I didn't become Catholic for this

My wife's employee diversity training was more religious than this

When we entered the Church in 2006, the torch had already passed to a new generation of Catholics.  As I've said many times, this was not that fundamentalist Scott Hahn's Catholic Church.  These were the Boomers.  The post-Vatican II gang.  Oh, they may have been born before Vatican II, but already the Church was being led by those who would take it through the Vatican II reforms.  

But more than Vatican II Catholics, they're post WWII liberal culture Christians.  That is, Christianity  is a right fine belief, but no better than all the other beliefs.  After all, all religious beliefs were just made up by ancient humans.  As my son's Mythology 222 class demonstrated, the Bible, the Iliad and the Aeneid are about the same in terms of myth and fantasy.  

These Catholics looked at our testimony and more or less scratched their heads.  Sometimes you could almost see the puzzlement in their eyes.  Lost your friends and colleagues, investment accounts and retirement funds, and came into the Church with no professional prospects ... just to become Catholic?  Why that was a strange thing to do!  The welcome mat that awaited the Hahn generation of clergy converts had long gone the way of the dodo bird. 

Shortly after becoming pope, Pope Francis met with Protestant leaders and echoed the same attitude.  Stay where you are and get to God in your own lovely traditions.  That's when my boys concluded ol'Dad had screwed up royally.  There we were, me a pastor, wife a teacher in a private school, kids with one of us at any given time, yearly vacations and time together and a nice close life centered around church and family.  Then BAM!  Out the windows,  after school care, scraping by, ramen noodles and rice for dinner, vacations confined to the local park, picking which bills to pay in a month, and all to enter the Catholic Church.  The same Catholic Church whose members and leaders made it clear that it was the strangest thing we ever could have done.  Clearly dad isn't the one to trust in such things. 

That's when we went to the Orthodox Church.  At least there the Orthodox still subscribe to the idea that Orthodoxy is the true Church, and those who make the journey, if they do for the right reasons, are absolutely right to do so.  Actual sermons on heaven and hell, on sin and holiness, and on the necessity of remaining in God's proper church showed my boys that the "Catholicism is our meat, but any meat is fine" shtick was not a universal attitude in modern Christianity, even if it was the majority opinion they encountered in our parish. 

Because of many reasons, I couldn't reconcile with Orthodoxy as a Christian home, though I appreciate the life preserver they were for us.  Therefore when our old Catholic parish brought a firebrand priest from Africa who was more than prepared to call sin sin, and the Catholic Church the True Church, we returned. 

Sadly, we came back just as Covid hit.  A year later, he was gone.  No clue why.  He showed up one Sunday, said Monday he was no longer our priest, and perhaps he might see some of us in heaven someday.  That was that.  To this day nobody has told us what happened.  I do know his fire and brimstone insistence on the truths of the Catholic Faith rubbed some the wrong way, and he was in for some heavy criticisms in the time we were there.

Be that as it may, we remained because I'm still convinced that the Catholic Church, more than any other tradition, is the right tradition.  Obviously that is minority opinion today, and not one that appears to be held by our bishops, many of our leaders, or even our pope.  It certainly isn't the attitude of many, if not most, modern Catholics.  Some even seem offended at the idea that Catholicism has any unique value that can't be found in a thousand different beliefs. 

Nonetheless, at my age, it's time to settle in for the final curtain.  Our financial fate was sealed when the economy collapsed in 2008 and we found ourselves under a bishop who would rather see the Church sink into the 7th level of Hell than see a former Protestant minister so much as scrub toilets in the diocese. Since then, it's been Indiana Jones one step ahead of the boulder.  As I joke with people we know, my retirement plan is to grab my chest at 65 and do a Fred Sanford. 

But we did all that to become Catholic because, again, I believe it is true. And not just true, but also non-optional. No, I don't think every non-Catholic in the world will burn.  But I don't think the belief that not every non-Catholic will burn means anyone can be anything and not burn.  

Just because I know not everyone who smokes will die of cancer or heart disease doesn't mean I hand out cigarettes and tell everyone to light up.  Something I don't feel our bishops, leaders or pope think.  I think for them, it's far more important that everyone at the best parties think they're cool for handing out the cigarettes, rather than take a firm stand on the need to stop smoking.  Whatever that might mean in terms of people's health. 

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Not the one in Texas.  Though that's always a nice reminder, along with other little urban names such as San Diego, San Francisco, and San Antonio, that there was actually a dynamic Catholic presence in the New World long before the rightly celebrated Plymouth Puritans showed up to display their own awesomeness.  No, this is the Feast of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.  As understood by Catholics, the actual Body of Christ in the bread and the blood of Christ in the wine.

Sounds silly, right?  Well, no more silly than the son of an obscure peasant woman being executed by Rome in order to redeem the spiritual well being of all humanity.  In fact, this was also one of those things that I, former non-Sacramental minister, came full force into contact with as I reflected on our own Lord's Supper celebration in the heyday of my Protestant years.

