Sunday is the first and original Christian feast day. According to the Holy See’s Directory on Popular Piety:
Sunday
95. Since the “Lord’s day” is the “primordial feast” and “basis and centre of the liturgical year”, it cannot be subordinated to popular piety. Hence, pious exercises whose main chronological reference point is Sunday, should not be encouraged.
For the pastoral good of the faithful, it is, however, licit to take up on the Sundays “per annum” those celebrations of the Lord, or in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary or the Saints which occur during the week and which are particularly significant in popular piety, provided that they have precedence over Sundays in the tables published with the Roman calendar.
Given that popular or cultural traditions can sometimes be invasive of the Sunday celebration and deprive it of its Christian character, “There is a need for special pastoral attention to the many situations where there is a risk that the popular and cultural traditions of a region may intrude upon the celebration of Sundays and other liturgical feast-days, mingling the spirit of genuine Christian faith with elements which are foreign to it and may distort it. In such cases, catechesis and well-chosen pastoral initiatives need to clarify these situations, eliminating all that is incompatible with the Gospel of Christ. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that these traditions C and, by analogy, some recent cultural initiatives in civil society C often embody values which are not difficult to integrate with the demands of faith. It rests with the discernment of Pastors to preserve the genuine values found in the culture of a particular social context and especially in popular piety, so that liturgical celebration C above all on Sundays and holy days C does not suffer but rather may actually benefit.”
There’s a new YouTube video out called “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus.” It was released January 10th, and as I write this on the morning of January 14th, it’s already racked up nearly 10 million hits, so it’s definitely gone viral.
I’ve had a bunch of requests for a response, so here goes.
The video is quite painful to watch. Check it out for yourself . . .
The video is painful to watch for a number of reasons. For one, the creator–Jefferson Bethke of Tacoma, Washington–is not that great a poet. He uses weak assonance when he should use rhyme. He has non sequiturs, so his thoughts don’t flow from one another. And he can be unclear in what he is trying to say.
I’m not so interested in critiquing what he has to say on an artistic level, however. The main thing is the painful content.
He starts by asking, dramatically, “What if I told you Jesus came to abolish religion?”
This is preposterous, of course. It creates an immediate reaction of incredulity, and it causes anyone who is religious to wince. Here we go with another self-righteous, religion-bashing session.
You often hear religion dissed by people who say they are “spiritual” rather than “religious,” which implies that they are on a higher plane. Being “spiritual” is set up as a good thing, in contrast to being “religious” which is either bad or inferior by comparison. For those of us who are religious, that comes off as an insult.
This kind of claim is often made by people who don’t explicitly identify as Christians. It’s something that the unchurched or people in the New Age movement say.
Mr. Bethke does not fall into either of those categories. He’s working the “religion = bad” concept from a different angle. I don’t know that Mr. Brethke identifies himself with the “Emerging Church” movement, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he does. His whole manner of presentation suggests it, and within that context, it wouldn’t be surprising to find this kind of “Jesus vs. religion” schtick. There have been elements of that before in certain Protestant circles.
Mr. Bethke’s poem goes down a number of rabbit trails that we won’t dwell on in detail. The first occurs in the second two lines of his poem, where he takes swipes at Christians who are also Republicans. He repeats the politically liberal cliche that they identify Christianity with Republicanism. While it’s certainly true that people have a tendency to identify their political affiliation with their religious affiliation (that’s a human temptation that has been around since the days of Pharaoh or Caesar, to name just two recent god-kings), his poem really isn’t the place to go into that.
A couple of sneer-filled lines doesn’t do the subject justice, but that’s all he gives it since he immediately ditches the political discussion in favor of his anti-religion rant.
He repeats the cliche that religion starts lots of wars, which is nonsense. Religion is a powerful motivator, and thus is often invoked in wartime, but the real reasons most wars have been fought have nothing to do with it. Instead, they have to do with political control–either allowing certain political leaders to gain or remain in power (e.g., who is the rightful heir to the throne) or they have to do with gaining political control of resources (e.g., land, money, food supplies, transportation and trade routes) or they have to do with a particular leader’s ambitions (i.e., being remembered as a great man, or not being remembered as a weak man). When leaders aren’t being totally naked about those things, they dress them up with national pride or religion, but ultimately they are not at the root.
The reason political leaders invoke religion when going to war is that religion is a powerful motivator that is built into human nature, which is why religion appears in all human societies. It’s a human universal, and religion in that sense is not something Jesus came to abolish. He didn’t come to root the religious impulse out of mankind but to shape it and channel it properly (e.g., “Blessed are the peacemakers”).
