Godbeat

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Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offered modern arguments defending an ancient faith

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Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offered modern arguments defending an ancient faith

A typical Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks speech would open with a self-deprecating jab at long-winded rabbis and then flow into a blend of Hebrew texts, science, law, literature, current events and the scriptures other faiths.

When the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom died on Nov. 7 at age 72, after battles with cancer that began in his 30s, the Prince of Wales said: "His immense learning spanned the secular and the sacred, and his prophetic voice spoke to our greatest challenges with unfailing insight and boundless compassion. His wise counsel was sought and appreciated by those of all faiths and none."

Most of all, Lord Sacks was known for using modern information and insights to defend ancient truths. One famous address, at a 2014 Vatican conference on marriage, began with fish mating in a Scottish lake 385 million years ago before charting humanity's rise from polygamy to monogamy, including some awkward biblical dramas.

Before this speech ended with a standing ovation, the rabbi explained that his goal was to defend the “most beautiful idea in the history of civilization," the concept of love as the origin of new life.

"What made the traditional family remarkable, a work of high religious art, is what it brought together: sexual drive, physical desire, friendship, companionship, emotional kinship and love, the begetting of children and their protection and care, their early education and induction into an identity and a history," he explained.

“Seldom has any institution woven together so many different drives and desires. … It made sense of the world and gave it a human face -- the face of love. For a whole variety of reasons, some to do with medical developments like birth control, in vitro fertilization and other genetic interventions, some to do with moral change like the idea that we are free to do whatever we like so long as it does not harm others, some to do with a transfer of responsibilities from the individual to the state … almost everything that marriage once brought together has now been split apart. Sex has been divorced from love, love from commitment, marriage from having children and having children from responsibility for their care."

Lord Sacks was part of the Modern Orthodox movement and wrote two dozen prayer books and works about science and spirituality, as well serving as a commentator on BBC Four's "Thought for the Day." He became chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in 1991, holding that post until 2013, Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 2005 and he entered the House of Lords in 2009.

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Memory eternal: The passing of a charismatic bishop with a big voice and an extended family

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Memory eternal: The passing of a charismatic bishop with a big voice and an extended family

Episcopal bishops in the 1980s were already used to urgent calls from journalists seeking comments on issues ranging from gay priests to gun control, from female bishops to immigration laws, from gender-free liturgies to abortion rights.

But the pace quickened for Bishop William C. Frey in 1985 when he was one of four candidates to become presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. A former radio professional, Frey was known for his bass voice and quick one-liners. His Lutheran counterpart in Colorado once told him: "You look like a movie star, sound like God and wear cowboy boots."

Other Denver religious leaders sometimes asked, with some envy, why Episcopalians got so much ink.

"I can't understand why some people want the kind of media attention we get," he told me, during one media storm. "That's like coveting another man's root canal."

A Texas native, Frey died in San Antonio last Sunday (Oct. 11), after years out of the spotlight. In addition to his Colorado tenure, his ministry included missionary work in Central America during the "death squads" era and leading an alternative Episcopal seminary in a struggling Pennsylvania steel town.

While critics called him the "token evangelical" in the presiding bishop race, Frey was a complex figure during his Colorado tenure, where I covered him for the now-closed Rocky Mountain News. He called himself a "radical moderate," while also attacking "theology by opinion poll."

“We need a church that knows its own identity and proclaims it fearlessly," he said, in his 1990 farewell sermon. "No more stealth religion! … We need a church that knows how to answer the question, 'What think ye of Christ?', without forming a committee to weigh all possible options. We need a church that doesn't cross its fingers when it says the creed."

Nevertheless, a conservative priest called him a "Marxist-inspired heretic" for backing the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women. The bishop opposed capital punishment -- and abortion -- and welcomed stricter gun-control laws. He backed expanded work with the homeless and immigrants. Then gay-rights activists called him a "charismatic fundamentalist" because he opposed the ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians and preached that sex outside of marriage was sin.

Also, before the presiding bishop election, Frey fielded questions -- and heard old whispers -- about the informal charismatic Christian community he led with his wife, Barbara (who died in 2014).

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Al Smith dinner 2020: Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters

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Al Smith dinner 2020: Trump and Biden make pitches to very different Catholic voters

During a normal White House race, the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner allows the candidates to don formal attire, fire snappy one-liners and make subtle appeals to Catholic voters.

