of course, reason is involved all the time. I mean, reason understands all sorts of things, but there is a moment when that person, if you're coming to real intimacy with that person, reveals something about herself that you could not in principle know no matter how many google searches and how much analysis and how much how clever you. There's no way you'd get what's in that person's heart unless she chooses to reveal it, at which point you have to make a decision: do I believe it or not. Now is it credible what she's saying, and you might say, "Yeah it is because it's congruent with everything else I know about her." At the same time, is it reducible to what I know about her? No, otherwise it wouldn't be a revelation. So that's why it's a false dichotomy to say reason or faith. No, it's reason that has reached a kind of limit, but reason has opened a door. Reason has poised you for the self-manifestation of another.

Well, that's not just with God; that happens all the time. When two people are married and deeply in love, I'm sure you could point to those moments when [your wife] revealed something to you that you would never ever have known otherwise. You revealed something about yourself to her and then the two of you, because you're in love with each other, I imagine said, "Yeah, I believe that."

Now, can I reduce that to an argument? No, you never can. In a way it remains always mysterious to you yet your will, in that case, has commanded your intellect. That's exactly what Thomas Aquinas says about faith. It's a rare instance when the will commands the intellect. Normally, it moves the other way right? The intellect kind of leads the will. The intellect understands the good and then it leads the will, but in the case of faith, the will leads the intellect. It says, "No this is worthy of belief. This person who's speaking to me is worthy of belief, and what the person is telling me is congruent with reason yet beyond it, and so I choose to believe." That's the relationship between faith and reason it seems to me so.

In the debate with O'Connor, Barron defined faith as "the response to a revealing God." That makes very little sense in terms of how most people use faith. "You just have to have faith that God's plan, which involves this horrendous suffering, will result in good," someone might say. Let's switch those out: "You just have to have [the response to a revealing God] that God's plan, which involves this horrendous suffering, will result in good." Clearly, this definition of "faith" is not the same as the original sentence's sense of "faith." This might work for "the Christian faith" -- "the Christian response to a revealing God." That works. That's fine. You'd also have "the Muslim response to a revealing God," and so on -- but this "faith" just means "belief system" or even "religion."

Furthermore, the faith that Barron gives in this example is not faith -- it's trust. It's a trust that is based on experiential evidence. I believe my wife because she's shown herself to be trustworthy. I wouldn't make this same move (to use a favorite Barron term) with a stranger. The only time such a move (there it is again) is conceivable is if the revelation the stranger gives you is utterly trivial: "I have a dog."

This faith/trust often moves into faith/trust in Jesus, that we're to get to know Jesus and then we'll have faith in him. Or trust in him. But that is utterly different from the situation with my wife. My wife is physically present with me. She's not some hypothetical spiritual being out there but a real person that I can observe and talk to.

"You can get to know Jesus," comes the rejoinder. But how? Directly? No.

I can get to know him through the Bible, but that's problematic for obvious reasons that I've discussed numerous times here. It's filled with contradictions. The image of God presented in the Old Testament is positively barbaric. It's packed with immorality commanded from God -- it's just not a good example of a good supposedly written by an omnipotent being.

I can get to know him through what the church teaches about him, and here the Catholic church has a leg up on Protestants because they don't restrain themselves to the Bible. The magisterium has equal footing -- or nearly-equal footing. So if the Pope says it ex-cathedra, it's an article of faith. Still, that's just the same as relying on the Bible -- it's a product of humans.

Finally, I can get to know him in that way that Evangelicals and Mormons are especially fond of: that sense we have in our heart (it's telling that religions insist on using that metaphor when we've known for ages that the seat of our intellect is not our hearts but our brains -- it's an attempt, I suspect, to move the whole experience away from the intellect) that God is involved in our lives. That warm feeling in their hearts that Christians attribute to the Holy Spirit. I don't doubt the experience of that warm feeling, but to attribute it to anything outside one's own mind is itself an act of faith, an act not based on evidence. "It's the Holy Spirit!" the Bible proclaims and our pastors echo, and so Christians accept that explanation. Muslims have the same experiences but attribute that not to the Holy Spirit (that would be blaspheme, for God is one!) but to Allah. Hindus would make the same move. (It's rubbing off on me.)

