Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Why Do Catholics Do That?
Reading Why Do Catholics Do That? A Guide to the Teachings and Practices of the Catholic Church by Kevin Orlin Johnson (Ballantine Books, 1994). It has both the Nihil Obstat & Imprimatur, so it's an authentic document of the Pope John Paul II era. I was curious about exactly what Catholics are expected & required to believe & do if they are strictly observant & not "cafeteria Catholics." Also want a better understanding of the Catholic take on sola scriptura, which is at the heart of protestantism, & taken to absurd extremes by fundamentalists. Johnson begins with chapter on the place of "Tradition" (contrasted with "custom") in Church doctrine & practice. But just 45 pages in & I can see why he has the Nihil Obstat. He has to ignore a lot of Biblical literary scholarship & stay a single path through early church history. He's also too condescending toward protestantism, too much a generalist.
It's very different from Garry Wills' books. Wills is a dissenting apologist who explains why he remains a Catholic despite what he knows. Wills has a charming, almost devious way of sounding like a fairly progressive protestant in his Biblical expositions only to arrive at a "Tah Dah!" moment where you realize he's thinking & reasoning as a Catholic steeped in Thomas Aquinas. Could Wills convert to Catholicism based on what he believes now? I don't see how he could get through the Rite of Christian Initiation classes all parishes offer. He challenges the Church to kick him out.
It's very different from Garry Wills' books. Wills is a dissenting apologist who explains why he remains a Catholic despite what he knows. Wills has a charming, almost devious way of sounding like a fairly progressive protestant in his Biblical expositions only to arrive at a "Tah Dah!" moment where you realize he's thinking & reasoning as a Catholic steeped in Thomas Aquinas. Could Wills convert to Catholicism based on what he believes now? I don't see how he could get through the Rite of Christian Initiation classes all parishes offer. He challenges the Church to kick him out.
Labels: religion, what I'm reading
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
But Christianity is a revealed religion: whether you believe in it or not, it does claim to have been revealed by its God to humans. Therefore no human can add, delete, or change any of it. That's "heresy", from the Greek meaning "to pick and choose"--being a "cafeteria Catholic". Christ either taught something or he did not; he either founded his Church or he did not. And as the record shows that he did, and that he guaranteed that it would teach his teachings complete and unadulterated until the end of time, there's no possibility of a "dissenter". Protestantism, you know, is predicated on heresy; it takes Luther, Calvin, or another heresiarch as having more authority than Christ. So that doesn't work, either. I've always been puzzled by the ease with which people, like Wills, revise doctrine while claiming that it's divinely revealed. Makes no sense whatever. So of course the book stays on a single path. There's no other way. Revealed religion! Thanks for reading!
# posted by 
: 7:08 PM
: 7:08 PM
"Either all of it is completely true or any of it might not be true" saith the sola scriptura fundamentalists. & so there must have been dinosaurs on the Ark.
In any case, I doubt I'll finish the book, not because it isn't informative, but because the author's tone is too snotty. There's other books cover the same material
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