Mr. Bill Moyers Responds

As previously indicated, equal space would be given for any response that Bill Moyers chose to send me in response to the reply that Dr. E. Calvin Beisner made to the demands Mr. Moyers issued through his lawyer.

I recently received the following e-mail:

There have been posts on your site about the exchange between Bill
Moyers and Dr. Calvin Beisner.  Attached is a PDF of the latest email
sent from Bill Moyers.  As of the time I am emailing you, Dr. Beisner
has not responded to the attached email.  We ask that you post it so
that your visitors can have a complete picture of their correspondence.
Thank you.

Best,

Rick Byrne
Director of Communications
Public Affairs Television

I therefore excerpt a portion of Moyers’ e-mail equal in length to what was excerpted from Beisner’s newsletter. Following it will be a link to the original PDF:

—–Original Message—–
From: Moyers, Bill
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2006 3:21 PM
To: Calvin Beisner
Subject:

Dear Calvin Beisner:

As this weekend passed and there was no response from you to my urgent request that you retract the lie that you have been spreading about me, my anger gave way to sorrow. There was only silence from you as your defamation raced across Cyberspace. By Sunday evening I had concluded that you were waiting for the damage to accumulate, knowing that with the Internet, a lie circles the earth instantly while truth stumbles to its feet.

And this saddened me. I had not wanted to believe that you are just as eager as your allies on the Right to practice the polemics of personal destruction. I knew that you were the designated spokesman on environmental matters for the religious wing of the political right, which is why they sent me to you. But I came to Florida in good faith, and I left believing that if you and I had such a cordial conversation, perhaps the sorely-needed dialogue among evangelical Christians in America might actually be possible. For so long the invective of the Falwells, Robertsons, and Dobsons has poisoned relations with other Christians. The transformation of Christianity into a political religion – a weapon of partisan combat – weighs heavily on the soul of democracy. I read Ann Coulter, listen to Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage – and I do not recognize the God they are talking about or the people they demonize, myself included. The great heart of Jesus seems missing from their worldview. The Golden Rule is tarnished and twisted. The Bible is turned into a partisan tract. And the Beatitudes are blasphemed. The profound themes of our historic faith – justice, mercy, love, compassion, redemption, and forgiveness – are swept away in the toxic dust of their vituperation. The propagation of the Gospel – the Good News – has been replaced by the polemics of personal destruction. As I listen and read all this, I think to myself: If this is what the world sees and hears of our faith today, no wonder Jesus weeps.

CONTINUE READING IN ORIGINAL PDF.

Lay Initiatives

Ed Peters has often pointed out that worthwhile initiatives in the Church are frequently started by lay people and only later taken up by the clergy.

Here’s another example of that principle.

L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, THE SEMI-OFFICIAL VATICAN NEWSPAPER.

EXCERPT:

Cardinal Bertone said "that it is due to some lay faithful, animated by a strong missionary motivation," that the newspaper "was able to take its first steps and begin its activity with courage, presenting the genuine face of the Church and the ideals of liberty that she proposes and incarnates."

The cardinal said the "succession of historical events shows that, in the past as in the present, to spread the Gospel message in all realms of society, to promote and defend the ideals of authentic liberty, truth, justice and charity, the Church needs the action, creativity and charism of the laity."

And given L’Osservatore Romano’s venerable age of 145, the lay initiative that started it was long before Vatican II and in an age in which Catholics even more than today reflexively allowed clerics to undertake religious initiatives.

Tridentine Mass Update

John Allen has written a number of pieces recently regarding what he is hearing concerning the rumored document on the Tridentine Mass that Pope Benedict is reportedly preparing.

HERE’S THE FIRST PIECE,

in which Allen discusses the possible scope of the document and how it might be a significant redefinition of the state of play on the topic of the Tridentine Mass, yet fall short of the "universal indult" that is hoped for by many.

HERE IS THE SECOND PIECE,

in which Allen reports on French bishops who are distinctly cool toward the celebration of the Tridentine order of Mass.

AND HERE IS THE THIRD PIECE,

in which Allen talks with the head of the English-language International Commission on English in Liturgy, who sees the forthcoming (and much better!) English translation of the current order of Mass as potentially diminishing demand for the former order.

