Where do you find one?

I was reading an older article on the First Things website raising the poignant question, Looking for the Real Catholic Church in New York City.  The whole premise is even larger than the Roman Catholic Church.  Indeed, it is common among those looking at Lutheranism but also Presbyterians, Methodists, and other Protestants.  The problem is that various different representations of Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Presbyterian, Methodist, and so many others exist side by side with little to clue the outsider in on which is authentic.  They cannot all be bona fide representations of the same churches when they look so different and sound so different and often believe so different.  Can they?

Although this might seem like a rather picky point to make and even a rather narrow minded perspective, it is not.  No one joins a church which has a split personality or more than one doctrinal and liturgical face.  Do they?  Maybe it was once possible to limit your sense of the Church to one congregation but not today.  After all, we live in  mobile world in which our people pack up and move many times throughout their lives.  Furthermore, the differences between the various congregations of the seemingly same confession are not just window dressing differences but real and substantial.  In a world in which people seem more and more interested in authenticity, which one is authentic?

Indeed, that is the problem.  Which one is the real one?  Lutherans have tried for a very long time to presume that there is no real face to Lutheranism -- they are all real and we even have a term for it.  It is called adiaphora.  We have adopted that term to mean that anything can go on Sunday morning -- within certain limited boundaries -- so long as the kernel of faith is preserved in theory.  I do not buy it but it is the party line, so to speak.  What this means is that Lutheranism presents itself in a variety of ways to those within the tradition and to those either interested or merely curious.  The range is rather mind boggling.  Some of us have bishops and some do not.  Some have female clergy and some do not.  Some confess the whole Book of Concord and some merely the Augsburg Confession.  Some have adopted the Western version of sexual desire and gender identity and some have not.  Some have praise bands and some have pipe organs.  Some have pop gospel choruses and some have hymns.  Some have an open table and some practice close(d) communion.  Some have vestments and some have torn jeans and tees.  I could go on.  You get the point.  So would the real Lutheran Church stand up?  Que.  They all stand.  Ah.  Duh.

Rome has an equally confusing face on Sundays.  Some have Novus Ordo and some have Vetus Ordo.  Some have reverence and tradition and some have casual informality all over the place.  Some have pep talks on spirituality as sermons and some have, well, sermons.  Some like Rome and the Pope and some want to keep both as far away from them as possible.  Some kneel and some stand.  Some hold out their hands and some wait for the Sacrament to be placed on their tongues.  Some have altar rails and some are tearing them out.  Some want a dictator pope and some want to introduce democracy into Rome.  Some want married and female priests and some could leave it if ever showed signs of happening.  Would the real Roman Catholic parish please stand up?  

No matter where you stand on these issues, the truth is obvious.  They all cannot be right or can they?  Is Christianity more a state of mind than a liturgical identity or a creedal confession?  I fear that those who may be interested in a Christianity neither lite nor paranoid will have to admit that not all the incarnations which display the name Lutheran are right or can have the same claim to fame.  Eventually, we will have to resolve this (and so will Rome!).  Even if we cannot muster the strength to resolve the untenable disparities for the sake of God and the people of God, then at least we need to resolve it for the sake of those who might be interested in trading the vacuous version of Christianity of the liberal left or no version at all from those who refused to teach it to their children into something authentic.  At least I hope so... 

Rights vs Freedoms. . .

K.G.M. v. Meta is a landmark legal case where a young woman, known only as K.G.M., sued Meta and other social media companies, effectively accusing them of designing their platforms to be addictive -- especially for children.  Her standing was her own personal claim that her mental health was harmed by these social media. The jury found in favor of K.G.M. and awarded her $6 million in damages.  This al;l happened in Los Angeles and in Superior Court and, even though it went on for three years, is surely not over yet.  Last month’s ruling in K.G.M. v. Meta et al., found Meta and YouTube liable for harms to an individual plaintiff not by virtue simply of content but by design, by the algorithms inherent to those platforms.  Of course, the naysayers insisted that this verdict threatened free speech; and that it interfered with and undermined parental rights and responsibility.  These are the same concerns raised against state efforts to impose age restrictions or parental consent requirements for minors on social media.  Is this really a contest between our children's mental health and wellbeing and rights of both kids and parents?