Bethke’s slam on religion as the cause of war is thus a shallow, sneering cliche that fails to get to the root of the issue.
He then asks why religion builds great churches but doesn’t feed the poor.
Excuse me?
Historically speaking, the Christian Church has been the greatest, most effective charitable institution in world history! It has fed more hungry, clothed more naked, and cared for more sick than any other institution!
And if you know your Bible, as Mr. Bethke seems to, given that his speech (including in other videos) is littered with insider Christian lingo, including numerous terms and phrases from the Bible, then you know that honoring God through architecture is important as well. God has some rather particular instructions regarding the construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple. Honoring God in this way is also built in to human nature.
It reflects the love of God, just as helping the poor reflects love of man. These two goals are not at odds with one another. The Church must pursue both.
Then Bethke says “religion” tells single mothers that God doesn’t love them if they’ve ever had a divorce.
HUH???
I’d like to hear Mr. Bethke name one person who has done that. I bet he can’t. And I’m quite sure that he can’t show the existence of enough people to warrant making this a general slam on the religious community, which–to the contrary–has been instrumental in setting up crisis pregnancy centers, creating homes for unwed mothers, providing assistance to single mothers, and extending care and compassion to countless individuals who have had broken marriages–and reassuring them of God’s love!
It is unfortunate, but Mr. Bethke has chosen to repeat uninformed cliches as a way of adopting the pose of a prophet. He comes across as a spiritual poser who does not know what he is talking about as he sneers and looks down on others.
There are simply too many things in Bethke’s rant that call for a response to give them each an individual treatment, so let us look at the big picture.
What we have here is a rap-battle-inspired slam on the concept of religion in favor of what Bethke considers to be the truth, the authentic cause of Jesus.
Unfortunately, the sneering, self-important, self-righteous tone of a rap battle does not lend itself well to this purpose (not that he’s actually rapping, but that’s what he’s aping).
It’s true that Jesus did have some stinging things to say about the hypocrites of his day. St. Paul was similarly harsh with his opponents. But it’s all too easy to justify our own self-righteousness and arrogance by appealing to these passages. One is playing with fire when one goes in this direction.
Mr. Bethke’s rant against the judgmental who put on an artificial show of piety is filled with both judgment and affected piety. There’s a moment in the video where he says, “Now I ain’t judging, I’m just saying quit putting on a fake look.”
Bethke, let’s be honest. You are so totally judging.
Your whole video is filled with scorn and sneer. Each line drips venom on other people.
And as for “putting on a fake look” (a clumsy set-up for a rhyme on the word “Facebook”), your whole schtick–the rap-battle insults, the disjointed poetry, the awkward assonance, the attitude of the earnest, hip nonconformist–the whole thing is as artificial or “put on” as one could wish.
This isn’t who you really are. Not at your core. This is you giving a performance.
And it’s a performance that, just coincidentally, shows how pious and “real” you are compared to your religious peers.
Who is putting on pious show here? You’ve got some mighty wide phylacteries, Mr. Bethke.
But let’s move past that and get to what really sets people off about your video: The dissing of religion.
What is religion?
Bottom line: Religion is a set of beliefs about the divine and/or the afterlife. All religions (atheism included) make some kind of claim about one of those two subjects. Most make claims about both.
But Jesus didn’t come to abolish beliefs regarding the divine and the afterlife. He came to proclaim them.
In another sense, religion is the life and the actions that flow from those beliefs. So what did Jesus think of religion in that sense?
Well, according to the Bible (James 1:26-27),
26 If any one thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this man’s religion is vain. 27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
Notice that here religion is spoken of as something positive, as something to aspire to, and something that can be pure and undefiled before God.
And it requires things of us. Bridling our tongues. Visiting orphans and widows. Keeping ourselves unstained from the world.
We needn’t quibble about these points, and we all fail in all of them, but they are things we are supposed to undertake, by God’s grace, in order to please God.
Jesus did not come to abolish these things.
And because he didn’t, the word “religion” has become part of the Christian heritage. It is something that has become part of how we as Christians identify ourselves–something that goes to the core of who we are.
We Christians have a religion. We Christians are a religion. We Christians practice religion.
So if you are a Christian, Mr. Bethke, if you love the Bible and the Church the way you say you do in your video, then who are you to overturn 2,000 years of Christian history and start ranting about how Jesus came to abolish religion and that religion and Jesus are contrary to one another.
What arrogance!
And what ignorance of the Christian heritage that has been bequeathed to you!
Now, I can’t blame you for some of that. If your YouTube username–bball1989–is any indication, you are 22 or at most 23 years old.
