Lex Anteinternet: New Years Day. Looking at 2024 through the front of the Church doors.

Lex Anteinternet: New Years Day. Looking at 2024 through the front ...: 

New Years Day. Looking at 2024 through the front of the Church doors.

I noted in our post  New Year's Resolutions for Other People, sort of that we weren't going to post resolutions, but we did have some comments.  That's true here as well.

New Years Day is the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, a Catholic holy day of obligation.  Like a lot of Catholics, I went to Mass last night.

Mural of the Virgin Mary in downtown Salt Lake City.

I didn't go last night as I intended to go whoop it up on the town.¹   I've never been big on celebrating "New Years" anyhow, although we did last night with family and sort of extended family, as we have a at this point another person in the second half of their twenties whose pretty much incorporated into the family, but not officially or by blood.  Anyhow, it was pretty low key and I was in bed before midnight.  I think last year I made it to midnight to observe the fireworks some neighbors set off.  This year I did not.  I'm amazed that the same people, who really like fireworks, set them off again, as we've had hurricane force winds for the past day or so.

Anyhow, the reason I'm posting this comment is due to a particularly troublesome year for American Christianity in 2024.

American Protestants don't like to believe it, but the United States is and has always been a Protestant Country.  It's so Protestant, that the Protestants can't recognize that, and even people who claim to have no religion at all are pretty Protestant.  Even a lot of Catholics are pretty Protestantized and I've known some fairly secular Jews who were fairly Protestant.

Protestantism is a pretty big tent, with there being all sorts of tables within it, and with some of the tables really not liking others.  For much of the country's history the Episcopal Church was the dominant Protestant Church, which made a lot of sense.  The Episcopal Church is, of course, part of the Anglican Communion and the English descent is dominant in American ancestry.  Supposedly this is 26% of the population now, but that figure is probably inaccurate by at least half simply because people whose ancestry stretches back away have simply forgotten it and is not celebrated the way other ancestral inheritance is.  I'm of overwhelming Irish ancestry but even I have a little English ancestry of the Anglo Norman variety, brough in through Ireland.

Anyhow, as in the 18th Century most residents of British North America were from Great Britain, most were members of the Church of England, outside of Canada, where of course they were French and Catholic.

The Episcopal Church has never been in the only Protestant Church in what is now the US, however.  Right from the beginning there were bodies of dissenters from the established church who came here to be able to practice their faith without being molested for it. That doesn't mean they were keen on others practicing their faiths, and they often didn't tolerate other Protestants at all.  But they were there, and that gave rise to a sort of rough and ready loosely organized Protestantism in some regions, particularly the American South.  These groups really prospered following the American Civil War as they hadn't gotten behind the war the way Southern Episcopalians had.  These groups really spread across the nation following the 1970s.  Looking back, its amazing to realize that growing up I knew exactly one Baptist kid (he's now a Lutheran) and the three big Protestant churches in this category didn't exist here.  Wyoming is the least religious state in the US, but at that time almost all the Protestants I knew were Lutheran or Episcopalian.  I knew a handful of Methodists and of course Mormons, but Baptists or Assemblies of God?  Nope.

So what's this have to do with 2024?

The Election of 2024 saw a really strong association of Evangelical Christianity, which is very much an American thing, and the vote.  It's distinctly different than anything that's occurred before.

Evangelical Christianity has been nationally significant in elections since at least 1950 or so, but it wasn't until 2024 that the "Christian vote" meant the Evangelical vote outside of the American South.  Because they are fractured, they are not the largest Christian body in the country.  Oddly enough, while 67% of the population self identifies as Christian, and something like 44% identify as Protestant, Catholics are the largest single denomination.

The back story to this however is that the Reformation, which started in 1517, is ending.  

The Reformation was able to start in the first place due to a large element of ignorance.  This can't be said of Luther, who wasn't ignorant, but who was opinionated and wrong.  Luther opened the door, however, to people like Calvin, Zwingli and Knox who were fundamentally ignorant in certain ways.

The spread of cheap printing and ultimately the Internet makes ignorance on some things much more difficult to retain.  For centuries bodies of Protestant Christians held to sola scriptura and a belief that they were like the first Christians, even though there's always been Christian texts dating back to shortly after Christ's crucifixion.²   Now, all of a sudden, anybody can read them.  This has in fact caused a pronounced migration of really serious sola scriptura Christians to the Apostolic Churches, as well as a migration by serious "mainline" Protestants.  Some bodies at this point, like very conservative Anglicans and Lutherans, are mostly Protestant out of pure obstinance. 