Note that the plaintiff alleged ythat she was harmed not by the content she was exposed to on social media (which may be bad enough) but by the design of the platforms themselves, such as aggressive algorithms, infinite scroll, autoplay, “likes,” and filters which both change the appearance of the person on display as well as the setting or background.  I would simply add that the progress in AI only makes these more dangerous as they become more effective.  What so many fail to note is the distinction between content (which is protected by the First Amendment) and product design (which is subject to liability).  In other words, this is not a simply balance between rights and freedoms protected by law but a challenge to the structure of those social media platforms and how they work.  Addiction scientists testified at this trial that social media effectively acts like a drug, triggering pathways in the brain that build upon rewards, triggering dopamine release, and generating a hunger or need for what is being offered.  This is much the way video games and pornography operates.  It is not simply the image on the screen but the craving for what is next, what is behind the next screen or click of the mouse.

Parents are complicit when they fail to exercise their parental duties to supervise and decide on behalf of their children what is appropriate and what is not.  In this, they are hindered by social media companies which insist that they are child-friendly and that they can be safely used by children.  Indeed, social media has become ubiquitous in our society.  We are addicted to those screens, reels, ads, and content and not simply because we are weak or mindless but also because those social media platforms are designed to exploit us, especially children.  Ten minutes in any public place and you can see how everpresent these screens are while we shop, walk, enjoy leisure, eat, talk with friends, etc., but especially when we have nothing else to do and even when we have everything else to do.  It cannot be merely that we are more weak-willed than ever before.  It has to be that social media companies have our number, literally.

It bothers me, then, when the Church jumps on the bandwagon and adopts social media as the means to do its work of evangelism, fellowship, education, formation, and even worship.  We are contributing to the problem.  We may not half to abandon all social media, nobody is saying that, but we do need to be much more careful about whether we are simply using a platform or feeding the hunger that is corrupting youth and adults.  Indeed, some churches today are more a .com presence than a presence in brick, mortar, and people.  The screen is justified because it is cheaper and easy but are we paying attention to the cost of this wholesale abdication to the social media frenzy that has become the world today?  Some people may choose to live on Facebook.  If they are adults, I suppose I have little to say.  But the Church does not need to live on Facebook (or any other media platform).  And, I would suggest, we betray our very claim to be the Church when we become nothing more than one more client of those platforms, preying upon the users of any age, with theology, fellowship, prayer, and communion disguised as an algorithm.  

Was it wrong?

The history of the requirement of priests to be celibate is not exactly easy to chart.  The practice of the East indicates that it was not exactly uniform Western practice -- at least prior to the Great Schism.  In the East priests are still allowed to marry (before ordination) though bishops are drawn from monastic orders or the unmarried who lived under the rule of celibacy.  Even in Rome there are exceptions.  Some Eastern Rite Churches, part of the Orthodox Church following the Great Schism, were reunited with Rome even as the Reformation was unfolding but with the proviso that they would be allowed to retain their liturgical, theological, spiritual, and disciplinary heritage, including a married clergy.  Clergy of Protestant denominations who convert to Roman Catholicism and seek the priesthood are allowed to keep their wives and children -- as expected in a communion that does not look favorably upon divorce!  Pope Benedict XVI created a special dispensation for the Anglican Ordinariate to do the same.  