But nothing is normal in 2020. Thus, Joe Biden and President Donald Trump used this year's virtual dinner to preach to Catholic voters in swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida. The event produced few headlines, coming a mere six hours before Trump announced his positive test for COVID-19.

Saluting Catholic progressive, Biden offered a litany about the pandemic, race, the recession and climate change. He warned that many Americans have lost faith "in one another, in truth, in science and reason."

The current pope, Biden stressed, embraced him during a 2013 White House visit, offering comfort shortly after brain cancer took his son Beau's life.

"Pope Francis took the time to meet with my entire family to help us see the light through the darkness," said Biden. "I live in an amazing country … where an Irish Catholic kid like me from Scranton, Pennsylvania, would one day befriend a Jesuit pope. But that's who we are as a country -- where anything is possible when we care for one another, when we look out for one another, when we keep the faith."

While stressing that he is guided "by the tenets of Catholic social doctrine" -- helping the "least of these" -- Biden didn't mention his vow to codify Roe v. Wade if the Supreme Court overturns that decision or his promise to reinstate policies requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to cooperate in providing birth control and abortifacients to staff. He didn't mention his decision to officiate at the same-sex wedding of two White House colleagues, an action clashing with church doctrine.

It was logical for Biden to avoid providing fresh ammunition for critics. But the speech, once again, trumpeted his Catholic credentials.

"Joe Biden's choice to run explicitly on the claim that he is a faithful Catholic squarely places on the table his claim to be a faithful Catholic," stressed legal scholar Robert P. George of Princeton University, writing on Facebook. He is a Catholic conservative who has also been a consistent critic of Trump.

“No way out of this, folks," he added. "It's not, or not just, Biden's critics who have raised the issue. It's the Biden campaign. …

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Memory eternal: Farewell to the sharp pen of Father Paul 'Diogenes' Mankowski

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Memory eternal: Farewell to the sharp pen of Father Paul 'Diogenes' Mankowski

For millions of Americans, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is as familiar as the national anthem and much easier to sing.

Few would need help with: "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on! Glory, glory, Hallelujah! … His truth is marching on!"

During 1990s fights over updated Catholic liturgies, a Semitic languages professor at Rome's Pontifical Biblical Institute wrote a Battle Hymn for modernists.

This "sanitized" text -- "chanted to no tune in particular" -- declared: "I see God's approach; it is good. God makes wine with God's feet. … Brightness flashes from the decision-making apparatus. God's worldview is currently earning widespread respect. Give honor repeatedly to the god of our tradition. We have owned our values."

Father Paul V. Mankowski put his own name on that First Things piece, since it didn't lance specific institutions or leaders. For decades, Catholics seeking his satirical work learned to look for "Diogenes" at CatholicCulture.org or "Father X" elsewhere.

Mankowski died on September 3 at age 66, felled by a ruptured brain aneurysm. Raised in a middle-class Rust Belt family, he worked in steel mills to pay tuition at the University of Chicago. His advanced degrees included a master's from Oxford and a Harvard University doctorate.

Many researchers, politicos and journalists (like me) knew him through telephone calls and emails, usually seeking documents and statements from nearby Catholic leaders. He was a rarity in the modern age -- a Jesuit conservative -- and his superiors eventually ordered him not to address church controversies. Much of his work was published anonymously or using pen names.

Princeton University's Robert P. George blitzed through years of emails, after hearing about Mankowski's sudden death.

"There are some doozies -- especially the spoofs, send ups and parodies," said George, on Facebook. "His wit was a massive quiver full of poison-dipped arrows, and he was a master archer. … He would not give a pass to fools, frauds, charlatans, hypocrites, rent seekers, time servers, racketeers, manipulators, corrupt scholars, false teachers or weak or craven leaders, especially in the Church."

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Anglican debate in 2020 crisis: Can clergy consecrate bread and wine over the Internet?

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Anglican debate in 2020 crisis: Can clergy consecrate bread and wine over the Internet?

In the late 1970s, the Episcopal Ad Project began releasing spots taking shots at television preachers and other trends in American evangelicalism.

One image showed a television serving as an altar, holding a priest's stole, a chalice and plate of Eucharistic hosts. The headline asked: "With all due regard to TV Christianity, have you ever seen a Sony that gives Holy Communion?"