So all three ways we get to know God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit are questionable: they're all open to interpretation; none are firmly grounded on rational reasoning based on evidence. That is what we skeptics mean when we say that faith is not reason, that it does not work in a similar way, and that it is separate from (sometimes anathema to) evidence.

Bishop Barron on Faith

Sunday 30 January 2022

I was listening to a debate between Alex O'Connor and Bishop Robert Barron on YouTube during my run this evening, and they got to talking about the nature of faith. I wanted to respond to it, but I didn't want to take the time to transcribe large portions of the video, so I tried my first-ever response video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmkvZTjsnGU

The original debate is here:

Snow Days 2022 — Day 4: Instructions about the Rapture

Wednesday 19 January 2022

An acquaintance posted a video on social media about the rapture -- one of the most bizarre ideas in all of Evangalicism.

He begins thusly:

The rapture of the church is when Jesus comes for his church the second coming is when Jesus comes with his church. The rapture of the church happens when he appears in the clouds of heaven he does not come to earth we go up to meet him. The dead in Christ rise first we which are alive and reign shall be instantly caught up to be with the lord in the air and we go to heaven.

The first thing that happens is the judgment seat of Christ. Paul said we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account of the deeds that have been done in our body whether they are good or whether they are bad. Our works are going to be tried by fire so that our lives in its essence will be given purity as we enter our eternal life. Every person is going to stand here people say well uh you're already in heaven it's not a matter of if you're going to be in heaven and on it's a matter that you are going to give an account to God for what you have done and what you fail to do. The gap that exists between what you could have been and not were not because you did not use the opportunities god blessed you. You are still going to be in heaven but you are going to receive a reward in heaven based on what you did on this earth where there are going to be five different crowns that you can receive. You'll receive a white robe and we are going to receive the mansions. We are going to be there for a period of seven years and there will be the marriage supper of the lamb.

While we're in heaven seven years there will appear on this earth the antichrist and he's going to set up a government of ten -- ten men who will lead groups of nations -- that will be complete dictators on the face of the earth. Every commercial exchange shall be recorded. You cannot do anything without his permission. He will start out making a treaty with the state of Israel that's for seven years. He will break that treaty in three and a half years.

In this seven-year period there will be six seals, seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven vials: 21 supernatural acts of judgment that are coming on this earth. Just one of those acts will be whenever angels are released to destroy a third of the earth's population in a day what's going to happen on this earth will be hell on earth and we the bride of Christ are going to be in heaven.

People teaching that we are going to go through that just simply biblically misinformed.

This claim that dissenters of this view are "simply biblically misinformed" would carry a lot more weight if there was anything in the Bible that actually explained things like he does in the video. If we could turn to Hypothetical Book of the Bible chapter x beginning in verse y and find what is quoted above, perhaps in more flowery language, perhaps a little more poetic, I might think the guy has a point here. However, the Bible says nothing about this. Instead, we find passages describing hallucinations of multi-headed beasts rising from the sea and then these people interpret it to mean this silliness. They explain it as if they are simply describing something they see in front of them or the process by which uranium-238 gets processed into uranium-235 (i.e., observable, confirmable, testable facts in our reality), but in fact, it's just wild conjecture.

And then there are all the competing interpretations. The Catholics, for example, have their own interpretation, strangely (for such a superstitious belief system) less based in wild conjecture:

The aim of the Apocalypse, the most difficult book of the Bible to interpret, is eminently practical. It contains a series of warnings addressed to people of all epochs, for it views from an eternal perspective the dangers, internal and external, which affect the Church in all epochs.

It's sort of a handbook for spiritual growth, I guess. It's not for the future, in other words; it's for all time. That's less crazy than suggesting that beasts coming out of the sea somehow represent contemporary events.

And there's a meme that perfectly illustrates a central problem with this interpretation:

Speaking in Tongues, Slain in the Spirit

Monday 10 January 2022

“Language-like activity in the absence of meaning” — a good definition of glossolalia, the act of speaking in tongues. The Bible promotes it, and I’d always understood it to be the miraculous act of speaking a language one doesn’t have any foreknowledge of. For example, breaking into Farsi having never studied it.

“Surely,” I thought, “No one really believes that happens?! It’s so easy to debunk: record it and have a computer try to recognize and translate the language.” But it turns out, real speaking in tongues is not the miraculous speaking of an otherwise-unknown language: it’s speaking in the language of angels. It is, in simple terms, gibberish.

