Ecclesia militans. On the use of the word "Christian".
Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὰ μέρη Καισαρείας τῆς Φιλίππου ἠρώτα τοὺς μαθητὰς αὐτοῦ λέγων· Τίνα λέγουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἶναι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;
οἱ δὲ εἶπαν· Οἱ μὲν Ἰωάννην τὸν βαπτιστήν, ἄλλοι δὲ Ἠλίαν, ἕτεροι δὲ Ἱερεμίαν ἢ ἕνα τῶν προφητῶν.
λέγει αὐτοῖς· Ὑμεῖς δὲ τίνα με λέγετε εἶναι;
ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ Σίμων Πέτρος εἶπεν· Σὺ εἶ ὁ Χριστὸς ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ζῶντος.
ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτῷ· Μακάριος εἶ, Σίμων Βαριωνᾶ, ὅτι σὰρξ καὶ αἷμα οὐκ ἀπεκάλυψεν σοὶ ἀλλ' ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
κἀγὼ δὲ σοὶ λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος, καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν, καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς.
δώσω σοι τὰς κλεῖδας τῆς βασιλείας τῶν οὐρανῶν, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν δήσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται δεδεμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, καὶ ὃ ἐὰν λύσῃς ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἔσται λελυμένον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
τότε διεστείλατο τοῖς μαθηταῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ εἴπωσιν ὅτι αὐτός ἐστιν ὁ Χριστός.
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Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi and
he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Simon Peter said in reply,
"You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."
Jesus said to him in reply,
"Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,
and upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."
Then he strictly ordered his disciples
to tell no one that he was the Christ.
Matthew 16:13-20
The other day I saw an item on Blue Sky posted by Atticus Finch of Georgia which linked in an article on "post truth Christianity". It brought into focus something that's really been increasingly bothering me in recent years. . .well more specifically the Trump era.
Then, as an example of synchronicity, I was speaking with a close relative of mine who absolutely exploded on the same topic. I didn't bring it up. That person did.
Then, this past Sunday, Matthew 16:13-20 was the Gospel reading.
Yesterday there was a post on Twitter in which an Orthodox Christian reacted the same way I am here.
So here's what that topic is.
When the term "Christian" is used recently, it tends to refer to "Christian" support of Donald Trump. And, hence the error.
While you can find individuals of any stripe of Christianity and religion supporting Trump, in reality, the Christians that support Trump are, for the most part, and most significantly, Evangelical Christians. Yes, you can find a Catholic or Orthodox cleric here and there that does.1 And, in fairness, you can find Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, and any number of other sets of beliefs with individuals who support Trump.2 But the real core of the "Christian" support of Trump comes from a slice of the Evangelical world, and just a slice at that.
The "post truth" comment is what really got my attention.
American Catholics generally try to make nice with other Christian denominations, although less so in the post 1960 world than we used to, but lots of Protestants don't try to make nice with us. So we have tended, post 1960, to keep some of our weltanschauung to ourselves.3 So much so, in fact, that we've allowed the Protestantization of lots of Catholics, who now think like Protestants. While there are exceptions, when you find a real pro Trump Catholic, they probably have a Protestant world outlook and don't realize it.
So, to post truth.
Protestants have been "post truth" for about five hundred years. Protestants outside the mainline Protestant churches are very post truth.
We've known that all along.
Starting with science, Catholics are in favor of science, not against it. The entire Big Bang Theory is our deal. We're not opposed to the theory of evolution. People evolved from earlier primates. The world is not 5,000 years old. It's billions of years old.
We know that. We not only accept that (most of us) but we rejoice in it. We don't feel that God has to fit within our limited human imagination.
Our basic view is that God gave us the intellect to explore his creation. So far, we haven't found one darned thing that causes us to question our faith. Moreover, if you belong to a religion that requires you do deny science, something about it is deeply wrong, even false.
So, yeah, there's a lot of "post truth" Christians out there, and they're coming from the Evangelical end of the pool. If you find a Catholic holding those views, they've likely dipped their toes in it. Some are swimming really deep in it.
And here's another thing, which my relative was exploding on.
Catholics have taken a beating for decades simply for being Catholic. It's okay, Christ told us that we would. In the US we get, from Evangelicals, the question of "are you Christian?", with the reply from them often being that if we're Catholic, we're not Christian.
Well, I guess when people had access only to their friends and neighbors and a pastor who had been miseducated on these topics, that was not only to be expected but semi tolerable, but it isn't any more.
We are the original Christians.
Πάντες τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ ἀκολουθεῖτε, ὡς Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς τῷ πατρί, καὶ τῷ πρεσβυτερίῳ ὡς τοῖς ἀποστόλοις. τοὺς δὲ διακόνους ἐντρέπεσθε ὡς θεοῦ ἐντολήν. μηδεὶς χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου τι πρασσέτω τῶν ἀνηκόντων εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν. ἐκείνη βεβαία εὐχαριστία ἡγείσθω, ἡ ὑπὸ ἐπίσκοπον οὖσα ἢ ᾧ ἄν αὐτὸς ἐπιτρέψῃ.
ὅπου ἄν φανῇ ὁ ἐπίσκοπος, ἐκεῖ τὸ πλῆθος ἤτω, ὥσπερ ὅπου ἄν ᾖ Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, ἐκεῖ ἡ καθολικὴ ἐκκλησία. οὐκ ἐξόν ἐστιν χωρὶς τοῦ ἐπισκόπου οὔτε βαπτίζειν οὔτε ἀγάπην ποιεῖν· ἀλλ' ὃ ἄν ἐκεῖνος δοκιμάσῃ, τοῦτο καὶ τῷ θεῷ εὐάρεστον, ἵνα ἀσφαλὲς ᾖ καὶ βέβαιον πᾶν ὃ πράσσετε.
