Blog Mirror: Luther Classical College of Casper breaks ground on Casper’s first Lutheran college

 

Luther Classical College of Casper breaks ground on Casper’s first Lutheran college

A new development in Casper.

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.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, May 4, 1924. Plans for the First Presbyterian Church.

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, May 4, 1924. Summer Olympics. Not oustin...: 

Locally, plans were being advanced for the construction of the Presbyterian church, which were published in one of the papers.

The church ultimately constructed would look a big different.

City Park Church, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

This is City Park Church, and was formerly, as noted below in the original entry, the First Presbyterian Church.

This Presbyterian Church is located one block away from St. Mark's Episcopal Church and St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church, all of which are separated from each other by City Park. 

The corner stone of the church gives the dates 1913 1926. I'm not sure why there are two dates, but the church must have been completed in 1926.

This century old church became the home of the former First Baptist Church congregation on February 28, 2020, and as noted in a thread we'll link in below, had been experiencing a lot of changes prior to that.

The original entry here was one of the very first on this blog and dated at least back as far as January 25, 2011.  While the architecture hasn't changed at all, with the recent change our original entry became misleading to an extent.

Related Threads:

Grace Reformed at City Park, formerly First Presbyterian Church, Casper Wyoming

Changes in Downtown Casper. First Presbyterian becomes City Park Church, the former First Baptist Church.

And, as can be seen, events have resulted in some denominational shifting.

Lex Anteinternet: Resurrection Sunday?

Lex Anteinternet: Resurrection Sunday?: 

Resurrection Sunday?

Before this past weekend, I'd never heard Easter called Resurrection Sunday.  I heard it twice on the weekend shows, once from a conservative Republican in Congress, and once from a centerist Democrat in Congress.  The latter, an African American Congressman from South Carolina, said off hand "we're supposed to call it Resurrection Sunday now".

I don't like it.

Apparently, what this relatively newly coined word is, is part of a widely held angst that everything on the liturgical calendar might have some pagan origin.  This is silly.

The classic one is that Christmas falls on top of a Roman holiday, which is particularly odd given that the Roman holiday so noted first came into existence after the first Christian texts noting the celebration of Christ's Mass in December.  The deal with Easter, apparently, is a fear that it is tied to the northern European goddess Eostre, who was the goddess of fertility and the goddess of the dawn.  People like to say that this is "German", but in actuality it would be Norse, with the Anglo-Saxons having close connections with the Scandinavians even before they became illegal immigrants on Great Britain.  The Venerable Bede made that claim, and he lived from 672 to 735, so in relative terms he was sort of close, but not all that close, to when the Angles, Saxons and Jutes had first shown up.

Bede further claimed that British Christians, using the Saxon calendar, starting calling Easter by that name as it occured in Eosturmonath (April) or Eastermonað.  If so, it also helps explain Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny, although it wouldn't explain why a bunny would leave boiled eggs all over, or why Easter Eggs are so famously associated with the East, as in Ukraine and Russia, either.

That the egg custom is really old and seems to ahve been adopted from a Persian Nowruz tradition actually would serve to explain the eggs. . . The tradition was old by the time it showed up on Great Britain.

The Easter Bunny is more obscure.  Rabbits had no association with Eostre, however.  About all we really know about the Easter Bunny is that it was a German Lutheran custom, and originally it played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide, making the rabbit sort of scary.

Back on topic, and be all that as it may, some believe that the word Easter comes from an old Germanic, in this in context it would be Low German, probably Saxon, word for "east" which also, if fully extended to "Easter" grammatically meant to turn to the east. When the etymology is really examined, this is in fact the most likely explanation.  Some who have looked at it go further and claim that the word came from a Latin loan word (of which there are a surprising number in German), that being Auster, which sounds a lot like Easter, but actually had sort of a complicated meaning, the most simple being south, but the word apparently having other more complicated implications associated with the dawn.  However, some would say, including me, that instead Auster and East have the same Indo-European root word, that being  *h₂ews-, which means ‘dawn’, with the sun rising, of course, in the East. Those people claim the Germanic East is a variant of the root *h₂ews-ro-, whereas Auster is the Italic reflex, from *h₂ews-teros.  And it goes from there.

The latter sounds complicated, but this too is more common than we imagine.  Certain elemental Indo-European words have ended up in all the Indo-European languages, twisted and turned over the millennia, which all make sense if their roots are explained, but which don't seem to when you first hear them.  Indeed, there's the added odd widely observed phenomenon that certain words in other languages that depart widely from your native language, almost instantly make sense when you hear them, an example being Fenster, the German world for "window", which is fenestra in Latin and fenêtre in French.  Just my hypothesis on the latter, but it's like because of some deep Indo-European root that we otherwise understand.

Anyhow, for what it is worth, as Americans tend to believe that things are uniquely centered around us, the German word for Easter is Ostern.  I note this as I've seen repeated suggestions that only in English is the word "Easter" used.  This isn't true.  Ostern, which has the distinct "Ost", or "East" in it, is pretty close, suggesting that the directional origin of the name is correct.  I.e., in German Ostern derives from the Ost, the German word for East.

Likewise, the Dutch, who speak a closely related Germanic language, call the day Ooster.  The Dutch word for East is Oosten.  So here too, the Dutch word for Easter derives from the Dutch word for East.

Applying Occam's Razor, and keeping in mind that English is a Germanic language related to German and Dutch (Dutch more closely), leads us to the conclusion that the word "Easter" derives from the cardinal direction East, particularly when the cousin Germanic languages of German and Dutch are considered, which they usually are not.  Once that is done, and it is realized that at about the time the word Easter was first used all the northern German languages were much closer to each other than they are now, and they are still pretty close, logic pretty much dictates this result.

Most language groups do not, however, call Easter that.  The word seems to behave the way German words did and do, and has "East" as its major component, hence "East"er, "Ost"ern and Ooster.