If you listen to these segments of people speaking in tongues, you’ll notice a few things:

  • A lot of them repeat the same vowel sound over and over.
  • They like to trill their r’s.
  • At times it seems as if they’re mimicking — consciously or otherwise — actual languages.
  • Some consonant sounds seem more common than others: b, k, r, and s seem very popular.
  • They seem to be so clearly putting on a show that it’s almost hard to watch.

I’m on the fence about the video, though, because they’re clearly mocking these people, and while it does seem silly, I find myself thinking that they must get something out of it. It likely gives a natural high of endorphins.

I once attended a church where there was a lot of calling down of the Holy Spirit, a lot of prayers for God to send the Holy Spirit to enter the building and enter them, with repetitive music playing, the congregants with their hands raised and their eyes closed, swaying to the music. It struck me how similar they appeared to people I’d see just a week or so earlier at a party who’d passed around a gigantic bong and gotten stoned out of their gourd. They all had the lost-in-the-moment look about them, and even in some churches that speak in tongues, one way they see the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is through uncontrolled laugher, the tell-tale sign that someone has smoked marijuana.

There’s also the element of crowd pressure — some of those people are clearly forcing their laughter. And perhaps some of them are closeted non-believers and they’re finally able to let out the laughter that they keep pent up every Sunday.

The king of all this nonsense is huckster Benny Hinn.

I just can’t understand how people can fall for this stuff. I’d love to get up on stage with someone like this and let him wave his arms at me, fling his coat at me, and just stand there looking at him. Wonder what would happen — I’d likely be hustled off the stage in a hurry…

Hearing God’s Voice

Monday 03 January 2022

In a post on social media in the group I’ve been following — people who have been participating in the “Bible in a Year” podcast, though I haven’t listened to any of it in weeks — someone posted the following:

I wish I am like Elijah who can hear God’s words.

This seems like a reasonable request. After all, if the Christian god is to be seen as a father, as he’s portrayed in the Bible, one would expect clear interactions with him. As a father myself, I try not to rely on the practice of maintaining physical distance from my children, being essentially invisible and leaving little evidence of my actual existence, while hoping we develop a good relationship through generic letters not necessarily written to them personally but to children in general. I find it’s much better to communicate to them directly, in their physical presence. This person clearly wishes her god engaged in parenting practices more like my own preferred methods and less like, well, most gods tend to prefer.

But it raises lots of questions if this god is going to maintain physical distance yet communicate audibly with his believers. I queried this believer about these concerns:

Even if it were an audible voice, how would we know it’s the voice of God and not something else, say schizophrenia? I think we pretty much discount people who say they hear God talking to them. How would we know the difference?

Her response was simple: she maintained that “somehow I think you’d know.” I naturally couldn’t let that stand: “How exactly? Especially if it were audible only to you.” She replied with the worst possible example I could imagine:

You just know! Unexplainable, but I will try. 🙂

When God spoke to Abraham. Only Abraham could hear him. Yet Abraham knew it was God.
The voices of schizophrenia is evil. Insane. The voice of God is good. Sane. The outcome of the two are complete opposites. (“How would we know the difference?—>)The results.

God does not boom to us vocally from the heavens today, like we surmise Him doing back in the Bible days. Its within. *God The Holy Spirit*, whether its for God, Jesus, Mary, Joseph, a Saint, or an Angel. We instinctively know which one it is. A miracle. A mystery that can not be explained. Then faith and trust follows, because its all you have left to explain the unexplainable.

There are few stories in the Bible that I find more disturbing than the story of Abraham and Issac. I couldn’t let it stand without comment:

The voice of God told Abraham to kill his son. That sounds pretty insane. If you heard what you thought was the voice of God, would you be willing to do the same? I know I wouldn’t.

The response:

God speaks in different ways…sometimes audibly..sometimes through others…sometimes in a way only your soul recognises.
So beautiful.

It’s like being in love. You just know.

“It’s like being in love.” Yes, I guess sometimes you just know — but most of the time I’ve “known,” I was wrong. I was right only once.

[G] I always know.. it comes in threes…usually through the media or through a priest during a homily.

What method did this person use to determine this? How do we know whether or not to count some event as part of those “threes”?

