We Are Church?

A reader writes:

How would you respond to a deacon during a homily who said:  "If everyone were to leave this building, it would no longer be a Church–the people are the Church?

I’d say that he has a point but he’s expressing it in a rather boneheaded way.

It’s true that, THEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, the Church of Christ is the body of people who are incorporated into Christ and that particular churches (e.g., the church of the Diocese of San Diego) are bodies of people who are incorporated into Christ and united to their bishop.

But it’s also true that Christian tradition across MULTIPLE LANGUAGES–INCLUDING LATIN–has received the usage of referring to specific buildings used by the Church as "churches" (Latin, ecclesiae).

Now, of these two uses the first is the original and more important, but human beings of normal intelligence normally have no trouble allowing words to have TWO OR MORE senses and being able to distinguish which sense is being used in what circumstance.

For an individual to pedantically insist on one usage to the exclusion of another usage that has DEEP roots in Christian tradition for his own pet theological concerns is to reject the customs and linguistic identity markers of the Christian community and MAY serve as a sign that he has a problem adhering to that community as it has traditionally understood itself.

It’s the verbal equivalent of a religious not wearing a habit, and it’s no surprise that many dissidents have highly stressed the idea of the Church as a community of people to the exclusion of other senses (e.g., church buildings, church hierarchy). Some–and I’m not accusing your deacon of being a dissident–have even banded together under the ungrammatical banner "We Are Church."

When one encounters such brazen defiance of established Christian linguistic custom, it’s enough to make one want to say, "TALK NORMAL, YA IDJIT!"

I don’t suggest that you should seriously say that to your deacon, though. If you are looking for something practical to say to him, you might try something like this:

Dear Deacon:

I was disturbed by your recent homily in which you said that "If everyone were to leave this building, it would no longer be a Church–the people are the Church."

While it is true that the original and more important meaning of the word "Church" refers to a body of people, Christian tradition has long received the usage of referring to buildings used by the Church as "churches." This is the case even in Latin. Most people have no trouble distinguishing the senses that different words have and are smart enough to handle both the idea of the Church as a people and the idea of churches as buildings.

You should be aware that when you criticize a deeply-embedded Christian usage of a term, it is quite disturbing to the faithful. Since you are rejecting the linguistic customs of the Christian community, it raises doubts in the faithful’s minds about how well you adhere to that community as it has historically understood itself.

If you don’t want to raise such doubts in the minds of the people to whom you are trying to minister, you may wish to find a way to express the fact that the Church is primarily the body of people incorporated into Christ without attacking long-held word usages of that community. After all, referring to church buildings as "churches" is part of "the Pope’s English."

Giant Mudpots

In my previous post I showed you the Salton Sea mud volcanoes, which are ULTRA cool. (YOU should go there. REALLY!)

I also knew there was another, similar mud-active field in the area, but it took me a while to find it (especially since I was approaching it from the wrong direction and didn’t have my copy of the directions with me).

I eventually got there and discovered that, unlike the previous field I visited, it didn’t have any mud volcanoes. (AWWW!)

It did, however, have GIANT mudpots. (WOO-HOO!)

In fact, the main mudpots were so large that they’d built a fence around them with a viewing platform.
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I took this photo from a distance, over the fence. But you’ll notice in the picture below that one slat in the fence is missing . . .
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I mean, that’s just an OPEN INVITATION, soooooo . . .

Continue reading “Giant Mudpots”

Mud Volcanoes! YEE-HAW!!!

100_1090_400x299The Salton Sea mud volcanoes were the thing that prompted this trip.

Once I found out about them, I knew I had to go.

I mean: Mud volcanoes? You gotta go see that!

Any volcanoes are cool, and ones made especially of mud are unique.

Not only because they’re made of mud but also because they are much SAFER than regular volcanoes when they’re errupting, so you can get much closer to them and even CLIMB UP ON THEM (like I did!) while they’re errupting.

WARNING! Impending cool pictures!

Continue reading “Mud Volcanoes! YEE-HAW!!!”

Obsidian Butte

100_1050_400x299My first stop (when I FINALLY got to it) was Obsidian Butte.

Obsidian Butte is one of five lava domes in the Salton Sea Geothermal Field.

The part of it that is exposed above ground is about 90 feet tall, but it goes much, much deeper underground.

MORE INFO HERE FOR GEO-GEEKS.

Here (left) I am parked part way up it.

The thing that drew me to Obsidian Butte was the obsidian–and the pumice.

