The Recusant Returns

Well. Like a character in Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited", after some life complications, and an ensuing attempted reversion to Anglicanism/Protestantism I've come back to Rome. My intellectual reasons / escape route from the Roman church fell apart, and God sent me a word that Pope Benedict XVI was my shepherd. Personal revelation is so embarrasing. I was thinking about it the other day. The reason I don't like Fatima or Lourdes, is because I wasn't there, it was PRIVATE revelation. But sitting in the break room at work and 'hearing' God tell me that Papa Benny is to be my shepherd, is intensely existential as an experience. I can't make anyone believe that it happened, or have them feel the significance, but personally, it was very convincing.



My Catholic chaplain gave me a book of St. Therese of Lisieux's prayers and reflections to help me find a gracious Catholicism (besides Hans Urs Von Balthasar). She is a Doctor of the Church and has been teaching me alot. Reading her today brought me to tears for about 5 minutes.

"Ever since I have been given the grace to understand also the love of the heart of Jesus, I admit that it has expelled all fear from my heart. The remembrance of my faults humbles me, draws me never to depend on my strength which is only weakness, but this remembrance speaks to me of mercy and love even more. When we cast our faults with entire filial confidence into the devouring fir of love, how would these not be consumed beyond return?"

"I cannot conceive of a greater immensity of love than the one that it has pleased you to pour out so lavishly on me, without any merit on my part"

The gentleness, and the childlike confidence of St. Therese gives me peace. I want this to be the Catholicism I pass onto others. The dogmatic declarations of Scholasticism and post-Reformation Thomism are fine for the theology student, but the heart of a saint is infinitely warmer and more inspiring than a system. As Papa Benny reminds us, our religion is primarily about a person, not a system.

It has been difficult being Catholic, and I now know what they speak of when they say "Catholic guilt". I know how Protestants could so easily evangelize us in the past with their gospel. But I am trying to find the path of gracious Catholicism, a joyful and hopeful Catholic faith.

At a personal note, I am struggling with my relationship, as my partner is not of the Roman confession. Artificial contraception, even views on abortion and the inerrancy of Scripture are sources of debate (my Baptist parents are pround that even though their son is a Catholic, he still has a Biblicist twinge).

I was despairing over the scenario and seemingly endless deadlock, about all the problems in my life that have come from Catholicism. A big 'proof' for me of the truth of the Roman claim, is that it is universally detested, it reminded me of Christ's claim that "if the world hates ye, remember that it hated me first" in St. John's Gospel (ch. 15). A huge portion of my problems would be solved if I were simply an Anglican. But I've realized that something of the Catholic spirit has permeated my soul. In moments of deep affection for Jesus, I kiss my little crucifix and tell him I love him. I will always make the sign of the cross when I am scared. And even in my temporary reversion to Anglicanism, when we almost got in a car accident, I began frantically muttering the Ave Maria in Latin.

I hope to love Jesus as best as I am able, and to have a childlike and possibly foolish hope that he will work out my seemingly impossible failings and problems into something for good. That is all I have. I hope to be a good Catholic, this is the struggle of my life, and may I die still in the struggle, or by God's grace, with a little peace and some victory.

There is no victory story, I should never have strayed, there is nothing glorious about my story. My Protestant friends are disappointed, my Anglican priest wants to meet up next week and probably either yell at me or try to re-convert me. My Catholic friends are confused over the whole situation. I have learned Christian humiliation, and hopefully I will learn from the experience that the story of my life is not one of my greatness, but of God's patient forbearance.

This picture was taken on a trip while I was a Baptist at Bible school and on an adventure in Ireland.


I was thinking about it today, and wondering if perhaps the Blessed Virgin hasn't been watching over me all this time. It's a comforting thought. Cardinal Newman said that while not every soul who is saved asked for the intercession of Mary, no soul was ever saved without it. May Our Lady always watch over this wandering sin-sick soul, and may the Sacred Heart of Jesus beat as the rhythm of my life.

Indelibly Catholic

All this Anglican frenzy of friends and opportunities was further compounded this weekend by an Anglican girl I'm friends with semi-asking if I wanted to start some sort of relationship. I thought to myself 'somehow by the end of the weekend, I will have 'reasoned' my way into the CofE (Church of England)'. Interestingly enough, the process began by me being unable to reason my way out of Catholicism, as the claims are so binding, the teachings of the saints and doctors so clear, there really is no way out of Rome. So then I started trying to reason my way out of reason a la Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling", but if I likewise found such a position untenable. I took a course in Islam, and while I am prejudiced as a Westerner, I have to say that 'logically' if you are going to disavow 'logic' Islam is a much better religion than Christianity. Christianity is inherently rational, and the bible doesn't have an origin like the Qu'ran (in the sense that there was disagreement and there are textual variants of the bible - not that I believe the Qu'ran is inspired).

