That picture up there is from this week’s Newsweek cover. It depicts an urban style Jesus with the title “Forget the Church, Follow Jesus.” I rarely buy Newsweek but I just had to buy this one, if for no other reason than to prove this article wrong, in that, the Church is needed in order to know and follow Jesus. Right off the bat, I don’t want you to think I’m being standoff-ish but, any good Christian (especially us Catholics) worth their salt should automatically recall Jesus’ words from Matt. 16:18: “…upon this rock, I will build my CHURCH…”
You can read the entire article here.
The author of this article, Andrew Sullivan, a married homosexual man who wrote a piece entitled Why Gay Marriage is Good for America, starts off the article by mentioning the “Jefferson Bible” which has recently been on display at the Natural Museum of American History in D.C. The bible itself is a heavily redacted and abridged version of the King James Version of the the Bible. Jefferson painstakingly cut out all of the “misconceptions” and and embellishments (whatever he must’ve thought they were) of Jesus. What was left was a critical view of the life and moral teachings of Jesus, Jefferson thought that by doing this he would get to the heart of what Jesus wanted for us.
While still in his introduction, Sullivan states that:
“If Jefferson’s greatest political legacy was the Declaration of Independence, this pure, precious moral teaching was his religious legacy.”
An interesting note that is wholly absent from this is the fact that Jefferson was a man of his time; it was during this time that Jefferson was most likely influenced by the predominant European beliefs that came from the Age of Enlightenment, which pretty much stated that reason, rationale and logic must overcome any form of superstition or mythology. If this wasn’t the main reason for Jefferson’s “bible” then I don’t know what was.
Sullivan then proceeds to tell us that because of this bible, we are able to see an apolitical Jesus and somehow better understand His doctrines and teachings. What he attempts to do next is to strip Jesus of his Divine nature and portray Him as a wise and knowledgable teacher. He states,
“If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely.”
I have a little bit of an issue with that, namely that Mr. Sullivan assumes that we can know what Jesus wants us to be without the “intricacies” of faith. The real question that he, and other who think this way about Jesus, is this: How would you know of or about Jesus if it wasn’t for the Early Catholic Chruch? If it wasn’t for that Early Church who collected, interpreted and canonized the teachings of Christ, how indeed would any of us know what Jesus actually wants “us to do and to be?”
This all lead us to Mr. Sullivan’s prime thesis for his article, that being that it is because of politics that Christianity, as a religion, is in a crisis. In a nutshell that is what the author’s conclusion winds down to but, what type of crisis is this and how can it be rectified? Let’s see what Mr. Sullivans says.
He begins by reminding us of the atrocities of the Catholic Church by stating of the decline of parishoners in Catholic Churches across the U.S., unfortunately, he must’ve missed the a study released in Febuary of 2010 by the National Council of Churches, a collection of Protestant church groups, stated that the membership within the Church as actually increased in 1.5% while membership in the top 4 Protestant denominations actually decreased. Additionally, Mr. Sullivan makes no mention of the fact that last year, 2011, Catholic memberships were up once again. Instead, Mr. Sullivan recycles the familiar pedophile priest scandal and the “unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI” as reasons for the resignation of the Church’s hiearchy. Painfully obvious is the fact that Mr. Sullivan has refused to accept the Church’s history against contraception or he has merely chosen to ignore it. Indeed, he even attacks the Church over the birth control mandate, very interesting really when one takes into account how he approves of an apolitical Christ through the eyes of Jefferson; who famously quoted the phrase ”seperation of church and state.” Yes, truly interesting that Sullivan would question the Church’s stance on the government forcing a religious body to do something against its teachings and yet laud Jefferson’s point of view for a seperation between both. Hypocritical if you ask me.
Following his erroneous assumptions of the Catholic Church, he dives right into Protestants. He makes the claim against them which is the very same claim that everybody can make against Protestantism and that is: that they can’t seem to agree on anything on the major issues - from literallism to scripture and even to the defense of torturing, Mr. Sullivan runs a quick gaunlet of the reasons why mainline Protestantism is also in a crisis of its own. He ends it by stating the following:
“Something has gone very wrong. These are impulses born of panic in the face of modernity…This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.”
So, it’s Christians who are afraid of the modern world! Of course! This explains everything! NOT. Mr. Sullivan once again rehatches the old hackneyed excuse of Christians being “old fashion” or too “traditionalist” in our views as one of the reasons for the current crisis he is attempting to demonstrate. Quite the contrary, any good Christian will tell you that we have hope and have been redeemed to have life for eternity but, with that being said, Christians aren’t blind to the world: we see the moral decays and the unethical societal norms that are taking place all around us so, as Christians what do we do? We put our power into the voting booth, we organize to rally for Christ-centered causes and we most certainly use our wallets to do so.