Continue reading “Obsidian Butte”

NCR: “Sympathetically Yours”

The National Catholic Reporter Distorter has sent a note of condolence to homosexual clergy on the occasion of the Vatican instruction about the ordination of homosexuals.

"To all those in positions of leadership in the Roman Catholic church [sic] who also happen to be homosexual, we offer our commiseration and sorrow that once again you have been forced to hear your sexuality, an element intrinsic to your humanity, described as an objective disorder.

"This time the phrase appears in the document with the ridiculously unwieldy title: ‘Instruction concerning the criteria of vocational discernment regarding persons with homosexual tendencies, considering their admission to seminary and to Holy Orders.’ In other words, the document on gays and seminaries.

"The description is repugnant, of course, to all those in the church [sic], gay and straight, who understand that homosexuality is, in the overwhelming number of cases, not a chosen orientation but as essential a part of one’s nature as heterosexuality is for others."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Envoy Encore for the link.)

Half The Adventure

100_1048_400x299Yesterday’s trip out to the Salton Sea region was quite eventful.

Rather than just doing a simple lap around the sea, this time I was going to certain specific points of geological interest. This meant getting off the main road and onto some really tiny ones.

The area I needed to go into was farm country, so what I was driving on were basically unpaved access roads designed to let the farmers have access to their fields.

On roads like that, you generally go pretty slow because they’re rough and you’re kicking up a ton of dust and pebbles.

It’s interesting when two drivers meet coming in opposite directions, because you’ll have to drive in his dust wake and he’ll have to drive in your dust wake. You approach each other carefully, too, because the roads are so thin.

Almost nobody who isn’t a farmer is out on these roads, so if you happen to be wearing a cowboy hat and driving a pickup then you get a friendly wave of recognition as a member of the local community as you pass the other driver–even if you happen to be a visiting apologist who’s here for the geothermal anomalies.

These roads are so deserted that some of them are one lane. In fact, some of them are one lane MUD PATHS.

What’s more, some of them (or parts of them) DON’T EVEN EXIST.

Y’see, I discovered that what the roads actually ARE and what the maps SAY THEY ARE ain’t quite the same.

It seems that a planning commission or somebody laid out a nice square grid of roads to allow access the fields, but they didn’t take into account the canals and such that were already there. As a result, when the builders tried to impose the grid over the existing area, they hit some problems–like a street supposed to go over a canal where there ain’t no bridge for it.

As a result, the locals took some . . . uh . . . liberties with the way the roads were supposed to be laid out. After all, they knew where the canals and things were and these roads are so little used that anybody who could be expected to be using them would know how to get where they’re going.

There wasn’t even any need to . . . um . . . tell the planning commission about the exceptions that were made. So the maps got made as if the original grid exists.

That’s all fine until a visiting apologist shows up to see the local geothermal anomalies. . . .

Continue reading “Half The Adventure”

A New Underground Railroad

Brokenchain

Pro-life advocates were doing too well by comparing abortion to chattel slavery of the antebellum United States. It must have worried Screwtape to see such a powerful analogy on the pro-life side, so he put out a memo to Lower Management and the R & D department Down Below has finally come through with their spin. Their Father Below must be proud.

"I volunteer with a local group called the Haven Coalition that offers free overnight home stays to women who come to New York for late-term abortions. Adeena, whose name has been changed to protect her privacy, is 24 years old and 24 weeks pregnant. She’d caught a Greyhound from Pennsylvania earlier that day, and spent the afternoon at a clinic in midtown getting part one of an abortion that will be completed tomorrow.

[…]

"’Can I ask you something?’ she inquires. ‘Why you doing this?’

"’You mean sharing my place with you?’

"I tell her I’m upset that people like her have such a hard time getting abortions, and besides, I remember being young and being (more than once) in a similar fix. I don’t tell her about the differences: how I always had Blue Cross Blue Shield and never went past seven weeks."

GET THE STORY.

Surprisingly enough, since most groups like this take pride in their activities, I wasn’t able to find a web site for the Haven Coalition. (Screwtape and his minions must be getting better at instructing the hairless bipeds under their thrall to disguise some of their activities, although the guardian demon of the writer of the article for New York Magazine is probably in for a roasting later.) I did, however, find this tidbit about the group on a site that bills itself as protecting "choice":

"Haven Coalition: Haven Coalition is a network of volunteers who open their homes to low-income women forced to travel to New York City for abortion procedures. To find out more information or learn how you can volunteer, send an email here."

Oh, and be sure to check out the logo of ProtectChoice.org: an angry woman with an upraised fist. Says it all.