See that you all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as you would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.
The Epistle of Ignatius, 33 to 108, to the Smyrnaeans, written in 107.
Nobody with any religious education of a serious nature denies this whatsoever. John Calvin and Martin Luther didn't deny that. The only religion that can raise a hand on it are the Orthodox Churches, and they don't deny that we're first, they just take they position that they are also first, and that actually makes some sense. There's a schism between the Orthodox and the Catholic Church, but we all go back to day one. That's not to make light of the schism, but it's significant in that we all know that our churches go directly back to the moment Christ founded the church.
No Protestant Church can claim that and maintain the claim, although some try to. Those that do have to acknowledge that the Catholic Church is first, and try to argue that they're related closely enough to it in order to make the same claim. That is the claim of the Methodist and Anglican Churches, for example.
All of which brings up the next point. Any Protestant Church that claims to be authentically Christian that doesn't have a good explanation for this is in real trouble. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. You can't be a Protestant Christian and just claim you are like the original Christian communities. Take a look at what St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote in 107. St. John the Apostle had only been dead for about seven years when he wrote that. You aren't like the original Christians if you don't look like the Catholic Church, with Bishops, priests, and deacons. You can't claim there was a great falling away, a Great Apostasy, early on. There wasn't. We have all the books and we know that there wasn't. Ignorance, on this topic, is your only defense (and now that you've read that, you don't have that).
Indeed, if you aren't Catholic, you need to have a really good explanation for it, and there really isn't one.
So, here's the thing, now that Trump is in office and flaming out we're hearing from the same group of people who said that we're not Christians that we need to throw in with them and support Trump.
We do not.
Trump is not a religious man himself, and there's very little evidence that he has any deeply held religious beliefs, if any religious believes at all. Personally, he's a study on certain of the Seven Deadly Sins. He's a warning on the love of money. He's a serial polygamist. He's a liar.
He's an evil man.
Throwing in with evil is never justified save for the principle of Double Effect. I.e., my tipping the pizza delivery guy may have just funded the purchase of illegal drugs, but that was not the intended effect. My working for the post office may mean that I'm delivering pornography (well, I guess that probably doesn't happen anymore in the age of the Internet, but you get the point), but that is incidental to the occupation, not its purpose.
But this obviously crosses over a line, somewhere. If, for example, I were a German and this was 1940, a hatred of Bolshevism would not justify joining the SS.
And that's sort of where we are at now, in a way.
Some thinking Catholics supported Trump either openly or quietly with their vote, earlier, as they were opposed to abortion and the weirdness of social trends in sex and gender in general. Well, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade and the transgenderism thing is jumping the shark, if it hasn't already jumped it. Indeed, in Europe, where it first appeared, it's in major retreat. Obergefell hasn't been reversed, but there's been no case that presented an opportunity for htat to occur, probably because conservatives fear to advance one.
Now, mind you, I'm not telling you who to vote for, what I'm suggesting is whom you do not support, or to put it another way, what you should not get wrapped up in.
The MAGA movement isn't justifiable from a Christian perspective at this point, if it ever was. It's weirdly nationalistic and in many instances engaged in idol worship in the form of fanatic adoration of Donald Trump, even somewhat crediting him with supernatural powers in "always being right". The administration has committed the military to actions which are outright murderous in the Caribbean and South American Pacific. It's waging an unjust and illegal war. It creeps right up on being racist and some of its members hold beliefs that are deeply antithetical to Apostolic Christianity. Some of the people in it are deeply evil, and all of them are deeply compromised.
Vote for those who you will, and in keeping with your conscience. But some things to remember.
Trump is not any kind of real Christian. Attaching Christianity to this administration is going to have a massive negative impact as it falls. It is in fact already doing so. There are people in the secular world who truly believe that its the "Christians" who are supporting Trump, and that people like Mike Johnson and Mike Lee are posters for Christians. They are not.4 The fact that they're being made posters for Christianity means that they, and Trump, are driving thinking people away from the Church. When Trump falls, he's going to take a lot of Evangelical Christianity down with him, just as the fall of the Confederacy during the Civil War heavily damaged the Episcopal Church in the South.
Catholics, we don't want to be part of that, and there's no reason that we should be.
Footnotes
1. A prominent example of that is Bishop Barron. Bishop Barron shows up on occasion at Trump related religious gatherings and he servers on President Trump’s Presidential Religious Liberty Commission.
I'm not here to criticize a Bishop and I don't really understand what the Bishop is doing, or what the Commission does. Nor have I followed it. I'm just noting this. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who is well liked, also serves on it. Archbishop Elpidophoros of America and Bishop Salvatore Cordileone are advisory members.
2. Stephen Miller, who just the other day accused the Protestant seminary student who is competing for a Senate seat from Texas of not being Christian, is Jewish.
3. We can trace this to the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, as we have before, who basically promised to only be Catholic on Sundays.
Kennedy was a horrible example of a Catholic to start with. But his election was such a thrill to American Catholics that a large number of them followed him into the same easy belief, which has been a disaster for a generation of American Catholics that we're only now just really beginning to recover from.
4. Johnson is a Southern Baptist, which is presently the largest Protestant denomination in the US, having about 12.3M members. In contrast the number of Catholics in the US is around 70M. A person needs to keep in mind that not all Catholics are observant, but then neither are all Baptists. Anyhow, Johnson also seems to adhere to the New Apostolic Reformation and sincerely believe that he's been licensed to lie in order to bring about a Protestant state. Lee is a Mormon and therefore not a Christian at all.
5. This huge icon is a Russian Orthodox icon.
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