I don’t know what the document B16 is preparing (if any) may contain, but y’all know where I stand: I favor a generous celebration of the former order of Mass, I think that there are practical barriers that–even in the event of a universal indult–will significantly hamper even a universal indult in resulting in the Tridentine order being widely celebrated, and–to introduce an element I haven’t commented on before–I think that a better translation of the current order of Mass could indeed result in a more reverent celebration of the Mass and thus a less sharp choice between the former and present order on the part of the faithful.

Back To Life

Michael J. Fox, who really rocked as Marty McFly of the Back to the Future films (as creepy as some elements of them were–particularly the first) has recently issued an advertisement supporting chopping up embryonic humans to harvest their stem-cells so that a cure might possibly be found for debilitating diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, from which Mr. Fox suffers (as the stalwart defender-of-life John Paul II did).

HERE’S MR. FOX’S AD.

But Mr. Fox is not the only individual weighing in on this question.

The following is a web ad produced by Scott Ott of Scrappleface.

It rocks.

(CHT: Southern Appeal.)


MORE.

“Bread”

A reader writes:

I am an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and one of the
things that grates on me is when people refer to Jesus as "the bread"
or "the wine", rather than something such as "his most precious body
and blood".  However, in scripture there are references as well that it
seems one could use to support a symbolic meaning of the Eucharist:

Luke 24:35:
Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Acts 2:42, 46:
They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.

46
Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes. They ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart

Do these verses refer to the Eucharist?  If so, why would the
scripture writers use the term "bread" and not something more
descriptive of what is actually taking place?

These passages–particularly those in Acts–may refer to the Eucharist, but it is not clear to me that any of these passages, in their primary, literal signification refer to the Eucharist. The expressing "breaking bread" is a well-known idiom referring to simply eating a meal, particularly given the fact that bread was the principle constituent of diets in this period of human history–to the point that in Greek the ordinary word for bread (arton) is the same as the word for "food."

I cannot rule out the possibility that in each of these cases what is being referred to is the sharing of an ordinary meal. This is particularly the case with the one from Luke, which occurred so closely after the Crucifixion that (given that Cleopas and his companion did not recognize Jesus) it could well have been an ordinary meal rather than a celebration of the Eucharist (which Cleopas and his companion may not have been empowered to celebrate, anyway).

I thus don’t know if these texts raise the issue that you are asking about.

If they don’t, however, others do.

In 1 Corinthians 10, for example, we read:

16: The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a
participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it
not a participation in the body of Christ?
17: Because  there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all  partake of the one bread.

St. Paul clearly indicates that consuming "the bread" of the Eucharist involves "a participation in the body of Christ," so the issue of the Real Presence is not in question. He indicates that "the bread" is "the body of Christ." He is so serious about this that he warns against profaning it in the strongest terms in chapter 11:

27: Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the
Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and
blood of the Lord.
28: Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
29: For any one who eats and drinks without  discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.
30: That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. 

   

Because of these biblical usages, I do not think that Catholics should scruple at references to the consecrated elements as "bread" and "wine" as long as these are understood correctly. St. Paul uses such terminology without diminishing in any way the reality of Christ’s Presence in the sacrament–to the point that he warns people against profaning it lest they die.

What one must recognize in such usages is that they are spoken (or written) according to the language of appearances rather than the language of reality. In reality, what is before us is the Body and Blood of Christ, but according to our senses–the appearances–what is before us looks and tastes like bread and wine.

God meant for us to live with both ends of this duality, held in tension: Sensing one thing but recognizing in faith the presence of something else.

Since God expects us to live with this duality, acknowledging both the appearance and the reality, and since he did not mandate a unique mode of language to accomodate the duality but instead allowed the divinely inspired Scriptures to speak of the elements according to both aspects of the duality, we must be prepared to receive and correctly understand both kinds of expressions.

Today we have a special kind of vocabulary that we can use to express the language of appearances. Philosophers call it "phenomenological language." We use phenomenological language when we describe something according to how it appears, without addressing the question of what it is. Thus we can talk about the sun rising, without failing to recognize that the Earth is a sphere (not a flat surface above which something else rises) that actually moves around the sun instead of visa versa.

In the same way, we can phenomenologically speak of the consecrated host as "bread"–the way St. Paul does–without failing to recognize the reality of the Real Presence.

We thus must be prepared to accept either phenomenological language (the language of appearances) and ontological language (the language of realities).

Of course, some today may be unclear on the reality of the Real Presence, and when we encounter someone with such a defective understanding, we must strive to correct him.