[G] You know. A voice you’ve never heard before, yet is some how the most familiar voice ever. The sound of pure, unconditional love. A peace and calmness, total serenity comes over you. 99% of the time God leads in ways other than a voice, and it can be difficult to decipher His will as He will not impose upon our freedom of will. However, if God wants to say something to you, there is no question, He will make Himself be known.

If you’re looking for a god, that’s exactly what you’ll find.

I don’t know why I do this…

Epiphany 2022

Sunday 02 January 2022

Today's reading in Mass had to do with the coming of the wise men -- the magi:

When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage.” (Matthew 2.1, 2)

It doesn't take much to see that they are using the star rising -- which is a clear reference to astrology -- and by this, learn of Jesus's birth. Astrology is condemned in the Old Testament: "Do not practice divination or seek omens" (Leviticus 19.26) makes this clear, as does "Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them. I am the LORD your God" (Leviticus 19.31) and "There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer" (Deuteronomy 18.10). But here it seems to be fine. In fact, God is using astrology to guide the wise men to the infant Jesus.

Bishop Robert Barron spoke of this in his homily today. The magi are astronomers, he suggests, and because of their "scientific investigation[, they] are now journeying to find this newborn king of the Jews." Only in one's wildest fantasies could one call these three astronomers. They were clearly astrologers. Astronomers do not see stars as being guiding forces in any way; that's exactly what astrologers do.

The priest in Mass today brought up science as well, though in a different way. He talked about how atheists deny God's existence by saying there's no scientific proof for him. "But science changes all the time!" the priest protested, adding with a pause, "Just ask the CDC." Laugher in the congregation prompted him to admit, "I thought you'd like that one." It was an underhanded way of belittling science's advances: "It really doesn't say anything completely trustworthy because it's always changing. It's useful, but not for grounding ultimate concerns," was the insinuation. It's a way of having the benefits of the scientific advances of the last 200 years ("We're not Luddites, after all!") without having to deal with the direct challenges science makes to religion.

On the non-religious side of things, my new bike arrived today:

A new mountain bike for me actually means a very happy Boy. "Think of all the places we can ride now!"

Immaculate Confusion

Wednesday 08 December 2021

Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, a feast day that always puzzled me even when I was actively trying to convince myself that I was a believing Catholic. Britannica defines it succinctly enough in a non-theological, non-devotional way:

Immaculate Conception, Roman Catholic dogma asserting that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was preserved free from the effects of the sin of Adam (usually referred to as “original sin”) from the first instant of her conception. (Britannica)

The question it at first raises, before the skeptic has a full understanding of the doctrine, is why God could not simply do for all humans what he did for Mary. Why not just preserve all people “from the effects of the sin of Adam” instead of this whole convoluted way of getting forgiveness in the Old Testament through blood sacrifice which then comes to full fruition in the New Testament with an actual human sacrifice (i.e. Jesus)? If he could do it for Mary, why couldn’t he do it for everyone?

A Catholic apologist at this point would explain that it’s not simply that God preserved Mary from the effects of this sin without the need of Jesus and his sacrifice. Instead, the apologist would explain, the sacrifice was applied to Mary in some kind of retroactive way. The Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent explains it thusly (emphasis added)

The immunity from original sin was given to Mary by a singular exemption from a universal law through the same merits of Christ, by which other men are cleansed from sin by baptism. Mary needed the redeeming Saviour to obtain this exemption, and to be delivered from the universal necessity and debt (debitum) of being subject to original sin. The person of Mary, in consequence of her origin from Adam, should have been subject to sin, but, being the new Eve who was to be the mother of the new Adam, she was, by the eternal counsel of God and by the merits of Christ, withdrawn from the general law of original sin. Her redemption was the very masterpiece of Christ’s redeeming wisdom. He is a greater redeemer who pays the debt that it may not be incurred than he who pays after it has fallen on the debtor. (New Advent)

Yet far from making this a simpler solution that solves the question of why God didn’t just do this for everyone, it makes an even more convoluted and illogical argument. Somehow, an event that hadn’t yet taken place affected the conception of the person who would later give birth to the individual to whom this salvific event would take place — see, there’s just no way to explain it without it sounding like some kind of theological Rube Goldberg contraption.

Eve and Misogyny

Friday 29 October 2021

It certainly does.