So, then what are we to do about this “crisis?” Mr. Sullivan tells us that, much like Jefferson’s bible, we should trim the fat out of our faith and go to the true message of Jesus. He uses as an example, the life of Francis of Assisi from a new biography which strips the legend of Assisi from being an “erstwhile hippie, communing with flowers and animals” to the “typical young secular figure who suddenly found peace in service to those he previously shrank from.” Interesting really since St. Francis of Assisi wouldn’t be a Saint had he not of become a Catholic priest, that is, a practioner of the Catholic faith! Indeed, the Catholic Church’s view of St. Francis has never been the one who says: “I love birds and trees and people who smile,” quite the contrary. The Church’s Assisi is the one who said the following in his Second Letter to the Faithful:
“To all those men and women who are not living in penance and do not receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; who practice vice and sin and follow wicked concupiscence…See, you blind ones, you who are deceived by your enemies: by the flesh, the world, and the devil; because it is sweet to the body to commit sin and it is bitter for it to serve God…And you have nothing in this world or in the one to come…The body becomes sick, death approaches, and this man dies a bitter death. And no matter where or when or how a man dies in the guilt of sin without doing penance and satisfaction…the devil snatches up his soul from his body with so much anguish and tribulation that no one can know it unless he has experienced it…And they leave their substance to their relatives and friends, and these have taken and divided the inheritance among themselves…Worms eat the body. And so they have lost body and soul in this passing world, and both will go down to hell where they will be tormented without end.”
Verily so Mr. Sullivan, the Saint that you praise in your article would indeed view you and your marriage to another man as a sin and ask you to repent of it…in the same way the Catholic Church - the Church that gave rise to Assisi’s order - views it today.
And thus we come to the crux (pun intended) of Mr. Sullivan’s arguement. The only way we can save Christianity is by getting rid of the theological docrines he argues that if we get rid of these significant doctrines (Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles) we can get to the greatest miracle of Jesus and that was His message. Now, truth be known, I agree that Jesus message as well at the deposit of faith he left us are of the utmost importance. But, the real question lies in where do we stop stripping Jesus down? If we take away certain things, why not others? What is to stop us from picking and chosing the things we like and or don’t like? WHO is to stop us from picking and chosing the things we like and or don’t like?
This is the danger that Mr. Sullivan has entered to. By wanting to have Jesus conform to him, he has simply alienated the true Christ from himself. And has very easily become that which he has already denounced: a Protestant. What would make Mr. Sullivan’s form of Christianity different then the other 35,000 different denominations? To put it bluntly: this article isn’t about how we should just follow Christ, it’s a view of someone who wants Jesus Christ his way. Period. He has managed to turn Christianity from a God-centered religion to a man-centered one; one where the wants and need of the man are met first and foremost.
I will pray for Mr. Sullivan as well as individuals who share this view. It is critical that they understand the need for acceptance of what Jesus really wants for them and of what the Church says is demanded of them to serve Christ.
You can read the entire article here.
The author of this article, Andrew Sullivan, a married homosexual man who wrote a piece entitled Why Gay Marriage is Good for America, starts off the article by mentioning the “Jefferson Bible” which has recently been on display at the Natural Museum of American History in D.C. The bible itself is a heavily redacted and abridged version of the King James Version of the the Bible. Jefferson painstakingly cut out all of the “misconceptions” and and embellishments (whatever he must’ve thought they were) of Jesus. What was left was a critical view of the life and moral teachings of Jesus, Jefferson thought that by doing this he would get to the heart of what Jesus wanted for us.
While still in his introduction, Sullivan states that:
“If Jefferson’s greatest political legacy was the Declaration of Independence, this pure, precious moral teaching was his religious legacy.”
An interesting note that is wholly absent from this is the fact that Jefferson was a man of his time; it was during this time that Jefferson was most likely influenced by the predominant European beliefs that came from the Age of Enlightenment, which pretty much stated that reason, rationale and logic must overcome any form of superstition or mythology. If this wasn’t the main reason for Jefferson’s “bible” then I don’t know what was.
Sullivan then proceeds to tell us that because of this bible, we are able to see an apolitical Jesus and somehow better understand His doctrines and teachings. What he attempts to do next is to strip Jesus of his Divine nature and portray Him as a wise and knowledgable teacher. He states,
“If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely.”
I have a little bit of an issue with that, namely that Mr. Sullivan assumes that we can know what Jesus wants us to be without the “intricacies” of faith. The real question that he, and other who think this way about Jesus, is this: How would you know of or about Jesus if it wasn’t for the Early Catholic Chruch? If it wasn’t for that Early Church who collected, interpreted and canonized the teachings of Christ, how indeed would any of us know what Jesus actually wants “us to do and to be?”
This all lead us to Mr. Sullivan’s prime thesis for his article, that being that it is because of politics that Christianity, as a religion, is in a crisis. In a nutshell that is what the author’s conclusion winds down to but, what type of crisis is this and how can it be rectified? Let’s see what Mr. Sullivans says.