The ultimate irony of all of this is that the mainline Protestant churches have collapsed in many places.  Part of this is due to the massive increase in wealth in the western world which has hurt religion in general, but part is also because it gets to be tough to explain why you are a member of one of these churches if you can't explain a really solid reason to be, as opposed being in an Apostolic church.

At the same time, and not too surprisingly, similar forces have been operating in the Evangelical world in the US.  As already noted, quite a few serious Evangelicals are now serious Catholics or Orthodox.  Others, however, have retreated into a deep American Evangelicalism that is resistant to looking at the early Church, even though they are aware of it. This is rooted, in no small part, to the go it alone history of these bodies.

At the same time that this has occurred, the spread of the American Civil Religion has grown which sort of holds that everyone is going to Heaven as long as they aren't bad.  Serious Catholics and Orthodox can't accommodate themselves to that but Evangelicals have attempted to, while at the same time realizing it really doesn't make sense.  

Obergefell, as we noted, was the watershed moment.  At that point, Christians of all types were faced with realizing that the US had really strayed far from observing its Christian origins, or at least the Christian faith, with there being all sorts of different reactions to it.  In Catholic Churches there was the realization that we really hadn't become as American as we thought, and we weren't going to.  Trads sprang up partially in reaction with now every Church having its contingent of Mantilla Girls giving an obstinate cultural no.

In Evangelical circles it helped fuel a militant conservatism that expresses its most radical nature in the New Apostolic Reformation which believes that we're on the cusp of a new Apostolic age, which will be Protestant in nature, and more transformational than any prior Great Awakening.  They believe that the United States is charged with a Devine mission and some have concluded, as unlikely as it would seem from the outside, that Donald Trump is an improbable Cyrus the Great who will bring this about.

The support of Southern Episcopalians for the Southern cause in the Civil War damaged in the South to such an extent that the non mainline churches, like the Southern Baptist, came up as a major force after the war.  The Baptists and Protestant itinerant preachers had warned during the war that wickedness was going to bring ruin.  It seemed that their warnings were proven by the results of the war.  Episcopal linking to a wicked cause diminished their credibility.

Donald Trump is not Cyrus the Great.  Mike Johnson is not standing in the shoes of Moses.  This will all have a bad end.  Or it might.  As noted, the Reformation is dying and in some ways this is the last stand of it.  Those linking their Christianity to a man like Donald Trump are pinning their hopes, and their faith, on a weak reed. The question is what happens when it breaks and how much damage has been done, including to Christianity in general, in the meantime.

Moreover, the question also exists if you can claim to bear a Christian standard while not observing parts of the faith that are established but uncomfortable, let alone contrary to what is now so easy to determine not to be part of the early faith.  Can those who clearly don't live a Christian life really be the shield wall against decay?  

Footnotes:

1.  As with my observation on Christmas in The Law and Christmas, being a Catholic puts you in a strange position in regard to the secular world, or rather the larger American culture.  Lots of people start celebrating New Years pretty darned early on New Years Even, which means as an employer you start to get questions about whether we're closing at noon and the like, pretty early on.  And also, while in the popular imagination people hit the bars at night, quite a few people have celebrator drinks here and there by late morning in reality.  If your concern is getting to a vigil Mass soon after work, you aren't one of those people. And if you are one of the people hitting Mass in the morning, you aren't having a late night.

2.  Sola scriptura never made sense and is obviously incorrect in that the New Testament itself mentions traditions outside of the written text.  But the Bible, moreover, which is the scripture that "Bible Believing" Christian's look to is the version that was set out by the Catholic Church as the Canon of Scripture. Nowhere in the Bible does is there a Devine instruction as to what books would be included in the Bible.

Indeed, this position is further weakened in that Luther put some books he personally didn't like in an appendix, and later Protestants removed them. That wasn't Biblical.  Moreover, the Eastern Orthodox Bible contains the Prayer of Manaseh, I Esdras, II Esdras, III Maccabees, IV Maccabees, Odes, and Psalm 151 and the Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon some pre Christian Jewish books the others do not. While Catholics can explain why the books they include in their canon and can explain the relationship to the other Bibles, Protestant "Bible Believing" Christians flat out cannot.  All of the texts in the Orthodox Bibles are genuine ancient texts without dispute.  Moreover, there are early Christian writings which are genuine that are wholly omitted from any Bible.  The Sola Scriptura position just accepts the King James version of the Bible on the basis that it must be the canon on a pure matter of faith, which is not relying on scripture alone.

Related thread:

Virgin Mary Mural in Salt Lake City

A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it means.