The Scandinavian goddess explanation is considerably more complicated in every fashion.

Most non-Germanic language speakers, and some Germanic language speakers, don't use a word anything like this, of course.  

Latin and Greek, with together with Araamic, would have had the first word for the Holy Day, and they have always called Easter Pascha (Greek: Πάσχα). That is derived from Aramaic פסחא (Paskha), cognate to the Hebrew פֶּסַח‎ (Pesach), which is related to the Jewish Passover, all of which makes both linguistic, historic, and religious sense, although in the latter case one that causes some irony as we'll explain below.  Pascha actually shows up in English in at least Catholic circles, as the term Paschal is given frequent reference in relation to the Last Supper, but also beyond that in relation to Easter.

Of interest, the Swedish word for Easter is Påsk, the Norwegian Påske, the Danish Påske and the Icelandic Páskar.  If the word derived from a Scandinavian goddess, we'd expect the same pattern to hold in Scandinavia, which was the origin point of Eostre, although that would not obviously be true.  Instead, in all of Scandinavia, the word derives from Pascha.

The Frisian word for Easter is Peaske, which is particularly interesting as Frisian is extremely closely related to English and some people will claim, inaccurately, that it's mutually intelligible.  Peaske is obviously from Pascha, but it's almost morphed into Easter, which could cause some rational explanation if Easter is just a badly mispronounced Peaske. Wild morphing of words can occur, as for example the Irish Gaelic word for Easter derives from Pascha, but is Cháisc, which wouldn't be an obvious guess.

Given the German and Dutch examples, however, the Frisian word almost certainly doesn't suggest that Easter came from Pascha.

The use of Pascha makes sense, as every place in Western Europe was Christianized by the Latin Rite of the Church, which would have used a Latin term for the Holy Day.  The difference is, however, they weren't all Christianized at the same time.  The Anglo-Saxons encountered Christianity as soon as they hit the British shores in the 400s, probably around 449. At that time, most of the residents of the island were British or Roman Christians, and they would have sued the Latin term.  Conversion of the invaders is, however, generally dated to the 600s.

The Scandinavians were however much later.  Christianity appeared in Scandinavia in the 8th Century, but it really began to make major inroads in the 10th and 11th Centuries.  When the Church sent missionaries to the Saxons, it remained a much wilder place than it was to be later.  Scandinavia was very wild as well, in the 10th and 11th Centuries, but Scandinavian roaming was bringing into massive contact with the entire Eastern and Wester worlds in a way that sort of recalls the modern impact of the Internet.  They changed quickly, but they were, ironically, more globalist and modern than the Saxons had been a couple of centuries earlier. They also became quite devout, contrary to what Belloc might imagine, and were serious parts of the Catholic World until the betrayal of Gustav Vasa.

But here's the added thing. What if, in spite of the lack of evidence, the day's name in English recalls Eostre or Eosturmonath (Eastermonað"? So what?

Well, so what indeed.  It really doesn't matter.

Early Greek and Aramaic speaking Christians took their term for the day from Passover, or rather פֶּסַח‎ (Pesach).  So they were borrowing a Jewish holiday for the name right from the onset.  Nobody seems to find this shocking or complain about it.  As far as I know, Jews don't complain about it.  It simply makes sense.

And borrowing holidays that preexist and even simply using the dates is smart.  The date of Easter doesn't fit this description at all, but if the word does, borrowing it would have been convenient if a holiday existed that was celebrating rebirth.  Explaining concepts through the use of the familiar is a smart thing to do, and indeed in the US this has been done with a civil holiday, Cinco de Mayo, which Americans inaccurately believe is a Mexican holiday celebrating Mexican independence, and which have made the We Like Mexico holiday.

So, if Eostre had a day, or if the day in Saxon was named after the month named after her, it really doesn't matter.

Indeed, on that latter note, we've kept the Norse goddess Frig in Friday, the Norse God Thor, in Thursday, and the Norse God Woden in Wednesday., in English, and we don't freak out about it. Sunday originally honored the Sun, and we don't find Evangelical's refusing to use the word Sunday, as it's also the Christian Sabbath

So what of Resurrection Sunday?

I'm blaming Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

Great Britain's experience in the Reformation was nearly unique, in some ways.  Really radical Protestant movements, such as the Calvinists, took root in some places on the European continent, but by and large they waned, leaving isolated, for the most parts, pockets in areas in which they were otherwise a minority.  Looked at from a distance, the initial round of Protestant "reformers" didn't seek to reform all that much.  Luther continued to have a devotion to the Blessed Virgin, and Lutheran services today look pretty Catholic.  

In England, however, official religions whipped back and forth.  King Henry VIII didn't want a massive reform of theology, he wanted to instead control the Church, but things got rapidly out of hand.  After him, the Church of England struggled between being very Catholic in outlook and being a "reformed" church.  

Cromwell came up as a childhood beneficiary of the theft of Church property in the form of the dissolution and appropriation of the monasteries.  He evolved into being a radical sola scriptura Calvinist and saw the suppression of the Catholic and Anglican Churches come about.  Under his rule, religious holidays were made illegal under the theological error of sola scriptura.  After his death, the English Restoration brought a lot back, but it was never able to fully bring back in Calvinist who had adopted a rather narrow provincial English, or Scottish, view of their Christian faith, filtered through the language that they spoke.  They heavily influenced Christianity in the Americas, and their influence continues to carry on, which explains how they can adopt a view that ignores the other Germanic languages and which, in seeking to give a new term to Easter, ignores the fact that the logical choice would be the Aramaic word פסחא (Paskha) which would appear in the Bible as it would have applied to Passover, or the Greek word Πάσχα, Páscha, which means Easter and Passover.  So modern Evangelicals have inherited the Puritan narrow focus, ignored the other Germanic language words, and ignore the original Greek and Aramaic ones, in order to come up with a new one with no history of use whatsoever.