Now some Anglicans are debating whether it's valid -- during the coronavirus crisis -- to celebrate "virtual Eucharists," with computers linking priests at altars and communicants with their own bread and wine at home.

In a recent House of Bishops meeting -- online, of course -- Episcopal Church leaders backed away from allowing what many call "Virtual Holy Eucharist."

Episcopal News Service said bishops met in private small groups to discuss if it's "theologically sound to allow Episcopalians to gather separately and receive Communion that has been consecrated by a priest remotely during an online service."

Experiments had already begun, in some Zip codes. In April, Bishop Jacob Owensby of the Diocese of Western Louisiana encouraged such rites among "Priests who have the technical know-how, the equipment and the inclination" to proceed.

People at home, he wrote, will "provide for themselves bread and wine (bread alone is also permissible) and place it on a table in front of them. The priest's consecration of elements in front of her or him extends to the bread and wine in each … household. The people will consume the consecrated elements."

Days later, after consulting with America's presiding bishop," Bishop Owensby rescinded those instructions. "I understand that virtual consecration of elements at a physical or geographical distance from the Altar exceeds the recognized bounds set by our rubrics and inscribed in our theology of the Eucharist," he wrote.

However, similar debates were already taking place among other Anglicans. In Australia, for example, Archbishop Glenn Davies of Sydney urged priests to be creative during this pandemic, while churches were being forced to shut their doors.

During a live-streamed rite, he wrote, parishioners "could participate in their own homes via the internet consuming their own bread and wine, in accordance with our Lord's command."

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Pope John Paul II is a saint -- now some claim that it's time to add 'the great' to his title

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Pope John Paul II is a saint -- now some claim that it's time to add 'the great' to his title

As he began his 1979 pilgrimage through Poland, Pope John Paul II preached a soaring sermon that was fiercely Catholic, yet full of affection for his homeland.

For Communist leaders, the fact that the former Archbishop of Cracow linked faith to national pride was pure heresy. The pope joyfully claimed divine authority to challenge atheism and the government's efforts to reshape Polish culture.

"Man cannot be fully understood without Christ," John Paul II told 290,000 at a Mass in Warsaw's Victory Square. "He cannot understand who he is, nor what his true dignity is, nor what his vocation is, nor what his final end is. … Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude of geography."

That was bad enough. Then he added: "It is therefore impossible without Christ to understand the history of the Polish nation. … If we reject this key to understanding our nation, we lay ourselves open to a substantial misunderstanding. We no longer understand ourselves."

This was the stuff of sainthood, and John Paul II received that title soon after his 26-year pontificate ended. But the global impact of that 1979 sermon is a perfect example of why many Catholics believe it's time to attach another title to his name -- "the great."

"The informal title 'the great' is not one that is formally granted by the church," explained historian Matthew Bunson, author of "The Pope Encyclopedia: An A to Z of the Holy See."

"Every saint who is also a pope is not hailed as 'the great,' but the popes who have been called 'the great' are all saints. … When you hear that title, you are dealing with both the love of the faithful for this saint and the judgement of history."

In the case of John Paul II, mourners chanted "Santo subito!" (Saint now!) and waved posters with that slogan at his funeral. During a Mass only 13 hours after his death, Cardinal Angelo Sodano spoke of "John Paul, indeed, John Paul the Great."

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Believers in an angry age of 'fake news,' conspiracy chatter and the QAnon heresy

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Believers in an angry age of 'fake news,' conspiracy chatter and the QAnon heresy

A majority of evangelicals are worried about "fake news" and they also think mainstream journalists are part of the problem.

The question, as pandemic-weary Americans stagger into the 2020 elections, is how many believers in this voting bloc have allowed their anger about "fake news" to push them toward fringe conspiracy theories about the future of their nation.

Some of these theories involve billionaire Bill Gates and global coronavirus vaccine projects, the Antichrist's plans for 5G towers, Democrats in pedophile rings or all those mysterious "QAnon" messages. "Q" is an anonymous scribe whose disciples think is a retired U.S. intelligence leader or maybe even President Donald Trump.

The bitter online arguments sound like this: Are these conspiracies mere "fake news" or is an increasingly politicized American press -- especially on politics and religion -- hiding dangerous truths behind its own brand of "fake news"?