The Bishop of Rome.

By this time, most observant conservative Catholics are either so fatigued from Papal issuances that they either disregard them, or cringe when they come out. They seem to come out with a high degree of regularity.

And, while we don't technically have a new one, a "study document" issued by the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity has put out something that has the Pope's approval to be issued, that being something that looks at the role of the Papacy itself:

Now, it's a very large document, so I'm not going to attempt to put it all out here, and I haven't read all of it either.  So, we're going to turn to  The Pillar to find out what it holds.  The Pillar states:

What does it say? 

Helpfully, the text has a section summarizing the four sections (beginning on p106).

1) Regarding responses to Ut unum sint, the document says that the question of papal primacy is being discussed in “a new and positive ecumenical spirit.” 

“This new climate is indicative of the good relations established between Christian communions, and especially between their leaders,” it says. 

2) Concerning disputed theological questions, the text welcomes what it calls “a renewed reading” of the classic “Petrine texts,” which set out the Apostle Peter’s role in the Church.

“On the basis of contemporary exegesis and patristic research, new insights and mutual enrichment have been achieved, challenging some traditional confessional interpretations,” it notes. 

One particularly controversial issue, it says, is the Catholic conviction that the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was established de iure divino (by divine law), “while most other Christians understand it as being instituted merely de iure humano” (by human law). 

But the document says that new interpretations are helping to overcome “this traditional dichotomy, by considering primacy as both de iure divino and de iure humano, that is, being part of God’s will for the Church and mediated through human history.” 

Another enduring obstacle is the First Vatican Council. But the document says that here too there has been “promising progress,” thanks to ecumenical dialogues that seek “a ‘rereading’ or ‘re-reception’” of the Council’s decrees. 

This approach, it says, “emphasizes the importance of interpreting the dogmatic statements of Vatican I not in isolation, but in the light of their historical context, of their intention and of their reception — especially through the teaching of Vatican II.” 

Addressing this point in a June 13 Vatican News interview, Cardinal Koch said that since Vatican I’s “dogmatic definitions were profoundly conditioned by historical circumstances,” ecumenical partners were encouraging the Catholic Church to “seek new expressions and vocabulary faithful to the original intention, integrating them into an ecclesiology of communion and adapting them to the current cultural and ecumenical context.”  

“There is therefore talk of a ‘re-reception,’ or even ‘reformulation,’ of the teachings of Vatican I,” the Swiss cardinal explained. 

3) Summarizing the document’s third section, the text says that fresh approaches to disputed questions have “opened new perspectives for a ministry of unity in a reconciled Church.” 

Crucially, the document suggests there is a common understanding that although the first millennium of Christian history is “decisive,” it “should not be idealized nor simply re-created since the developments of the second millennium cannot be ignored and also because a primacy at the universal level should respond to contemporary challenges.”

From the ecumenical dialogues, it’s possible to deduce “principles for the exercise of primacy in the 21st century,” the text says. 

One is that there must be an interplay between primacy and synodality at every level of the Church. In other words, there is a need for “a synodal exercise of primacy.”

Synodality is notoriously difficult to define, but the document describes it at one point as “the renewed practice of the Synod of Bishops, including a broader consultation of the whole People of God.” 

4) Among the practical suggestions for a renewed exercise of the ministry of unity, the document highlights the possibility of “a Catholic ‘re-reception’, ‘re-interpretation’, ‘official interpretation’, ‘updated commentary’ or even ‘rewording’ of the teachings of Vatican I.” 

It also stresses appeals for “a clearer distinction between the different responsibilities of the Bishop of Rome, especially between his patriarchal ministry in the Church of the West and his primatial ministry of unity in the communion of Churches, both West and East.”  

“There is also a need to distinguish the patriarchal and primatial roles of the Bishop of Rome from his political function as head of state,” the text says, adding: “A greater accent on the exercise of the ministry of the pope in his own particular Church, the Diocese of Rome, would highlight the episcopal ministry he shares with his brother bishops, and renew the image of the papacy.” 

The new document appears months after Pope Francis restored the title “Patriarch of the West” among the list of papal titles in the Vatican’s annual yearbook, after it was dropped by his predecessor Benedict XVI. 

Commenting on that development at the June 13 Vatican press conference, Cardinal Koch said that neither Francis nor Benedict XVI offered detailed explanations for the change. 

“But I am convinced they did not want to do something against anyone, but both wanted to do something ecumenically respectful,” he commented. 

Another suggestion is for the Catholic Church to further develop its practice of synodality, particularly through “further reflection on the authority of national and regional Catholic bishops’ conferences, their relationship with the Synod of Bishops and with the Roman Curia.” 

