Picking back up my notes for C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”…
1. If Christianity is true, why are all Christians not obviously nicer than all non-Christians?
(a) Part of this question is very reasonable
“If conversion to Christianity makes no improvement in a man’s outward actions… I think we must suspect that his ‘conversion’ was largely imaginary…”
(i) Jesus told us to judge by results
“Fine feelings, new insights, greater interest in ‘religion’ mean nothing unless they make our actual behaviour better; just as in an illness ‘feeling better’ is not much good if the thermometer shows that your temperature is still going up… Christ told us to judge by results”
(ii) When we fail to live up to our calling, we make Christianity harder to believe for others
“When we Christians behave badly, or fail to behave well, we are making Christianity unbelievable to the outside world… Our careless lives set the outer world talking; and we give them grounds for talking in a way that throws doubt on the truth of Christianity itself”
(b) Part of this question is very unreasonable
But there is another way of demanding results in which the outer world may be quite illogical…. they should see the whole world neatly divided into two camps -Christian and non-Christian – and that all the people in the first camp at any given moment should be obviously nicer than all the people in the second.
There are several flaws with this kind of thinking…
A rather different entry this week, the rather delicate and thoughtful “Make me new” with Pat D’Angelo:
I’ve played the game before chasing after fame and needing more
Don’t you know you showed me that I need you?
I need you, you’re making me new…
I don’t know what to do but trust in you, trust in you alone You make me more than I could ever make myself More than I could make myself, you make me new…
Your love for me is greater than I’ve ever known
Your presence fills my heart and makes me fill I’m not alone
I need you, you’re making me new…
Our penultimate chapter of Book I of “Mere Christianity” is Chapter 4 and is entitled “What lies behind the Law”. In this episode, Jack digs into the consequences of the Moral Law and, in particular, what we can know about the universe in which we live.
Unfortunately, there were some small issues in this episode with my microphone, a bit of a crackle, but hopefully I’ll have it sorted out by the next time Matt and I record agin.
If you enjoy this episode, you can subscribe using iTunes or Google Play. As always, if you have any objections, comments or questions, please send us an email through my website or tweet us @pintswithjack.
In this week’s episode, we return to the Early Church and discuss the successors to the Apostles, known as the Early Church Fathers. Somehow Nessa manages to talk about relationships… :-/
* I mentioned my article I’ve written called “Before 300” where I outline 21 documented beliefs of Christians prior to the rise of the Emperor Constantine:
Part #1: The Church
1. The Church is Catholic
2. The Church has a three-fold structure of leadership
3. There is unity through episcopal authority and schism is evil
4. Sacred Tradition is authoritative
5. Worship is liturgical
6. There is Apostolic Succession
7. Peter has Primacy
Part #2: Salvation & Sacraments
1. The Eucharist is a Sacrifice
2. Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist
3. The Eucharist is taken to the sick
4. Infants are to be baptized
5. Baptism actually washes away sin
6. Priests forgive sins
7. Works are involved in salvation
Part #3: The Saints and Our Lady
1. Prayers are said for the dead
2. There is purgation after death
3. Relics are venerated and Saints are celebrated
4. Mary is the New Eve
5. Mary was a perpetual virgin
6. Mary is the Mother of God
7. Prayers are made and songs are sung to Mary
1. Antiquity Did this person live sometime between the time of Christ and the end of the 8th Century? This span of time is called the “Patristic Era” (“Patristic” simply means relating to the Early Church Fathers).
2. Sanctity Did this person live a life of outstanding holiness? Is this person a canonized Saint?
3. Orthodoxy
Did this person hold heretical views? Tertullian and Origen are two early Christians who are typically disqualified here due to some of their erroneous beliefs. We therefore instead give them the title of “Early Ecclesiastical Writers”.
4. Church Recognition and Approval Has the Church and Christians throughout history generally referred to this person as a Father of the Church?
* There were about one hundred Early Church Fathers.