He begins by reminding us of the atrocities of the Catholic Church by stating of the decline of parishoners in Catholic Churches across the U.S., unfortunately, he must’ve missed the a study released in Febuary of 2010 by the National Council of Churches, a collection of Protestant church groups, stated that the membership within the Church as actually increased in 1.5% while membership in the top 4 Protestant denominations actually decreased. Additionally, Mr. Sullivan makes no mention of the fact that last year, 2011, Catholic memberships were up once again. Instead, Mr. Sullivan recycles the familiar pedophile priest scandal and the “unilateral prohibition of the pill in 1968 by Pope Paul VI” as reasons for the resignation of the Church’s hiearchy. Painfully obvious is the fact that Mr. Sullivan has refused to accept the Church’s history against contraception or he has merely chosen to ignore it. Indeed, he even attacks the Church over the birth control mandate, very interesting really when one takes into account how he approves of an apolitical Christ through the eyes of Jefferson; who famously quoted the phrase ”seperation of church and state.” Yes, truly interesting that Sullivan would question the Church’s stance on the government forcing a religious body to do something against its teachings and yet laud Jefferson’s point of view for a seperation between both. Hypocritical if you ask me.
Following his erroneous assumptions of the Catholic Church, he dives right into Protestants. He makes the claim against them which is the very same claim that everybody can make against Protestantism and that is: that they can’t seem to agree on anything on the major issues - from literallism to scripture and even to the defense of torturing, Mr. Sullivan runs a quick gaunlet of the reasons why mainline Protestantism is also in a crisis of its own. He ends it by stating the following:
“Something has gone very wrong. These are impulses born of panic in the face of modernity…This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.”
So, it’s Christians who are afraid of the modern world! Of course! This explains everything! NOT. Mr. Sullivan once again rehatches the old hackneyed excuse of Christians being “old fashion” or too “traditionalist” in our views as one of the reasons for the current crisis he is attempting to demonstrate. Quite the contrary, any good Christian will tell you that we have hope and have been redeemed to have life for eternity but, with that being said, Christians aren’t blind to the world: we see the moral decays and the unethical societal norms that are taking place all around us so, as Christians what do we do? We put our power into the voting booth, we organize to rally for Christ-centered causes and we most certainly use our wallets to do so.
So, then what are we to do about this “crisis?” Mr. Sullivan tells us that, much like Jefferson’s bible, we should trim the fat out of our faith and go to the true message of Jesus. He uses as an example, the life of Francis of Assisi from a new biography which strips the legend of Assisi from being an “erstwhile hippie, communing with flowers and animals” to the “typical young secular figure who suddenly found peace in service to those he previously shrank from.” Interesting really since St. Francis of Assisi wouldn’t be a Saint had he not of become a Catholic priest, that is, a practioner of the Catholic faith! Indeed, the Catholic Church’s view of St. Francis has never been the one who says: “I love birds and trees and people who smile,” quite the contrary. The Church’s Assisi is the one who said the following in his Second Letter to the Faithful:
“To all those men and women who are not living in penance and do not receive the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ; who practice vice and sin and follow wicked concupiscence…See, you blind ones, you who are deceived by your enemies: by the flesh, the world, and the devil; because it is sweet to the body to commit sin and it is bitter for it to serve God…And you have nothing in this world or in the one to come…The body becomes sick, death approaches, and this man dies a bitter death. And no matter where or when or how a man dies in the guilt of sin without doing penance and satisfaction…the devil snatches up his soul from his body with so much anguish and tribulation that no one can know it unless he has experienced it…And they leave their substance to their relatives and friends, and these have taken and divided the inheritance among themselves…Worms eat the body. And so they have lost body and soul in this passing world, and both will go down to hell where they will be tormented without end.”
Verily so Mr. Sullivan, the Saint that you praise in your article would indeed view you and your marriage to another man as a sin and ask you to repent of it…in the same way the Catholic Church - the Church that gave rise to Assisi’s order - views it today.
And thus we come to the crux (pun intended) of Mr. Sullivan’s arguement. The only way we can save Christianity is by getting rid of the theological docrines he argues that if we get rid of these significant doctrines (Incarnation, Resurrection, and the various miracles) we can get to the greatest miracle of Jesus and that was His message. Now, truth be known, I agree that Jesus message as well at the deposit of faith he left us are of the utmost importance. But, the real question lies in where do we stop stripping Jesus down? If we take away certain things, why not others? What is to stop us from picking and chosing the things we like and or don’t like? WHO is to stop us from picking and chosing the things we like and or don’t like?
This is the danger that Mr. Sullivan has entered to. By wanting to have Jesus conform to him, he has simply alienated the true Christ from himself. And has very easily become that which he has already denounced: a Protestant. What would make Mr. Sullivan’s form of Christianity different then the other 35,000 different denominations? To put it bluntly: this article isn’t about how we should just follow Christ, it’s a view of someone who wants Jesus Christ his way. Period. He has managed to turn Christianity from a God-centered religion to a man-centered one; one where the wants and need of the man are met first and foremost.
I will pray for Mr. Sullivan as well as individuals who share this view. It is critical that they understand the need for acceptance of what Jesus really wants for them and of what the Church says is demanded of them to serve Christ.
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