Let's just stick with Easter.

Lex Anteinternet: Holy Week.

Lex Anteinternet: Holy Week.:  

Holy Week.

 This is Holy Week.  It commenced yesterday with Palm Sunday, which we noted  yesterday:

Palm Sunday

 

Zdzisław Jasiński Palm Sunday 1891.

From City Father:

Palm Sunday

In those countries which were spared the cultural impact of the Reformation, at least directly, at the entire week is one of celebration and observance.  In a lot of those places, people have the whole week off.  Some of Spanish and Central American friends, for example do.

Well, in the English-speaking world we've had to continue to endure the impact of Cromwell and all his fun sucking, so we'll be headed to work instead.

Lill'uokalani Protestant Church, Haleiwa, Hawaii.

 

2021 Reflections: The Church Edition.

We've posted commentary here from time to time, but what we've never done is to post a commentary of the resolutions/reflections type.

Indeed, it's extremely presumptuous of us to do so.

We're going to take a stab at it anyhow.

First we might note that in this area there's always less going on that those with Überangst would like to believe, and those in the press seem to believe.  That's important to note, and frankly this is true not only of stories involving religion, but stories involving most things.

Having said that, we're going to do that in part as this has been an extraordinary year in almost every way. 

The Coronavirus Pandemic rages on although most of the mask mandates in the United States have stopped.  A debate exists in society on the vaccinations mostly based on some people having erroneous views on the science of the vaccines (they are effective, they are not going to kill you, and they're necessary if we're going to stop this pandemic).  Some people have interjected moral issues into it, however, taking positions valuing personal liberty over collective good, a classic item for philosophical debate, and some taking a position based on the DNA of long ago aborted fetuses in the vaccine, a moral issue.  The United States switched Presidents bringing in a Sunday and Holy Day observing Catholic whose John F. Kennedyesque moral outlook somehow allows him to be a proponent of abortion, and tossing out what would appear to be a nominal Presbyterian serial polygamist who, on the other hand, took policy positions that very much advanced the cause of life.  The country abandoned a two decade old war in Central Asia and left that land in the hands of absolute Islamic fanatics.

And that's just a start.

So we dive in.

We're going to start in an odd place, perhaps, that being. . . Latin.

Immaculate Conception Church, Rapid City South Dakota

This is Immaculate Conception Church (formerly chapel) in downtown Rapid City, South Dakota. This Catholic church is somewhat unique for the region in that it says its masses, one daily and one on Sunday morning, in Latin, using the Tridentine Mass.

The church obviously once had another name, as the corner stone reveals, which appears to have been St. Mary's, but I do not know the history of this particular church.

Latin, we often hear, is a dead language, but its sure not dead in some corners of the Internet.  Indeed, people who track such things inform us that in fact Latin is enjoying a bit of a revival in some ways as the Internet has brought people who like Latin together from far away corners of the universe.

That's one thing, but another is that starting with Pope St. John Paul the Great there was a revival of Latin in the Catholic Mass.

Most people don't track this, of course, but Pope Paul, during the Vatican II era, but not as part of Vatican II, as so often erroneously believed, decided that the Mass needed to be put back in the vernacular.

Did I just say "back"?

Yes, I did.

He did more than that, in fact regarding the Mass.  A new Mass came out, which is the Mass that most Latin Rite Catholics know. And frankly, it was an improvement over the the old Latin Rite Mass that existed at the time.

Indeed, in my view, a large improvement.

Now, starting off with the history of this, the very first Masses in history were said in Aramaic.  Some still are, for those in the Chaldean Rites of the Catholic and Orthodox churches.  Very soon thereafter, they were said in Greek, and some still are, rather obviously.  Indeed, early in the Church's history, the Mass or Devine Liturgy was pretty uniformly said in the local language, whatever that might be.  One of those languages was Latin, as the Church came early to the Rome.

The collapse of the Roman Empire was coincident with a huge expansion of the Latin Rite, which left the Church with a big problem.  There were all sorts of new languages and peoples to deal with, and so the Church kept Latin, a language that came to be spoken by most learned people (it was the language of education for centuries) and which crossed borders and ethnicities.  But by the 20th Century this was rather obviously no longer true.  And at the same time, the need to keep the Mass limited in terms of the parts of the Canon of the Bible it used were no longer there as well. 

So it was time for a New Mass, the Novus Ordo.

This seems simple enough, but something can't be done one way for a very long time and then have everyone accept the change right away, if at all.  And at the same time, the "Spirit of Vatican II", rather than what Vatican II actually decreed, came into the Church in a major way in some places and predictably enough there was a reaction in some quarters.  Indeed, depending upon what the reaction focused on, not all of it was invalid by any means.

This gave rise to a very strong, but quite small, dissention movement that started in France, the SSPX, which determined to continue to use the Tridentine Latin Mass.  Never large, but nonetheless large enough to be a concern, and also on the edge of other radically conservative groups, Pope St. John Paul the Great worked to avoid having them go into full schism.  Ultimately, a compromise developed, which Pope Benedict expanded on, allowing the use of the Latin Tridentine Mass, with a set of guidelines and requirements.

In the meantime, as the original flag bearers of the "Spirit of Vatican II" started to pass away, and as the Internet came in and made self Catechesis relatively easy, conservatism and traditionalism in the Church strongly revived.  Abuses in the Novus Ordo, or as we would now say the "Ordinary" form of the Mass were corrected. Some traditional elements were reinserted.  Translations were fixed where they had been hastily made.

All of which made Catholic "liberals", a now aging but still present group, unhappy.