You haven’t been alive long enough to get a broad perspective on history, and you may well not have been exposed to or encouraged to read broadly in the history of Christianity.
Being angsty and wanting to rant against the religious hypocrisy you perceive around you is also often part of being 22. I mean, a lot of us have been there.
And many of us look back on that time in our lives with a bit of embarrassment. I know I do. As I’ve gotten older, I continually realize all the more just how much I don’t know, and how I need to be more careful in what I say and what I claim.
You are also likely to look back with embarrassment on this, only on a larger scale since you now have almost 10,000,000 hits–and undoubtedly will have far more than that by the time your video’s popularity is played out.
Things may seem awesome now. For example, you have a recent Facebook post saying:
My buddy just called me and said he was driving 60mph down the freeway and a car came up along side him and on the entire back window in shoe polish was written “YouTube the video ‘Why I Hate Religion, but Love Jesus” LOL God is good! Man. It’s a craze right now but He is faithful and He is my judge! It’s all Grace!
But already you are seeing some of the harm that your video can result in, as you quickly followed up with a post saying:
If you are using my video to bash “the church” be careful. I was in no way intending to do that. My heart came from trying to highlight and expose legalism and hypocrisy. The Church is Jesus’ bride so be careful how you speak of His wife. If a normal dude has right to get pissed when you bash His wife, it makes me tremble to think how great the weight is when we do it to Jesus’ wife. The church is His vehicle to reach a lost word. A hospital for sinners. Saying you love Jesus but hate the Church, is like a fiancé saying he loves his future bride, but hates her kids. We are all under grace. Look to Him.
Just as you can’t separate the Church from Jesus, you can’t separate religion from Christ and his Church.
It can’t be done, and it’s foolish to try.
If you want to rant against legalism and hypocrisy then call them by their names. Don’t go on a futile quest to get people to start using the term “religion” in an unfamiliar way that is, frankly, contrary to the way it’s used in the Bible.
Religion is something very, very important to people, and telling them that Jesus opposed religion is not only preposterous, it’s offensive–particularly the way the claim is presented in your video.
So ditch the sneer, ditch the mocking, self-righteous attitude toward your fellow believers, and show some consideration for them and for their feelings regarding the word “religion”–feelings which are, frankly, more attuned to the way Scripture uses the word than yours apparently are.
Today is Saturday of the 1st week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Epiphany, and the liturgical color for today is white.
Saints & Celebrations:
Today, January 14, there is no special fixed liturgical day in the Ordinary Form.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Felix of Nola, priest and martyr, who died in A.D. 312. This celebration is a commemoration.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, confessor, and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 368. It is a Class III day.
25. In the fourth and fifth centuries, a greater sense of the sacredness of times and places begins to emerge. Many of the local Churches, in addition to their recollection of the New Testament data concerning the dies Domini, the Easter festival and fasting (cf. Mark 2,18-22), began to reserve particular days for the celebration of Christ’s salvific mysteries (Epiphany, Christmas and Ascension), or to honor the memory of the martyrs on their dies natalis or to commemorate the passing of their Pastors on the anniversary of their dies depositionis, or to celebrate the sacraments, or to make a solemn undertaking in life. With regard to the socialization of the place in which the community is called to celebrate the divine mysteries and give praise to the Lord, it must be noted that many of these had been transformed from places of pagan worship or profane use and dedicated exclusively to divine worship. They became, often simply by their architectural arrangements, a reflection of the mystery of Christ and an image of the celebrating Church.
Now Catholic New Agency is reporting that an effort is underway to fix it:
“I made a design for the sculpture that wasn’t executed well in the foundry,” explained the creator of the artwork, Italian sculptor Oliviero Rainaldi.
“It is not that we have come up with a new statue,” he told CNA on Jan. 10. “We’re correcting those details that weren’t executed well” so that “it will be more faithful to my original idea.”
The redesign will involve replacing the head, modifying the Pope’s cape and touching up the outer coating of paint, since the bronze has oxidized to a light shade of green. The statue will also be raised 15 inches on a new platform, and its lighting will be improved.
. . .
Rainaldi told CNA in a June 2011 interview that his avant garde design is intended to manifest the inner-life of Pope John Paul II, instead of presenting a life-like photographic image.
“The man within was more interesting to me than the man outside,” he said, describing a man who was “lacerated” inside “not only by his infirmity but also by his mission,” the sculptor said. Rainaldi added, “this man showed he was beautiful for others reasons beyond his appearance.”
Color me skeptical, but it doesn’t sound to me like Rainaldi “gets it.”