I went for a walk today and prayed my rosary and was thinking about the sorrowful mysteries. About Christ's agony in the garden, his cross. I realized my agony was totally selfish and nothing compared to his, and that while he carried a real cross if my sufferings and trials were incarnated into a cross, it would be about as small as the one on my rosary. When I suddenly remembered St. Thomas More, I felt so much guilt. He had so much more to gain than I, and still he died as a martyr before renouncing the papacy. St. Edmund was offered the archbishopric of Canterbury for his conversion, and he accepted death over severing communion with Rome.

I repented, and thought it funny that even when I was considering the CofE - for all the wrong reasons - I was still thinking "well I hope I can still pray the rosary" or "I still want to believe in infused righteousness" or "I still need Confession". I guess I am unchangeably Catholic, a Roman through and through.

In all of this, I've realized that I'm nowhere near the level of holiness required for religious life. I told my Jesuit vocations director some of my doubts, and we're continuing, but honestly I don't think I'm mature enough yet. It's only taken a few waves to rock the boat, and if I'm to be an anchor, I'm going to need alot more strength, if that is my vocation after all.

Sts Thomas More and Edmund Campion, pray for me, a coward.

How Philosophy Changes Our Lives

I was taught as a teenager the Worldview of C.S. Lewis, for which I am grateful, as there are many worse starting points. I think my view of faith and reason as well as the neo-Platonism of Lewis that we learned in philosophy allowed me to fit well into the Catholic faith. Unlike the nominalists (anti-rationalists) Luther and Calvin, Lewis fell more closely to the Angelic Doctor (Aquinas), through Lewis' study of Dante, and in his clever use of reason, I understood how Christianity shouldn't be afraid of philosophy.

But I did learn many unhelpful views that I'm only now philosophically unpacking. Our epistemology (method of finding truth) was Berkeleian Immaterialism. It was basically this argument:

Ideas are true or false
Matter/Material Objects is/are not true or false
Therefore ideas are not Matter/Material

This gave us "spirit" which wasn't material, or 'idealism' at least. Then we would go on to attack Empiricism with the typical Cartesian methods, as well as Berkeley's which sought to show how the senses were unreliable. Ex:

How do you know you have proper vision?
you hear the doctor say you passed a vision test
How do you know you have proper hearing? , etc to infinity where one can no longer believe anything based on the sense, but by the mind alone / reason.

This is the argument Bishop (Anglican/CofE) Berkeley used to argue for immaterialism, the idea that the only 'real' existent things are ideas perceived in one's mind. This then led to the problem of: 'what happens when someone isn't thinking about an object? does it cease to exist?' - we know the things don't cease to exist, as we do not when we sleep, etc. This means a universal mind must be perceiving everything at once (a Term Lewis uses in Mere Christianity for God - he was a Berkeleian after all). This universal mind is God.

Thus cometh the famous phrase that "we are all just thoughts in the mind of God".

This was a fun worldview because it was diametrically opposed to materialism, the worldview of the modern university. Then I remember reading Nietzsche's "Twilight of the Idols" and his chapter on how the real world became myth, etc. It wasn't so much of a logical argument that disarmed me / immaterialism, it was just an interesting approach which many people would prefer to my pseudo-platonic arguments.

Like I said, Nietzsche never really convinced me logically of anything (that's kind of his whole point really), but it did much to shake my thinking. Subsequently I've read Christians who attack his post-modernism from a Modernist Christian standpoint, and I've seen other Catholics and Protestants accept postmodernity and understand Catholicism within it (Kearney, Vattimo, MacIntyre also kind of).

I then started studying Aquinas, and I began to love his way of doing things. He mixed the 'best' of neo-platonism with aristotelianism, and made it all Christian. But there was one problem... He was an empiricist (the view, you'll remember, of my oldest enemies). He described the intellect and soul ascending to God from perceiving sensible things. But when I read "Nicomachean Ethics" by Aristotle last year and his "Politics", I felt like I "gave my mind to Aristotle" (like I gave my heart to Christ), because he was such a genius. But I'm still trying to figure out Aristotelianism and my own life.