Indeed, during this period a sharp divide between a minority "liberal" wing of the  Church and the more conservative bulk developed.  Beyond that, however, that began to focus with the development of not only strongly Traditional Catholics, but Radical Traditionalist, or Rad Trads, as they were termed.  Rad Trads came close to having the same views as the now permitted SSPX in various ways.  Over time, they started to reintroduce on a private basis things that had long disappeared, mantillas being an example.

This would be all more or less fine, but then came in Pope Francis.

Pope Francis has been termed a "liberal" or "progressive" Pope by those who don't like him, but its really not true.  He's a South American Pope, and that shows.  He's highly conservative in some ways, and not in others.  On economics and environmental matters, he's upset American traditionalist and even simply orthodox Catholics who sometimes tend to confuse economic conservatism and an opposition to environmentalism, which are largely political matters, with religious ones.  Added to that, American Catholics tend to be ignorant on Catholicisms traditional views in both of these areas, and would be surprised, for example, that the Popes have criticized capitalism on more than one occasion.  

They're not the only ones to get confused, however, as "progressive" Catholics, also confused, ahve figured that they're back in vogue and have run with it whatever they can.  As an example, even though Pope Francis has referred to homosexuality has been influenced by the Demonic, American Catholic liberals are constantly on the edge of their seats expecting the Pople to endorse homosexual coupling. That's not going to happen.

Anyhow, this long-winded introduction is for this reason.  In the last couple of years the disaffected Rad Trads have been edging closer and closer towards schism, while the grump European progressives, principally lead by the German bishops, have done the same.  The Pope, while it seems obvious to neither, is acting to reign them both in.

With Rad Trads, the Tridentine Mass  went from being a beautiful license, to sort of a flag of opposition.  At the same time, individuals who started off  being loyal orthodox Catholics, like Taylor Marshall and Patrick Coffin, have edge up on allegations that Pope Francis is not a valid Pope, with Coffin being so suggestive in that area that its impossible not to basically attribute that claim to him, whether or not he really believes it.  The Pope, having had enough, as determined to pretty much end the license for the Tridentine Mass in Latin.

He can't be blamed.

The Catholic Church is the Universal Church. The old form of the Mass, while beautiful, was poorly understood in modern times by most, and the Ordinary Form is actually more inclusive of the full faith.  And hence our first set of reflections and resolutions

1.  The Mass, more traditional, but not Latin.

It's time to really abandon the Tridentine Mass, but it's not time to bring back 1970s style Guitar Masses either.  The direction we were headed, which reflected the perfection of the Ordinary Form, is one we need to get back to.

That means Rad Trads need to come back in. They have a place, but they can't be pushy about their views either.  You can't make women, for example, who are there in their jeans feel that they're doing something immoral because they aren't wearing a full length skirt and a mantilla.  And the Mass can, and frankly normally should, be in the vernacular, which people actually speak and know.

At the same time, the aging boomer crowed that saw alter rails come out in the 70s and the like needs o stop trying to change fundamentals, and even dogma.  Converting the Catholic Church into a liberal branch of the Episcopal Church won't work for anything.  It sure hasn't worked for the Episcopal Church, which is dying.  Orthodoxy is the future of the Catholic Church because it is the Catholic Church.  Traditional elements should be brought back in where they can sensibly be (where are those alter rails?), and beyond that, a real fundamental needs to be reinforced and accepted, which is:

Just because you have a deep attachment to sin, doesn't make it okay.

That's a hard lesson to learn, but its true.

I can no more put up wall to wall pinups and excuse it by saying that I have a deep attraction to women than those who have a deep attraction to the same gender, in the same way, can claim that "well, I'm born that way". 

We've been warned by St. Paul, and we were always told that we were going to have to carry a Cross.  We were also told that, in most places, in most times, most people aren't going to like us.

That's the way that is, and everyone, from Rad Trads to German Bishops, need to come to that realization.

2.  Stop trying to change dogma and an appreciation of existential nature.

See above, I covered it there.

Still, once again, nobody said being a Christian was going to win you lots of popularity contests.  Not so.

The oddity is, however, that the most observant people are the happiest.  They simply are, and that's for a simple reason. As ultimately, we look towards a home that we don't have, as we lost in the Fall, we're happiest the closer we get to our true natures. 

This is true, I'd note, of everyone in everything.  Vegans ranting on street corners are miserable people as they're living artificial lives.  Men and women living the Sex in the City lifestyle go home miserable and can't find solace in their lives as, at the end of the day, materialism and hedonism isn't our nature.  The freest people are those who have conceded Devine laws and live close to them, no matter what their station in life may be.

3.  Your economics shouldn't be your religion

This is something I've noted before, and while the upper two comments are mostly Catholic ones, this one is universal for all Christians.

I'm constantly amazed by how people confuse their faith with their economic well-being. They aren't the same.  Not even close.

This obviously takes on the "health and wealth" Gospel, but frankly, it isn't Christian.  Christ never promised anyone wealth, or health.  

In modern terms, insisting, as some do, that capitalism is equivalent with Christianity is self delusional and harmful.  Even more harmful is the economic version of the "made that way" line of thinking.  Just as I'm employed as a Widget Maker doesn't mean that Widget Making must therefore be benign because I'm a Christian.

4.  Sound science and Sound Christianity are not incompatible.

This should be obvious, and it's a traditional Catholic view, but if something seems very well established in science the chances of it contradicting Christianity are nill. If there seems to be a conflict, something needs to be looked into.

The best example of this is evolution, of course.  Some Christians are absolutely insistent that evolution can't be true because of Genesis.  Anyone looking into the original Hebrew version of it, however, will come away with the conclusion that it certainly can be.  

Taking extreme positions such as this and making them hills to die are counterproductive.

At the same time, just because we can do it, scientifically, doesn't license it.  There are lots of examples of his, and this too is a very of the "made that way" argument.  I usually here this in the form of "well God gave me common sense and therefore  (fill in personal sin here).  