"A reflexive disregard of what are legitimate news sources can feed a penchant for conspiracy theories," said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

Many mainstream journalists do a fine job of covering the complex world of evangelicalism, stressed Stetzer, reached by email.

Nevertheless, he added: "I think that the bias of much of mainstream news has to be considered in this conversation. Many evangelicals have seen, over and over, news sources report on them irresponsibly, with bias, and -- at times -- with malice. When you see that enough, about people you know, there is a consequence. Regrettably, I don't think many in the mainstream news world are thinking, 'We should have done better.' "

It doesn't help that Americans disagree about the meaning of "fake news."

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Struggling to take sacraments to the people, while honoring social-distancing rules

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Struggling to take sacraments to the people, while honoring social-distancing rules

Priests in the Church of England have faced many challenges in recent decades -- from plummeting attendance numbers to fierce debates about marriage and sexuality.

Nevertheless, a coronavirus epistle from Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop of York John Sentamu was a shocker -- offering worship guidelines even stricter than those released by the government.

"Our church buildings must now be closed not only for public worship, but for private prayer as well and this includes the priest … offering prayer in church on their own," they wrote. "A notice explaining this should be put on the church door."

Thus, there was quiet defiance in Father Marcus Walker's voice as he stood alone near the altar of St. Bartholomew the Great -- London's oldest surviving church -- on the first Sunday after Easter and said, "I speak in the name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. And so we're back."

There was no response from his Facebook Live flock, but the priest stressed that he had been listening to his people. The bottom line: There had to be some way to proceed that stressed public safety, while addressing people's spiritual needs.

"Their voices have been loud, insistent and -- so far -- unanimous," he said, in his sermon. "I have received scores of letters and emails, calling on services to be restored here in their church: the church they have upheld and kept up, where they were married, where they buried a partner, saw a child christened, found God, were confirmed.

"This is their church and I am their pastor. I owe them my solidarity. As one said in her letter: 'We don't need you in solidarity at home, we need you in solidarity at the altar of our church.' "

With Easter in the rear-view mirror, members of ancient Christian flocks -- those built on liturgies and sacraments -- are waiting to see how their shepherds will walk a liturgical tightrope between church and state.

The bottom line: It's easier for megachurches to put their dramatic sermons and worship bands on home computer screens than for priests to digitize Holy Communion and rites of confession.

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Concerning the coronavirus crisis and these Darwinian days in faith-based higher education

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Concerning the coronavirus crisis and these Darwinian days in faith-based higher education

Every week or so, John Mark Reynolds does something that presidents of academic institutions rarely do -- he cleans his office at Saint Constantine School.

This isn't a symbolic gesture in an age of ominous trends, and now a global pandemic, that threaten private education. Reynolds always takes his turn -- with other members of his team -- cleaning administration offices at this classical school in Houston.

"We have no administrators who are just administrators. Everyone teaches. Everyone shares many of the jobs that need to get done," said Reynolds, reached at his "sheltering in place" home office. "We have a maintenance team, but we all help out. The first lady and I plan to water some plants later today. …

"We call this the economy of small."

Saint Constantine is a K-16 Orthodox Christian school, which means it offers four years of college credits. College tuition is $9,000 per year.

"Our whole model was created to survive the collapse of liberal arts education, while striving to preserve the core of liberal arts education through an Oxford-style tutorial system," said Reynolds. "This pandemic is only exposing the weaknesses of what was already a business model fraught with peril."

College educators have long known that painful challenges were coming in 2025, due to falling birth rates and the end of high millennial-generation enrollments.

Now, the coronavirus crisis is forcing students and parents to face troubling realities. A study by McKinsey & Company researchers noted: "Hunkering down at home with a laptop … is a world away from the rich on-campus life that existed in February."

What happens next? The study noted: "In the virus-recurrence and pandemic-escalation scenarios, higher-education institutions could see much less predictable yield rates (the percentage of those admitted who attend) if would-be first-year students decide to take a gap year or attend somewhere closer to home (and less costly) because of the expectation of longer-term financial challenges for their families."

This could crush some schools. In a report entitled "Dawn of the Dead," Forbes found 675 private colleges it labeled "so-called tuition-dependent schools -- meaning they squeak by year-after-year, often losing money or eating into their dwindling endowments."