Similarly, there are sacramental and liturgical dissents who, one suspects, refer to the Eucharist as "bread" and "wine" because they have a defective understanding of the realities this sacrament involves. It is quite understandable that one feels uncomfortable with their using such language, and it is legitimate to question them about what they mean, but the mode of language itself is not prohibited, for Scripture itself uses it.

 

One note about the passages the reader cites: Regardless of what the primary literal sense of these texts might be, the Church early on recognized a reference to the Eucharist within at least the spiritual sense of these texts, and so it is legitimate today to appeal to them in Eucharistic contexts.

GodBlogCon Begins!

By the way, just a note reminding those in the L.A. area that I’ll be speaking at GodBlogCon 2006 Friday morning (9 a.m.) and Saturday morning (10:30 a.m.).

I hope y’all’ll join me and other Christian bloggers (including Hugh Hewitt and La Shawn Barber) for the event.

The bigger the Catholic turnout we can raise for the event, the better.

GET THE STORY.

 Godblogcon

P.S. I’ll try to blog from the convention itself if I can!

Post-Synodal Exhortation Near?

B16’s promised post-synodal exhortation following the Synod on the Eucharist last fall is expected out soon, with November being a commonly speculated timeframe. There was some worry that it might take longer because it took the drafting committee that prepared the first version of the document for the pope a long time to complete its work–to the point that the pontiff himself publicly commented on the delay (ouch).

Now news sources are reporting that the release of the document is "imminent."

EXCERPTS:

Citing informed sources at the Vatican, I Media reports that Pope Benedict XVI will soon release his apostolic exhortation on the Eucharist. The Holy Father reportedly was reviewing a final draft of the document late in August.

The imminent release of a papal document on the Eucharist would be noteworthy under any circumstances. But in light of the reports that Pope Benedict is preparing another document on the use of the Latin Mass, the document will be even more anxiously awaited. Some Vatican-watchers have surmised that the Pontiff will release his motu proprio on the Latin Mass in conjunction with the apostolic exhortation on the Synod.

The informed Vatican sources cited by I Media say that the papal document will be quite similar to the list of final propositions endorsed by the Synod fathers after concluding their discussions in Rome last October. In a break from ordinary Vatican practice, the Synod released that list of 50 propositions in an "unofficial" Italian-language statement last October 22. The "official" Synod conclusions, in Latin, were given to the Holy Father.

Pope Benedict, respectful of the collegial authority of the Synod, has made relatively few changes to the text approved by the Synod fathers, sources report.

That would not surprise me at all. Not only does B16 wish to emphasize collegiality in his pontificate but if he were not already in substantial agreement with the 50 propositions that the synod wrote, he would not have taken the unusual step of publishing in the first place.

If you’d like to read my own commentary on the 50 propositions,

LOOK HERE.

(They’re in reverse numerical order, in keeping with the way they were blogged. My apologies for failing to do the last five propositions; my memory is that I had to go out of town.)

The next synod of bishops is going to be devoted to the Word of God, and I’ve seen early reports on it. It’s one I hope folks’ll keep in prayer for it could do significant good . . . or not.

EXCERPT:

Meanwhile the ordinary council for the Synod met in Rome earlier in October to prepare a working document for the next full meeting of the synod, scheduled to take place in Rome in October 2008. The subject will be "the Word of God in the life and mission of the Church."

The Synod council is now working on the lineamenta, the first working document for the Synod discussions. Once that is complete– with a final document expected to be approved by the Synod council in January 2007– the lineamenta is circulated among the world’s bishops for their comments. On the basis of their suggestions a new document, the instrumentum laboris, is drawn up to serve as the basis for the Synod discussions.

GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

Soldiers At The Service Of Peace

They have a lot of conferences over in Rome about . . . well, all kinds of stuff. Shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. Everything from soup to nuts.

I’m not always sure how necessary or valuable some of these conferences are, but here’s one I can really get behind:

The fifth international congress of military ordinates is focusing on the theme "Soldiers at the Service of Peace."

The president of the congress, being held in the Vatican from Oct. 23-27, is Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

He is being assisted by Father Giulio Cerchietti, head of the congregation’s central office for the pastoral coordination of military ordinariates.

As they saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes (a slight exaggeration, but not much of one), and soldiers definitely need pastoral care.

I’m also glad–among much of the reflexive peace-at-any-costs language that we encounter in some ecclesiastical circles–a recognition of the Catechism’s reality-based statement that

Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of
the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably,
they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of
peace (CCC 2310).

Amen.

GET THE STORY.