Ask Not For Whom The Alarm Sounds

No human group has a monopoly on sophistry. The tendency to rationalize what we want to do but know is wrong is universal among humans.

It’s no suprise, then, to find

THIS STORY FROM ISRAEL.

According to it, a new law will go into effect next year that will hook timers up to people’s respirators. The timers will be equipped with (though the paper doesn’t call it that) a dead-man switch.

No really!

Periodically an alarm will sound, and if you DON’T override the alarm then it will turn off the respirator and the patient will be euthanatized. (That’s why it’s a dead-man switch. You’ve got to keep interacting with it or the device changes it’s behavior. Normally dead-man switches are used for fail-safe purposes, but in this case it’s being used for a fail-deadly purpose, making the name "dead-man" bitterly appropriate.)

The reason for this rigamarole is to circumvent the "Thou shalt not kill" (or "Thou shalt not murder") requirement. Certain strands of Jewish religious law forbid taking the life of a patient, and so a system has been devised to allow a machine to do the killing instead of a person.

It’s a way of having your euthanasia and eating it, too.

It’s also pure and simple rationalization.

It doesn’t eliminate the immorality of the homicide, it just changes the mode by which the homiciders do their work. Instead of them directly flipping a switch to kill the patient, they first install an egg timer on his life and then they refuse to re-set the egg timer. That doesn’t get around the problem.

Sure, the person who installs the egg timer can say, "Hey, I’m not killing him. I’m just setting up this egg timer." And then the person who refuses to re-set it can say, "Hey, I’m not killing him. I’m just not re-setting that egg timer."

But the situation is the same as if the first person wheeled the patient into an air-tight room and said, "Hey, I’m not killing him; he’s got some air in here for a while" and the second saying, "Hey, I’m not causing him to suffocate; I’m just not opening the door to let in more air."

Or, if you prefer a little more science-fiction in your example, it’s like one person setting up a GIANT KILLDROID in the patient’s room and another person refusing to keep hitting the DO NOT KILL switch on the KILLDROID.

I’m sorry, but these folks’ actions would STILL amount to homicide.

Nevertheless, I could see this kind of rationalization being used in the U.S. someday. Israel just got there first.

I do want to briefly treat something else the article mentions, though, that is more specifically Jewish: It mentions Sabbath timers. These are the same kind of timer (i.e., they activate if you don’t hit the dead-man switch), only they are used to do things like turn lights in a house ON during the Sabbath (rather than turning respirators OFF) since in some circles it is considered breaking the Sabbath to turn the lights on.

That’s TOTALLY DIFFERENT morally, and I want to point that out.

Now, I don’t agree with the severe interpretation of God’s law that would constitute flipping on a light switch as work and thus a violation of the Sabbath. Neither do I mind that there is someone at the power station who has to work on the Sabbath. Even the priests work on the Sabbath, and guys at the power plant is one of those functions that needs doing (whether you have a droid turning on your lights or not). It’s like if your sheep falls in a pit on the sabbath, it’s okay to get him out. (NOTE: Sheep do this ALL the time. They’re REALLY dumb and helpless.)

But there is a BIG DIFFERENCE between having a droid turn on you lights on the Sabbath and having a droid kill your patient.

The point of Sabbath legislation (however it is interpreted) is not to keep you from having light but to keep you from working so that you can rest. Doing the labor to set up a lightswitch droid on Thursday does not cause you to do work on the Sabbath. You get to rest when you’re s’pposed to and you work when you’re s’pposed to. You’re just doing a little extra work to make your rest more enjoyable.

But the point of anti-killing legislation IS to keep people from being killed, and so setting up a killdroid on your patient’s respirator DOES violate the purpose for which the legislation is given.

There’s thus a big difference between morally between using a killdroid and using a lightswitch droid–and not just in the gravity of the actions they perform (killing someone being a lot worse than turning on lights) but in the morality of SETTING THEM UP IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I didn’t want the mention of Sabbath timers to confuse this as a uniquely Jewish issue. Medical killdroids are just wrong no matter who is using them as part of a "La, la, la, la; I’m not killing you; la, la, la, la" gambit.

NOTE: For simplicity’s sake I have not broached the question of how the Jewish Sabbath relates to Sunday and what Christians are allowed to do on Sunday. Neither have I broached the question of whether the person on the respirator is required to be on the respirator in the first place. I’m assuming that the use of the respirator IS morally required in a particular case for getting at the morality of using a killdroid to shut it off. In other cases its use may not be morally required, in which case no killdroid would be needed to shut it off morally. That’s a separate debate that I didn’t want to have here.