The advantage I do see in St. Thomas - aside from his legacy and centrality in our Holy Roman Church - is the way his system seems so true in everyday life. It is a challenge though to my normal Platonic system which has a heavy emphasis on distinguishing between mind and body, matter and spirit. This has been a key theme in my life (probably why I'm obsessed with learning and education, but morbidly obese, or why I am great with faith, but terrible with works). Aristotle, and St. Thomas always make sure that the internal and the external are linked, and that grace perfects nature. That sounds really simplistic but in reality it's REALLY profound. In my previous worldview matter was almost evil, corrupted by the fall, grace abolished nature, it didn't perfect it. The material world was the fake and transient world, the world of the forms or ideas was the 'real world'. Aquinas will have none of this. God is reconciling even nature to himself, and evil is only a privation of good, Christ gave us physical things - sacraments (baptism, eucharist, etc) - to change our spiritual reality by grace. This means faith and works, nature and grace, the natural and supernatural, are all married to some extent. For instance he writes on the Law of Christ:

"The kingdom of God consists chiefly in internal acts: but as a consequence all things that are essential to internal acts belong also to the kingdom of God. Thus if the kingdom of God is internal righteousness, peace, and spiritual joy, all external acts that are incompatible with righteousness, peace, and spiritual joy, are in opposition to the kingdom of God; and consequently should be forbidden in the Gospel of the kingdom." - St. Thomas Aquinas (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/2108.htm)

I didn't go to church/mass today, even though I could've, because "I didn't feel like it", and because I couldn't receive the sacrament anyway (I'm as usual, in mortal sin). I figured regardless of whether or not I sat in church today, my relationship with God would be uneffected. But Aristotle reminds us that virtues are formed by habitual action and repetition. St. Thomas and Catholicism likewise oblige us to attend Mass regularly because this physical habit changes our spiritual reality, it makes God's Word more prevalent in our mind, it makes our Will more easily inclined towards the work of God, and it brings us into deeper fellowship and even allows us to spiritually partake in the oblation (Sacrifice of the Mass) of the priest/Christ.

But in my own choice of will, I demoted my intellect to my passion of laziness, and thus missed another chance at grace. This is how philosophy changes my life, and our lives. Perhaps you should look over your own philosophy, after all, according to Socrates: "the unexamined life is not worth living".

Newman - The Development of Doctrine (Part 1)

"Till positive reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary, the most natural hypotheses, the most agreeable to our mode of proceeding in parallel cases, and that which takes precedence of all others, is to consider that the society of Christians, which the Apostles left on earth, were of that religion to which the Apostles had converted them; that the external continuity of name, profession, and communion, argues a real continuity of doctrine; that, as Christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind, therefore it went on so to manifest itself...this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this...Our popular religion scarcely recognizes the fact of the twelve long ages which lie between the Councils of Nicæa and Trent, except as affording one or two passages to illustrate its wild interpretations of certain prophesies of St. Paul and St. John. It is melancholy to say it, but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon. To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant...this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact" - Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman "Development of Christian Doctrine"

I'm going through this monumental work of Cardinal Newman's. I'm on # 14 of the intro and very much enjoying how he's taking the argument so far and destroying Anglicanism & Protestantism.

Welcome

I'm just getting things started here at Recusant Corner. I'm a Roman Catholic convert from Anabaptist/Evangelical Protestantism and plan on writing my thoughts here (probably mostly theology, but other stuff as well).

It's hopefully going to be a refuge from Polemics where I can try to operate on the principle 'live and let live'.

Why Call it Recusant Corner?

I'm a history major and my niche in Catholicism is a movement known as Recusancy (wikipedia it). Recusants were the Catholics who refused to submit to the Established Church of England and resisted to the point of martyrdom and persecution at first, and in later years at least were forbidden from public worship.

I find it a fascinating movement and some English Catholics even today like to style themselves Recusants. St. Thomas More, St. Edmund Campion (and all the Tyburn martyrs), John Donne (for a while), William Shakespeare (probably), were Recusants, as well as later figures like: Alexander Pope, Ven. John Henry Cardinal Newman, Lord Acton, G.K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others.

Canada (where I live) is technically ruled by the English Monarch who is the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, so technically, and in a very vague impractical sense I am a Recusant.

Many Recusants were Jacobites, and on this blog, you'll find a strong support of the Stuart line rather than the Hanoverian usurpers of the inGlorious Revolution of 1688-9.

Some abbreviations you might want to know so they don't confuse you:

CofE : Church of England - Anglican Church - Established Church
R.C : Roman Catholic
Papist : Roman Catholic
Puritan : Reformed Protestant
Prelate : Anglican
Fr. : Father (indicating a Catholic Priest)
Bp. : Bishop
Abp. : Archbishop
Ven. : Venerable (Level in sainthood/canonization after blessed)
Bl. : Blessed (1st Level in canonization)