If you want to make a John Paul II memorial homeless person shelter then make a homeless person shelter and slap a sign on it. Don’t make something that positively invites an internet caption contest.
Speaking of which . . . how would you caption this monstrosity?
Today is Friday of the 1st week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
In the Extraordinary Form, this is the season after Epiphany, and the liturgical color for today is white.
Saints & Celebrations:
Today, January 13, in the Ordinary Form, we celebrate St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, confessor, and doctor of the Church, who died in A.D. 368. It is a Class III day and an optional memorial.
In the Extraordinary Form, we celebrate the Baptism of Our Lord. It is a Class II day.
24. In the fourth century, given the new politico-social situation of the Church, the question of the relationship between liturgy and popular piety begins to be raised consciously in terms of adaptation and inculturation rather than solely in terms of spontaneous convergence.
The local Churches, guided by clear pastoral and evangelizing principles, did not hesitate to absorb into the Liturgy certain purified solemn and festive [ritual] elements deriving from the pagan world. These were regarded as capable of moving the minds and imaginations of the people who felt drawn towards them. Such forms, now placed at the service of the mystery of worship, were seen as neither contrary to the Gospel nor to the purity of true Christian worship. Rather, there was a realization that only in the worship of Christ, true God and true Savior, could many [ritual] expressions, previously attributed to false gods and false saviours, become true [ritual] expressions, even though these had derived from man's deepest religious sense.
22. The relationship between Liturgy and popular piety is ancient. It is therefore necessary to begin by surveying, even rapidly, how this relationship has been experienced down through the centuries, since it will often help to resolve contemporary difficulties.
Christian antiquity
23. The Apostolic and post-apostolic periods are marked by a profound fusion of the [ritual] realities which are now called Liturgy and popular piety. For the earliest Christian communities, Christ alone (cf. Col 2,16) was the most important [ritual] reality, together with his life-giving word (cf. John 6,63), his commandment of reciprocal charity (cf. John, 13,34), and the ritual actions which he commanded in his memory (cf. 1 Cor 11,24-26). Everything else – days and months, seasons and years, feasts, new moons, food and drink… (cf. Gal 4,10; Col 2,16-19) – was of secondary importance.
Nevertheless, the signs of personal piety are already to be found among the first generation of Christians. Inspired by the Jewish tradition, they recommended following the example of incessant prayer of Jesus and St. Paul (cf. Luke 18,1; Rm 12,12; 1 Thes 5,17), and of beginning and ending all things with an act of thanksgiving (cf. 1 Cor 10,31; 1 Thes 2,13;Col 3,17). The pious Israelite began the day praising and giving thanks to God. In the same spirit, he gave thanks for all his actions during the day. Hence, every joyful or sorrowful occasion gave rise to an expression of praise, entreaty, or repentance. The Gospels and the writings of the New Testament contain invocations of Jesus, signs of christological devotion, which were repeated spontaneously by the faithful outside of the context of Liturgy. It must be recalled that it was a common usage of the faithful to use biblical phrases such as : "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me" ( ); "Lord if you wish, you can heal me" (…); "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom" (…); "My Lord and my God" ( …); "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (..). Innumerable prayers to Christ have been developed by the faithful of every generation on the basis this piety.
Until the second century, expressions of popular piety, whether deriving from Jewish, Greco-Roman or other cultures, spontaneously came together in the Liturgy. It has already been noted, for example, that the Traditio Apostolica contains elements deriving from popular sources.
The cult of martyrs, which was of great importance for the local Churches, preserves traces of popular usages connected with the memory of the dead. Some of the earliest forms of veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary also reflect popular piety, among them the Sub tuum praesidium and the Marian iconography of the catacombs of St. Priscilla in Rome.
While always most vigilant with regard to interior conditions and the prerequisites for a dignified celebration of the sacred mysteries (cf. 1 Cor 11, 17-32), the Church has never hesitated in incorporating into the liturgical rites forms drawn from individual, domestic and community piety.
In this period Liturgy and popular piety, either conceptually or pastorally, did not oppose each other. Both concurred harmoniously in celebrating the one mystery of Christ, considered as a whole, and in sustaining the supernatural and moral life of the disciples of the Lord.
Catholic Weekend welcomes Jimmy Akin to talk about the newest affiliate of SQPN, The Jimmy Akin Podcast. We learn a little bit about Catholicism, a little bit about Jimmy, and a whole lot about Square Dancing. That
Today is the 2nd Sunday of Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
Here are this week’s items for 
Today is Saturday of the 1st week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
Today is Friday of the 1st week in Ordinary Time. The liturgical color is green.