The history of moral failure is not exactly rare.  It is said that even homosexual and heterosexual popes themselves did not lead celibate lives.  It is claimed that Pope Paul II (1464-1471) died while being sodomized by a page; Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) was known to be a “lover of boys and sodomites;” Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503) notoriously had illegitimate children with two women; Pope Julius II (1503-1513) had three illegitimate daughters; Pope Leo X (1513-1521), who excommunicated Martin Luther, was reported to have suffered from an anal fistula as the result of too much anal sex; Pope Paul III (1534-49) fathered four illegitimate children; Pope Julius III (1540-1555) shared his bed with 15-year-old Innocenzo Ciocchi Del Monte whom he incardinated at the age of 17; and Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585) had a son while studying for the priesthood.  We all know the stories of Augustine and other earlier church fathers and their, well, indiscretions.

Celibacy did not suddenly appear but evolved, first under Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) and Pope Calixtus II (1119-1124), but more profoundly under Pope Innocent II (1130-1143), a monk of Cluny who convened the Second Lateran Council in 1139 with its requirement of celibacy for all diocesan priests and for its singular invalidation of the marriages of priests who were married. It applied to the orders of subdeacon and above with wives or concubines and it threatened to deprive them of their position and its income if they failed to obey.  Most of this is not whispered charge but well founded in record, including the failures of those to whom the vows of celibacy were to be made!

What is Rome to do?  Does it admit that a thousand year practice was wrong or misapplied?  Does it suddenly shift gears and restructure what is built around a celibate priesthood to be something else?  Exceptions are one thing but repudiating such a long past is quite another.  What about all those faithful men who gave up the desire for a wife and a family for the sake of this higher calling?  Were they duped or simply fools or did they have much higher motives?  Unlike the East, Rome does not exclusively create bishops from monastic clergy.  What would this do to the episcopate?  Then there is the vexing question of the Lavender Mafia and the claim of some that homosexuality is firmly entrenched not only among the priesthood but among those in the monastic life.  It could be ended with a simple notice from Leo XIV that it is no longer required but it won't be and it probably will never be ended.  Those who look to Rome awaiting this shift will not live to see it and probably no one will.  It has become part of that long train of doctrines and practices within Rome that cannot be jettisoned any more than they can be argued from history or Scripture as catholic.  So what will Rome do?  They will continue doing what they have done for a thousand years.  It will become harder but the cost of changing is too great to the culture of Rome.  And which pope wants to make such a change only to have it end up with the same division that has plagued Rome since Vatican II in the worship wars of the Latin Mass vs the vernacular?  I cannot imagine that anyone will go there anytime soon.  Can you?

Bonds of affection or ties to truth. . .

There was a time when the ecumenical endeavor seemed to have the attention of many, if not most, of Christian leaders and seemed poised to muster the energy to do what years of division have undone.  That, of course, has come and gone.  The ecumenical endeavor is no longer on the front burner of anyone and many presume that its aims have all been achieved -- if not by a common structure and single jurisdiction then by communion and fellowship long ago declared.  The only problem is that the ecumenical consensus was achieved not by struggling to find unity amid the doctrinal divisions that had existed or continue to exist.  Instead of truth, the focus shifted to mere affection.  We like you.  Let's work together.  Let's eat together.  Bonds of affection are as fickle as affection.  What was needed then and now is something more study -- a unity deep in the truth of God's Word, the creeds confessed, and the doctrines held.  That is not where the ecumenical movement is today.  Not by a long shot.

An example of this has already occurred in Anglicanism.  The once formidable Anglican Communion has been fractured to the point where those representing some 75% of Anglicans worldwide chose to boycott the enthronement of Sarah Mullally as it titular head, the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Who would have thought that the supreme example of a unity forged less with common creed and confession but in the area of affection, tradition, and "gentlemanly" discretion would be left with the tattered rags of church bodies and bishops who still hold to the idea that fellowship does not have to mean agreement on doctrine?  But that is where things have ended up.  The seeds of this division were always there but they have grown, matured, and borne the poison fruit of an Anglican Communion which is no longer a communion at all.  Yet what we have seen in Anglicanism is largely what has happened across the ecumenical landscape.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has struggled to find some group with whom they are not in communion -- except, of course, the Missouri Synod which actually holds to Scripture and the Lutheran Confessions.  Bonds of affection have led to seats at the table for Methodists, Reformed of various stripes, and a host of others who could not quite agree on what is believed, taught, and confessed but who do agree that affection means you are willing to overlook such thinks for the sake of the ecumenical endeavor.  They are certainly not alone.  Indeed, nearly all the old seven sisters of the American Mainline Protestant Churches have pursued this kind of ecumenical unity which is but merely the agreement to act civilly toward each other, not to address the other's sins, and make nice for the public image.  There is, for this reason, little need for the ecumenical conversations of old in which theologians actually looked at what they believed and what that meant.  It is probably for this reason you have need seen any such provisional texts of the progress of those conversations for some time.  Don't count on any in the future either.