5. Holding co-religious accountable.

One of the warnings of the New Testament is that people can and do find their own personal gain so predominant that they'll choose it over their faith when difficult decisions come.  Did the rich man go away and give his possessions to the poor?  We don't know.

A current example of this is the example of political power.  It's very clear that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, among other Catholics, are advocating something the Church regards as a gave evil. We don't know the state of their hearts on abortion, but their willingness to ignore the Church for political position is pretty abundant.

The Church has for too long been willing to turn a blind eye to this.  It's time to stop.

Indeed, here we can take a lesson from the Protestant Churches which have very much turned a blind eye to numerous sins in order to seem to keep themselves relevant.  It hasn't worked for them either.  Here, they need to recover the ground they've lost by going back and reviewing what they did.

As part of this, however, a wider net needs to be cast, in my view.  In one local Parish, there's a politician who has been deep in the lies about the past election being stolen.  Perhaps he really believes it, but there's no reason that the sinfulness of telling lies can't be pointed out.

Here too, I suppose, is a place where lay Catholics have a role.  The Catholic on Sunday, or Christian on Sunday, and "my own views the rest of the week" type of attitude have no place in the life of Christians.  There's no reason to be in people's faces, but when encountered with something like this, there's no reason to simply ignore it by saying nothing either.

6.  Smelling like the sheep

Pope Francis has repeatedly said that the pastor should smell like the sheep.  He's right.

I don't have the same thing in mind that he does by noting this, however.

I'll note that while I fully understand why things everywhere were shut down early in 2020, I wasn't in favor of that in regard to churches.  I've changed my mind and I think that step right.  But closing the door of the Church doesn't mean closing the Church.

Different pastors handled this differently, but there's no reason whatsoever that every single parishioner or congregant in a church, mosque or synagogue, no matter what the faith was, shouldn't have received at least occasional calls of the "how are you doing variety".

Maybe some places they did.  But, at least in so far as I know, that didn't happen here.

I think the reason that it didn't happen here is that the American Catholic Church is used to a strong parishioner base, and the parishioners have, in substantive ways, supported the Church in every fashion. This remains the case.  It doesn't diminish the point, however.  Priests (and pastors, and ministers) should have reached out.  I'm sure some did, but many do not seem to have.  They should have, with "how are you doing (spiritually and physically), do you need anything (spiritually and physically)".

For a long time, I've had that feeling about the clergy in general.  I know that they live a vocation, which most of us do not, and that the demands on their time are monumental, but I fear that they fall prey to the same thing old lawyers do.  We know all lawyers, and a few clients, we talk to lawyers, and that's our lives. That's part of the reason the law becomes disconnected from reality.  

With Priests, in my view (and pastors and ministers), they ought to at least all do something that puts them out in the public, no matter how uncomfortable that may be, and not with the handful of people who go out of the way to be in contact with them.  Go fishing. Go hunting.  Go hiking.  Go to a neighborhood bar.  Take a class on English literature or European history at the community college.  You get the point.

As part of this, and something I thought about making a separate item, any Church has to be both true to its faith and in the world of the parishioners as they really are.  Throughout the pandemic it's been easier to find information on the Bishops' website here on Bishop Hart, who was bishop long ago, and the accusations against him, than what's going on with the Church and COVID 19.  The Church should have been reaching out, as noted above, to its members, rather than putting up news items on a Bishop who served so long ago that most Catholics in the state today have no connection with him whatsoever.

7. Younger, more and more orthodox

I don't have the solution to vocations, but in the modern world what strikes me is that we need to find a way to have younger clergy, more clergy and more orthodox clergy.

If it was me, I'd retire all the Bishops, pretty much, who are older than 50.  Time, technology, and events have moved on.  And I'd look at a way of localizing, once again, religious instruction.  I grasp that this helped give rise to the Reformation, but that was before the Internet, when everything local was much more local.

And while I am very traditional, frankly I think the prohibition on married clergy needs to be reassessed.  We had them early on, and it lingered in many European localities, until the Middle Ages.

It should be obvious to all that sex is part of human nature, and it's a problem.  Sure, it can be denied, just as a varied human diet can be denied.  Everyone can deny it to the extent necessary to live an ordinary and moral life.

But not all Catholics eat a diet that comports with the original Rule of St. Benedict, and they never have.  Periods of fasting are not anywhere near as numerous as they once were, but they were never every day.  The average Parish Priest isn't subject to the Rule of St. Benedict in this fashion either, and if it were imposed clergy wide, I suspect some who have become Priests would have reconsidered as that sort of discipline isn't meant for everyone.

The original purpose of the prohibition on married clergy was to prevent the rise of a Priestly class.  I.e, the Church worried about the sons of Priests becoming Priests, and so on.  This does occur in the Rites that allow for married clergy, but it  hasn't become a problem as the Priests in those Rites aren't closely associated with a ruling class.  In the Anglican Church in England, however, it did become a problem as the clergy was one of the few categories of occupations that noble men could occupy, with the military being another.  This lead to an anemic military officer class and a clergy that wasn't respected.

In the modern West, these problems aren't going to arise.

What did arise, in the mid 20th Century, was the Latin Rite becoming a refuge for homosexual men at a time that homosexuality was despised.  It provided cover for not being married.  Such individuals were always a minority of the clergy, but it lead to problems for a variety of reasons, not the least of them being that not all of those individuals probably truly heard a call.  

In the movie Dr. Zhivago (I don't recall it being in the book) the character Laura is instructed by a Priest that flesh is strong and only marriage can contain it.  Whether Sir David Lean inserted that into the story or not, it's true.  There's a place for vows of abstinence and there always will be, but perhaps the time has come to end it as to diocesan priests.

8. Reunion

I've noted this before, but it's time to end the separation between East and West.

That will take overcoming a lot of pride and a sense that independence needs to be preserved.  But that time has arrived and that should occur.