It's odd that the famous John 6 discourse comes in the last of the Gospels. Think on that.  Unless you're really a radical progressive post-modern scholar, you accept that John's was the last Gospel penned.  Probably around the last part of the first century.  That's about 60-70 years from the events of Christ's Passion.  Meaning the Church has been around for about six decades or so (about as long ago as the 1950s are to us).

By now, the earliest Gospels were in circulation.  Within a century the four would all be accepted by the early Church as part of the scriptural witness of the New Covenant.  But John was last.  And almost all scholars know that some form of pre-gnostic Gnosticism was being addressed in the heavy handed 'Word became Flesh' emphasis of John's writings.  Unlike the Synoptic Gospels, John is focused on fleshing out (literally) the story of Jesus, especially as some must already have been suggesting, ala later Gnosticism, that Jesus could not have actually been physical. Matter being evil in itself.

Enter John.  The Word became Flesh, and dwelt among us.  It's noteworthy that it's John's Gospel that bookends Jesus' earthly ministry with accounts of Mary.  But that's for another post.  In this one, instead of hearing the tale of the Last Supper, we hear something else.  I remember being taught that John 'didn't have a Last Supper account.'  One of the things that blew my mind was hearing Steve Ray say 'yes it did, it's in John's Gospel, chapter 6.'

Just like the synoptic accounts of Jesus birth being repackaged to be the Divine Logos made Flesh, so here we have the Eucharistic meal not in a setting with Jesus and the Disciples as it happened, but with Jesus unpacking the meaning.

When Jesus said to his Disciples 'take and eat, for this is my Body', what in the world did He mean?  When Paul repeats those words in his letter to the Corinthians, what was he talking about?  Well John, written decades later, explains.  He means this:

I am the bread of life.  Your fathers did eat manna in the desert, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven; that if any man eat of it, he may not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven.  If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give, is my flesh, for the life of the world.  The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?   Then Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you.

How about that?  Yes, I'm aware that Protestants read this as a metaphorical saying, or using imagery to point to his overall Sacrificial mission, or something similar (depending on the Protestant tradition).  That's fine as far as it goes.  But there's no textual support for such a reading in the Greek, especially when set against the classic Corinthian and Synoptic quotes of Jesus pointing to the bread and wine and declaring them His Body and His Blood.  Something that the author of John would have been well aware of by the end of the first century.  That, plus the lack of a textual reason to reduce it to imagery, is a problem.  We were even taught that in Greek class.  But for the theological underpinning of clear Evangelical thought, there wouldn't be a reason to see this as anything other than meaning what the Historic Faith says it means.

And more than that, considering John's emphasis on 'it is too really flesh, real, there', it isn't hard to imagine this being an unpacked explanation of the Eucharistic meal being celebrated by that point in time.  When Christians decades later were celebrating it, some questioning the bodily presence of Christ on earth would logically question anything bodily present in a piece of bread.  And John's answer?  Not that 'well yeah, duh, of course he meant it was representative of something.'  No, just like that Word coming to tabernacle with us, so Jesus makes it clear His Body is the Bread, and we must eat it, His Flesh, to have Life in us (just like the Synoptic narratives present His statements).

I know, anything can be argued away.  And yet, like many things that dragged me kicking and screaming into the Catholic Church, I had to ask if it was the simplest thing to do, or if it was something I merely wanted to do because I didn't want to be Catholic.

Anyway, today's the Feast.  Here is the always enjoyable Fish Easters unpacking some traditional customs for this day.  We had a procession, but illness and timing brought us home (though my middle two stayed to help with the procession).  We'll see what else we can do.  There are more things to unpack about this central teaching of the Faith.  But thought I'd toss out a few thoughts off the top while waiting to pick up the boys.

Dr. Peter Ruckman

And a devoted fan help demonstrate why I became Catholic.  Peter Bradley unpacks the book and points out its more obvious flaws.  He rightly observes that it belongs to a hopefully bygone era of Archie Bunker style bigotry, racism, and prejudice that, sadly, informed far too many congregations over the years.  I'm sure there are Catholics who are just as bad.  Muslims in their own ways.  Jews perhaps.  Atheists even.  I don't pretend that one group has a monopoly on evil thoughts and actions.  But it's still telling that many ideals Protestants have about the Catholic Church are rooted in such flagrant bigotry and ignorance of the historical record.   Most, of course, wouldn't be caught dead defending such ideals, but have grown comfortable enjoying the watered down fruits of it nonetheless.  Then again, based on responses to Mr. Bradley's review, it looks like there's still some out there who worship at the 'only Church God loves' congregation of bigotry and ignorance.  Not to mention some milk-out-the-nose hilarity at mangling and mauling the history of the early Christian Church.  Sigh.