* The Early Church Fathers of the 1st and 2nd Centuries are usually called the “Apostolic Fathers” since they were born during the era of the Apostles.
* We then briefly spoke about three Apostolic Fathers:
1. St. Clement of Rome
* A successor to St. Peter as Bishop of Rome
* He wrote a letter to the Church at Corinth (AD ~96) in response to the ejection of their clergy
* In the letter he gives many Old Testament examples of those who flaunted God-given authority and who suffered the consequences
* In a particularly beautiful passage reminiscent of 1 Corinthians 13, Clement exhorts the Corinthians to love. I had a small rant about 1 Corinthians 13, pointing out that Paul is speaking of “agape” love rather than “eros” love.
2. St. Ignatius of Antioch
* A successor to St. Peter as Bishop of Antioch
* Taken to Rome in chains (AD ~107) to be thrown to wild animals
* Wrote seven letters, one to St. Polycarp (see below), several to nearby Churches and one to the Church in Rome
* In his letter to the Roman Church he begs them to not interfere with his coming martyrdom: “I beseech of you not to show an unseasonable goodwill towards me. Suffer me to become food for the wild beasts, through whose instrumentality it will be granted me to attain to God. I am the wheat of God, and am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of God”
* In the account of his martyrdom, the Governor tells Polycarp to say “Caesar is Lord”, but Polycarp knew that “Christ/Jesus is Lord”. He was told to “revile Christ”, but he responded: “Eighty-six years have I served Him, and He never did me any wrong: how then dare I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?”
* Prior to being burned alive, Polycarp gives a prayer which sounds an awful lot like a Eucharistic Prayer.
* As he was burned, people reported the smell of baking bread.
* Some Jews claimed that the Christians might start worshipping Polycarp after his death. The author of the Martyrdom account says the following: “They did not realize that we could never abandon Christ, He who suffered for our salvation – the blameless one for sinners! – or worship any other. Him we worship as being the Son of God, the martyrs we love as being disciples and imitators of the Lord; and deservedly so, because of their unsurpassable devotion to their King and Teacher. May it be our good fortune, too, to be their companions and fellow disciples!”
* After his death, the Christians gathered Polycarp’s relics and and interred them in a fitting place: “There the Lord will permit us, as far as possible, to assemble in rapturous joy and celebrate his martyrdom – his birthday – both in order to commemorate the heroes that have gone before, and to train the heroes yet to come…”
* In last week’s episode, we spoke about another Early Church Father, St. Basil of Caesarea.
* If you would like to read what the different Fathers wrote about the Sunday Gospel, you can look it up using the Catena Aurea (“Golden Chain”), a collection of patristic commentary which was assembled by St. Thomas Aquinas. You can also get it on your mobile!
I first noticed the comment. The phrase “Birth control is good for business” pretty much translates into “Sterilize your workforce and their family won’t get in the way of their productivity”. However, then I noticed the graphic used in the tweet. It looked so familiar… they didn’t, did they? I clicked on the link…
Yup, Planned Parenthood had used a graphic of an NFP chart! Apparently they do know what is! Maybe they could consider this a better way to plan parenthood?
Last month was the Catholic Answers Conference here in San Diego. It was a weekend full of great talks from guest speakers and the Catholic Answers apologists.
However, the real highlight for me was meeting in the flesh two guys with whom I have corresponded for some time, but never actually met in the flesh. These two Catholic Titans were Devin Rose and Douglas Beaumont, both of whom should be familiar to regular readers of this blog as I share their articles often. As a bonus, I also got to meet Matt Nelson!
If you’d like to get a better sense of what it was like at the conference, Devin authored a piece on his conference-going experience:
The great thing about saints is that they will not lose their faith because of bad liturgical music. They can suffer bad preaching, small budgets, poor management, and every single one of the many fools we have in this hospital for sinners. They’ll still be in the pews on Sunday, quietly winning the world for Christ, slowly transforming the Church, recruiting more saints and often fixing other problems in the process.
A rather different entry this week, the rather delicate and thoughtful “Make me new” with 