The Latin Rite of the Church is having a big synod right now.  Personally, I think that the synod is designed to bring in the full voice of the Church in Latin American and Africa, and the result will be a strengthening of the orthodox and diminishment of European and American liberalism.  

One thing I do wish, however, is that this process could somehow include the voice of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox.  I think it's up to the West to keep inviting them in until they come in.  And at some point, they will.  It's time, in my view, to treat them somewhat like cousins who live across town and who are estranged due to a long over family argument.  If you keep calling and say "well, that was a while back, we're having a gathering on Sunday . . . "

I'd also note that this is the case for some Protestant groups at this point who are really holding out based on tradition.  It'll take a lot for them to get over this, but conservative Anglicans and Lutherans should come back in. There's really no longer any reason for them not to.

9.  Proceeding in ignorance of history.

I concluded that last item by noting an item of Protestant history, but generally, some Protestants, and Protestant culture in general no longer have an excuse for a lot of the bogus historical items they cite and need to knock it off.

Everyone who stays to a Catholic "well what about Galileo" needs to go right back to grade school without passing go as they don't know what they're talking about.  The same for any Protestant stating "well what about the Inquisition".  These are Protestant position that were developed during the Reformation by people who had to justify the positions they were taking and demonize the Catholic Church.  In an era when most people barely read, you could get away with this stuff.  You can't now.

Likewise, ignorance on the origin of the Faith.  Protestants can argue about the nature of their denominations if they wish, but nobody can cite a false history to excuse them.  The works of the Church Fathers are easily accessible at this point.  It's clear that there was one, and only one, Church at least up to the Great Schism.  One, that's it.  After that, that Church was in schism, but it was still one church. There were not multiple Christian denominations until the Reformation. A person can claim, if they can justify it, that their branch of Christianity is the correct one, or a correct one, but they can't claim it to be the original one if they aren't Catholic or Orthodox.

That's obviously a theological problem for Protestants, but it's the case.  Various Protestant denominations which are close to the Apostolic churches have their own answers for it, but when people say this isn't true, they're wrong.  In the modern age, we can't afford to be wrong.

This also stems, I'd note, back to the topic of inserting personal beliefs into your religion.  No matter what a person may wish to believe, Christ drank wine, not grape juice, and the wine served at the Last Supper was just that.  He would have eaten meat too.  When Peter heard "kill and eat", he heard "kill and eat'.  Besides that, he was a fisherman and fishermen kill fish.

10 The Americanized Exotic Faiths.

Taking a radical turn, but also along the same lines of knowing what is what, Americans adopting exotic, usually Asian, religions should know what they really hold.

This may be most evident in the case of Buddhism  American Buddhism isn't very Buddhist.  For example, American Buddhist tend to be self comforted by the thought that Buddhism doesn't have a Hell. . . except that real Buddhism does.

Things like this are one step above the "spiritual but not religious" line that some people put out, which means something completely different.  All humans everywhere have a concept of God, even though there are people who claim they do not  I've heard, for example, a person who claims to be an atheist discuss his encounter with a ghost.  You can't get to ghosts if you don't have life after death, and if you have life after death. . . 

Anyhow, what this really boils down to is that all religions have a structure. There is no unorganized religion, as the concept of the Devine implies order by its very nature.  What people who claim they're spiritual but not religious, or people who claim to dislike organized religion are stating, is they don't like the "rules".  This should suggest to them that the real inquiry is whether the rules, which are in the order, are of Devine or man made law, something that Christ himself discussed in regard to the Pharisees.  An inquiry like that doesn't take you into Buddhism, however, which is tends to be a way for Americans to adopt something with some structure over a structure which actually expects something out of you.

Be that as it may, Americans tend to do these religions disfavors by implying that they basically boil down to "it's nice to be nice to the nice".  Not so, there's a lot more to them than that.

11.  Go to Church, the Synagogue, the Mosque.

Here's a final comment, or resolution.

Whatever faith you are, Protestant Christian, Apostolic Christian, Jew, Muslim, attend.  

Modern life has made people sedentary, and it's working against us in every fashion.  It's also made us isolated in ways that are bad.  People sit alone at home, and then go to work with people who are just like them.  Indeed, the more educated a person is, the more likely that they just work with people who are just like themselves, largely with the same ideas they have.  

No church or faith is that way, to be sure.

Everything about our natures expects more out of us than we're inclined to deliver, if we can avoid it.  Get up, go out, and go.

South Goshen Community Church, Yoder Wyoming

 This is the South Goshen Community Church in Yoder, Wyoming.  I don't know much about the church, which bills itself as "non demoninational"  

Yoder is a very small town south of Torrington.

BoJo Marries and the Comments Fly.

A Medieval wedding.

Boris Johnson and his longtime girlfriend, Carrie Symonds (now Johnson) married.

So what, you may ask.  Indeed, dulled by the long 2019-2021 parade of bad news of one kind or another, that was my initial reaction, even though there's an obvious Christian point to this story from the onset, as by marrying, they're no longer shacking up, if you will, even though they certainly haven't been shacking up in quarters that could be compared to a shack.  

Frankly, as an Apostolic Christian, I'd normally have probably made a comment at some point about their living arrangements as its clearly contradictory to the tenants of the Christian faith, and even in Europe this would have been poorly regarded in almost any society up until, well right now.  Now, it pretty much produces a yawn, as do the majority of other serious religious tenants shared by all of the Abrahamic religions on a variety of matters related to sex.  I.e., this conduct is regarded as seriously sinful by all the Christian religions, Judaism and Islam.  In the modern world, it seems, Christians, including some serious ones but also a lot of nominal ones, have decided that most of what the Apostles wrote down was elective in nature and that people pretty much get a vote on what is and what isn't sinful.

More on that here later.