Ecumenical endeavors have become the stuff of media friendships proclaimed with a click and with all the meaning and significance of those social media relationships.  Bonds of affection may sound nice but they lack little teeth or power to hold groups accountable or together.  And that is the real purpose of ecumenical conversations -- to hold each other accountable to what we said and say we still mean about who is God and what His Word speaks.  Indeed, the premise of the old ecumenical conversation was that if we really held each other accountable to be the best we could be through the norm of Scripture, it actually might mean that we had a confession in common.  Alas, that seems to be lost.  In its place is something that is as fragile as a house of cards and with even less meaning.  What a shame! 

Fix the Mass. . . Fix Everything

Curiously, the two divergent liturgical groups within Rome, Lutheranism, and other denominations seem to have exactly the same idea -- fix the mass, fix the Church.  It is exactly this which gave birth to the post-Vatican II mass form.  Though perhaps not fully complicit in its origin but certainly responsible for its outcome, Paul VI accepted the ideas of Bugnini and others that what was inhibiting Rome was the old Latin Mass.  Get rid of it and everything will be fixed.  Of course, it was not.  Yet the other side seems to say the same thing except this time it is get rid of the New Mass and restore the Latin Mass of the ages and everything will be hunky dory.  Okay.  Maybe I am simplifying things a bit but probably not by that much.

Lutherans are also victims of the same oversimplification.  The evangelical wing of Lutheranism insists that fix worship by abandoning the liturgy in favor of a casual, seeker, entertainment form of worship will be the answer to all that ails us.  They continue to insist that this is the problem—not the doctrine but its practice.  Those on the other side insist that you cannot hold to doctrine in theory, especially if that doctrine cannot or does not inform practice.  The Church that once insisted that justification was the article on which the Church stands or falls cannot now make everything else adiaphora.  So they insist that you will fix everything that troubles us by returning to page 15 (in LSB form, of course).  Is that all that the problem is?

In the end it might seem like I am arguing against myself and my own well founded advancement of Prosper of Acquitane's maxim 'lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi'.  I am not.  The problem is that worship is not the only one of our many problems.  Modernism may encourage faulty worship practices that are out of keeping with our own past and our confession but that is not all that modernism does.  It begins not with worship but with the Word of God and how we have made relative what God meant to be final—finally making that Word merely one of many voices competing for our mind and our heart.  The problem is not only worship but our failure to hear and heed the voice of God has aided in the corruption of worship and made it difficult for us to speak of the Divine Service in any other terms but preference and desire.  With the loss of that anchor, worship has been adrift on the same sea of change as our morals and truth in general.

Rome cannot fix the Mass and solve the problem of doctrine no longer anchored in the unchanging Word of God and neither can we as Lutherans.  They go together but they are different problems requiring different solutions.  Our loss of marriage and the family is coupled with the way we have distanced ourselves from God's Word and truth.  Our willingness to cater to people's preferences and pet peeves about so many things has certainly led to the idea that they can treat the Scriptures in the same way.  It only stands to reason that if the voice of God is merely a suggestion, nothing can rein in the power of desire—whether in worship format or moral truth.  This is only the solemn admission that we have much to do and our work cut out for us.  If we equivocate on the core issue of God's Word, we will have lost every other battle as well.  It is certainly something to think about...