Finally, the text mentions a request for regular meetings among Church leaders at a worldwide level, in a spirit of “conciliar fellowship.”

What does that mean?

Well, frankly, I don't grasp it.

Without having read it, I sort of vaguely grasp that the Pope, who recently revived using the title Patriarch of the West, is sort of modeling this view of the Papacy on the Churches of the East, sort of.  In the East, each Church is autocephalous, with the Patriarch of Constantinople holding a "first among equals" position.  I don't think the Pope intends to fully go in that direction, but vaguely suggest that the synodal model of the East should apply more in the West, and that as Patriarch of the West, perhaps the entire Apostolic Church could be reunited, and perhaps even sort of vaguely include the "mainline" Protestant Churches, by which we'd mean the Lutheran and Anglican Churches.

It sort of interestingly brings up the Zoghby Initiative of the 1970s, in which Melkite Greek Catholic Church bishop Elias Zoghby sought to allow for inter-communion between the Melkites and the Antiochian Orthodox Church after a short period of dialogue.  His position was, basically, that this reunion could occur with a two point profession of faith, those being a statement of belief in the teaching gof the Eastern Orthodox churches and being in communion with the Bishop of Rome as the first among the bishops "according to the limits recognized by the Holy Fathers of the East during the first millennium, before the separation."

Thing was, there really were no limits.  In the first thousand years before the separation it's pretty clear that the Pope was head of the Church.  Indeed, from the earliest days that was recognized.

Bishop Zoghby's initiative went nowhere and he's since passed on, but this sort of interestingly recalls it.  His effort received criticism from figures within Orthodoxy and the Roman Catholic Church, although a few Eastern Catholics admired it.  Here, I'd predict that conservative Catholics are not going to be too impressed.

Additionally, a recent problem barely noticed in the West is that the recent focus of Pope Francis on blessings for people in irregular unions, which is widely interpreted to mean homosexuals, has not only upset conservative Catholics, but Eastern Churches in some cases have backed away from the Catholic Church.  One Eastern Bishop who was getting quite close to Rome came out and stated that Fiducia Supplicans basically prevented any chance of reunion with his church.

This gets back to some things we've noted here before.  One is that this Papacy seems very focused on Europe, although the fact that this also looks towards the East cuts against that statement a bit.  Having said that, a good deal of the early focus of this Papacy was on European conditions, which have continued to be a problem as the German Church is outright ignoring Pope Francis to a large degree.  Loosening the role of the Papacy may stand to make those conditions worse, and probably won't bring the mainstream of the Lutherans and Anglicans in.  Which gets to the next point.  The Reformation is dying.

Seemingly hardly noticed is that the real story in Christianity, to a large degree, is the rapid decline in the old Reformation Protestant churches.  People like to note "well Catholic numbers are declining too", but frankly real statistical data shows that while there may be a decline, it's slight.  Indeed, what appears to be occurring in the Western World is that conversions to Catholicism offset departures. That's not growth, but what that sort of shows is the decline in cultural affiliation with a certain religion and, at least in the US, the end of the byproduct of the Kennedy Era Americanization of the Church.  Indeed, at the same time this is going on, the growth in Catholic conservatism and traditionalism in younger generations has grown too big to ignore.¹ At the same time, Eastern Catholic Churches are gaining members from outside their ethnic communities, and the Easter Orthodox are gaining adherents from conservative Protestants who are leaving their liberalizing denominations.

This is a study document, so it's not a proclamation.  Twenty years ago or maybe even ten, I would have thought this a really good idea.  My instinct now is that its time has passed.  While conservative Catholics hold their breaths about the upcoming next session of the Synod on Synodality, there's sort of a general sense of marking time here as well, and indeed, an uncomfortable one.  The current Papacy has is very near its end, everyone knows this, but it puts out a lot of material that's of a highly substantive, and often controversial, nature.  Much of this is going to have to be dealt with after this Papcy concludes. Both the volume and speed at which things are occurring may reflect this, as that knowledge operates against the clock, but it might also be a reason to slow down at the Vatican level, or even put a bit of a time-out on things.

Footnotes:

1.  Indeed, I was at Confession recently on an average Saturday and noted that as I was there a  young woman with her two children were waiting in front of me, with both children saying Rosaries and the mother wearing a chapel veil. Her mother came in and also was wearing one, and a stunning young woman of maybe 20 came in also wearing one.  Every woman, and most of them were young, were attired in that fashion.

It's a minor example, but very notable.  This is becoming common.