That's not what sparked the news, as soon became apparent.  What did, is that Johnson and Symonds married in a Catholic cathedral in a Catholic ceremony.  For people who like to be shocked, amazed, or scandalized, this was shocking, amazing, and scandalous.  And the press all over the English speaking world reacted with a giant "WHAT? How could this be?"  For example, the New York Time ran this headline:

Why Could Boris Johnson Marry in a Catholic Church?

The Guardian, a British newspaper that has made inroads into this US, ran this bizarre historically dim headline:

Boris Johnson’s outdone Henry VIII in having his third marriage blessed by the Catholic church

Apparently the writers at this British paper are historical dimwits.

The Irish Times, less dim on the topic, ran this one, which was actually interesting and informative.

Boris Johnson baptised Catholic and cannot defect from Church, says canon law

And the Times headline gets to the crux of the matter.

That didn't keep, however, an Irish priest from stating that the wedding made a "mockery" of the Church's laws.

Which it does not.

I don't know much about Johnson personally,  Or indeed, hardly at all.  And among the things I didn't know is that his mother was Catholic and he was baptized by a Catholic priest.  His mother raised him as a Catholic as a child, but when he was in Eaton, he was confirmed (rather late, if we look at North American anyhow) by an Episcopal Bishop.

And that makes him an Episcopalian, right?

Well, that depends.

Carrying the story forward, in the 1980s he married Allegra Mostyn-Owen. The couple divorced in 1993 after six years of marriage.  She's currently married to a man 22 years her junior who is a Muslim, which has lead Johnson to put Mostyn-Owen on a Muslim relations task force.  Reportedly, she's given her husband permission to have more than one wife as she is unlikely to be able to bear children and of course polygamy is a feature of Islam, although that would not be legal anywhere in Europe, in so far as I know. ^[1]. 

His second wife was Mariana Wheeler, a childhood friend of Johnson's.  They married twelve days after his first divorce and she was pregnant at the time.  Their marriage lasted seven years.

So, eeh gads, surely this is contrary to Catholic teaching, right?  I.e., his current marriage to Symonds, age 33 (Johnson is 56), just can't happen, right?

To read the press, you'd think so.  I've read everything, however, from this can't happen as Catholics don't allow divorce to this could only happen as Catholics don't recognize the marriages of other faiths.  

That doesn't grasp the interesting religious angle, however, of this at all.

In reality, all of the Apostolic faiths, as well as some of the Christian faiths that are close to the Apostolic faiths and regard themselves as Apostolic, take Christs' injunction against divorce seriously, although they don't all approach it exactly the same way.  Interestingly, and completely missed in all of this, the Church of England doesn't recognize divorce.  The mother church of the Anglican Communion, that is, regards it as invalid, just as Catholicism does, which isn't surprising as High Church Anglicans regard themselves as a type of Catholic, even if the Catholic Church completely rejects that assertion as "completely null and utterly void".

We'll get to more of that in a minute, but perhaps the most peculiar of the approaches to divorce is the Orthodox one.  The Orthodox allow more than one marriage under a vague application of a mercy principal that tolerates, in some cases, up to three marriages.  It's tempting to compare this to the Catholic concept of annulment, and indeed it is somewhat comparable, but lacking in the formality.  The basic approach, however, is that the Orthodox only recognize one valid marriage, but accept that human nature is frail and people goof up, so it applies some leeway essentially as it generally feels that the problem of sex in human nature makes it difficult not to.  I'm not Orthodox, so I could be off on this by quite some margin.

The Catholic Church doesn't recognize divorce at all.  It does apply the principal of annulments where it judges that one of the original marrying parties lacked something to make that marriage valid.  I don't' know what percentage of people who go through the annulment process obtain one, but frankly it seems rather shockingly high, which as been a long criticism of it, and a valid one in my view.  Outside of that, however, Catholics hold that once you are married, its until death.  No exceptions, save for the one noted, which would hold that the first marriage wasn't valid, and therefore wasn't really a marriage.

So how on Earth could Johnson and Symonds marry in a Catholic cathedral?

Well that leads to messy press analysis.

The Irish Times, not surprisingly, had it best. 

Contrary to what some of the press elsewhere would have it, the Catholic church fully recognizes the marriages of non Catholics, and for that matter, non Christians.  If two Muslims marry, the Catholic Church regards them as married.  Married and can't divorce is how the Catholic Church would regard it, irrespective of how Muslims may view it.

And also contrary to what some of the press is claiming, the Church also recognizes the marriages of people who are two different faith, or no faith at all.  Go down to the Courthouse and have the judge marry you, in other words, and you are married.  

So what's the deal here?

That's where you get into Canon Law.

Originally the overwhelming majority of Christians, all of whom were Catholic, married outside of a Church ceremony.  Indeed, it was extremely informal.  People just decided they were to marry, and they were.  No wedding ceremony at all.  

That first began to change with monarchs, as their marriages were also effectively treaties between nations, and they wanted it to be really clear and official in every respect possible.   But also, during the Middle Ages, things began to change with regular people as the need for marriage witnesses arose. This was principally because one member of the couple would claim they were never married, usually the man, leaving he other, usually the woman, in a very bad position.

Indeed, even with very early Christian monarchs you can see this at work.  Some early Saxon and English kings, for example, had queens who were subject to this.  Hardecanute is a famous one who married with King of England, but who had a Scandinavian queen before and during that period. What was she?  Harold Godwinson, the last Saxon king of England, had a Saxon queen who was "married in the old style" and a Welsh queen to whom he was more formally married. When  he died at Hastings, it was apparently the Saxon queen, still around, that identified his body.

This presents a series of obvious problems and the Church therefore worked to clear it up, imposing the Canon law that Christians had to be married by a priest.  This served a number of purposes, one of which was that the wedding was therefore witnesses and couldn't be simply excused away.

It would be tempting to think that the current situation came about immediately upon the Reformation, but that would be in error.  Indeed, it's important to keep in mind that at the parish level, while the fact that the Church was in turmoil was obvious, the severance wasn't necessarily immediately apparent in the pews.  All of the original Lutheran priests, for example, had been ordained Catholic priests.  No Bishops followed Luther into rebellion in what is now Germany, so there was no way to ordain valid new priests in the eyes of the Catholic Church there, but in Scandinavia things muddled on in an unclear fashion for some time and the Scandinavian Bishops did follow their monarchs into a series of murky positions.

In England, the situation in the pews was also unclear. All of the original Anglican priests had been Catholic priests and most, but not all, of the Bishops followed Henry VIII into schism.  Eddward VI took the country as far from the Catholic folds as he could, but then Queen Mary brought the country back into the Church, although without completely success.  Then Elizabeth struck a middle ground, most likely for political reasons more than anything else.  As late as the Prayer Book Rebellion, 1549, Catholicism was still so strongly rooted in the minds of average Englishmen that they revolted over the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer which the conceived of as too Protestant.

The point of this isn't to introduce a treatise on the history of religion in England, but rather to note that for average people this must have been distressing, but if they were going to get married, they still went to the same place, the Church, and the presiding cleric presided over it.  This is important to our story here as, at least in England, in spite of an outright war by the Crown against Catholicism, the Church did not prohibit Catholics from marrying in a ceremony presided over by an Anglican priest and no dispensation was required for a "disparity of cult".

Indeed, it's widely believed that as late as 1785 the man who would reign as King George IV married Maria Fitzherbert, a Catholic.  The marriage remains really murky in terms of details, as it was conducted in secret, and was arguably invalid because George IV had not obtained permission from George III, which was a legal requirement.  The marriage did not, however, require Fitzherbert to obtain permission from the Catholic Church and its believed it was conducted by an Anglian priest.  Interestingly, while George IV would later deny that the marriage was valid, and their relationship was rocky, it never completely ceased altogether and he asked to be buried with a locket containing her image.  George IV was officially married to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick in what was pretty clearly both an arranged and unhappy marriage that he did wish to terminate.  He died first.

So when, exactly, the current canon came in requiring permission for a marriage outside of a Catholic officiation, I frankly don't know.  It may not have occurred everywhere at the same time, for that matter.  Having said that, it seems to have been first mentioned as a Church law, and therefore a legal requirement binding Catholics, in 1563, so the example given above is problematic.

Note, however, that it binds Catholics.  Not other people, and the Church has never stated otherwise.  

Additionally, it binds Catholics as its a law of the Church.  In order for a Catholic to have a valid marriage, it must be presided over by a Catholic priest or there must be some dispensation.  If that doesn't occur it isn't valid, as to Catholics.

And that's what we have here.  It's not change in the law of the Church in any fashion. Boris Johnson was baptized as a Catholic and so he is a Catholic, the way that Catholics understand that.  Carrie Symonds is also a Catholic, and indeed, press comments about her routinely refer to her as a "practicing Catholic".  Her status in that regard is problematic as she and Johnson have been shacked up, which is contrary to Catholic moral law in a major way, but with their marriage, and presumably with a Confession that preceded it, that's no longer an issue of any kind.  And Symonds' views would otherwise be evident in that she had their son, born out of wedlock (see issue above again), baptized in the Catholic faith.

So, why al the fussing?

Well, for the most part at least knowledgeable Catholics aren't fussing.  Not everyone likes Johnson politically, but Catholics pretty much take a "welcome home" view towards this sort of thing.  So, the past is what its, and Boris is back. All is fine, religion wise.

Of course, some Catholics who don't know the doctrines of their own church, or who simply want to have a fit, are. But its' a pretty misplaced one.

Non Catholics can have a fit if they're predisposed to, as they don't understand the Church's law and they are often surprised to find that the Church retains its original position that as it is the original Church, which is indisputable, all others lack in some fashion. ^[2].  So this serves to remind people that the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church have a lot of similarities, but no matter what the Anglican Communion may maintain, the Catholic Church doesn't regard it as Catholic.  Of course, not all Anglicans wish to be regarded as Catholics, but some of them are offended as the fact that the Catholic Church isn't according them equivalency with the Catholicism is offensive to them.

More than that, however, a long held cultural anti Catholicism that came in with the reformation is still pretty strong in certain Protestant regions of Europe in spite of the decline of their Protestant established churches.   This is very evident in England, and is very strong in Scandinavia.  It's somewhat ironic in various ways, not the least of which is that these regions have become highly secularized and as that has occurred, the Church that has remained strong has been the minority Catholic Church, which has not only survived its long Reformation winter, but which has gained new adherents.

Does this mean that Johnson has fully returned to the Catholic fold and will be at Mass next Sunday?  Well, Catholics should hope so, and frankly so should Protestants as well. And there is some evidence that Johnson, who has lived a fairly libertine life, may in fact be taking his Christianity more seriously than he did in earlier days.  His recent address regarding the Pandemic specifically referenced Christ and his mercy, something that very few politicians would generally do, and European ones even less.

So, while people can have fits if they want to, all in all, they shouldn't.  Indeed, no matter what a person thinks of Johnson one way or another, there's reason to be happy about this development, and not just in being happy for the apparently happy couple if a person is inclined to be such.

Footnotes

1.  Having said that, I don't know if polygamy is legal in Turkey, which is obviously a Muslim majority nation, and which is in Europe, depending upon how you draw the continental lines.  Turkey has become increasingly Islamic under its current leadership but had years of aggressive secularism, so the status of Muslim polygamist marriages isn't a given, and I don't know the answer as to its status there.

2. The various Orthodox Churches also stretch back to Apostolic origins, which is why the Catholic and Orthodox Churches regard each others sacraments as valid, and also regard their separation as schismatic, depending upon which you are in, rather than an outright rebellion and departure as was the case with the Protestant Churches.