Why they say "don't let it go to your head"

Fame makes the mind loose and gayish, scatters the spirits, and leaves a kind of dissolution upon all the faculties.

-- Robert South

Intemperance destroys both the knowledgeable and the ignorant

 

Thou hast not half that power to do me harm,

As I have to be hurt:

oh gull, oh dolt,

As ignorant as dirt!

-- William Shakespeare, Emilia to Othello, Act V, Scene 2

The wonder of the ignorant

We find in sullen writs,

And cross grain'd works of modern wits,

The wonder of the ignorant.

 

-- Hudibras

On the confident certainty of the ignorant

Shallow unimproved intellects, are confident pretenders to certainty;

as if, contrary to the adage, science had no friend but ignorance.

-- Joseph Glanvill

"Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow"

What differ more, you cry, than crown and cowl?

I'll tell you, friend, a wise man and a fool.

-- Alexander Pope

LOL, leave it to WaPo to stir up trouble over the Phoenix baptism story

(((Michelle Boorstein))) right out of the box whips out her pilpul, here:

Their marriages, confessions, promises of salvation — all of these things ceased to exist for thousands of Catholics baptized by an Arizona priest who, it turns out, was saying the sacrament script wrong. ... diocesan officials ... said last month that people who Arango baptized aren’t technically Catholic. That means they weren’t eligible, from a Catholic point of view, for other sacraments.

 

Except the diocese didn't actually say so:

According to the Diocese of Phoenix, Arango remains in "good standing" as a priest and "has not disqualified himself from his vocation and ministry." As of right now, other sacraments performed by Arango are considered valid, the diocese said.

More. 

Still, ex opere operato is having a bad week.

The diocese is obviously confused because the bishop is. He evidently doesn't understand that doctrine. Though defending the "other sacraments performed" by the errant priest, the bishop nevertheless has said, "You will need to be baptized."

St. Augustine would have disagreed.

The bishop of Hippo in North Africa taught the church in the Donatist Controversy that the validity of sacraments doesn't depend on the character of the priest, or on his theology. The sacraments work by themselves as long as they are reasonably Christian and the individuals come under the jurisdiction of the Catholic church.

All the attention here is misplaced on the personal pronouns used, "I baptize you" vs. "We baptize you", in keeping with the spirit of the current age, when the triune formula "in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost" plus the corporate idea is the important thing according to Augustine. Arguably "We baptize you" emphasizes the latter, in good Augustinian manner.

Augustine's principles are charitable and Pauline. The bishops could learn from them.

Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel; the former proclaim Christ out of partisanship, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice. 

-- Philippians 1:15ff.

 

 

 

The superstition around baptism remains strong in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix

Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of the Diocese

Thousands of baptisms over 20 years were declared "invalid" and "nullified" in St. Gregory parish because the priest in question routinely said "We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit," instead of "I baptize you . . .", an "incorrect formula" which failed to indicate that it is Christ who baptizes in the sacrament since it is the ordained priest who is uniquely invested with the spiritual power and presence of Christ:

"The issue with using 'We' is that it is not the community that baptizes a person, rather, it is Christ, and Him alone, who presides at all of the sacraments, and so it is Christ Jesus who baptizes."

More.

This is pure magical thinking, an example of decadence, the degeneration of the original conception of baptism, from sign of repentance, renunciation of the world, and attachment to the new community of the elect to mysterious, wonder-working ritual imparting divine grace and forgiveness of sins.

The evidence of the Synoptics shows that Jesus himself did not baptize anyone like John the Baptist did. Only the Fourth Gospel says that Jesus so baptized, in John 3, but that is deliberately corrected in John 4 to state that Jesus himself did not baptize, and that only his disciples did.

Well, set aside the contradiction and ask, what formula did they use?

Did the disciples of Jesus use the formula "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost"? 

The idea is preposterous.

So did that make those baptisms "invalid" and therefore null?

Totally kooky.

Magic is for a world continuing on into the indefinite future, with billions of possible customers. The baptism of repentance was for salvation from a world soon coming to an abrupt end. The failure of the latter paved the way for the former.

David French, call your office

The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the most intolerant of all sects; the most tyrannical and ambitious, ready at the word of the law-giver, if such a word could now be obtained, to put their torch to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere the flame in which their oracle, Calvin, consumed the poor Servetus, because he could not subscribe to the proposition of Calvin, that magistrates have a right to exterminate all heretics to the Calvinistic creed! They pant to re-establish by law that holy inquisition.

-- Thomas Jefferson to William Short, April 13, 1820

LOL, Presbyterian David French is completely unfamiliar with the far-right road show in revolutionary America which repeatedly called the people to arms from Protestant pulpits

He's shocked, I tell you, shocked:

 If you think it’s remotely unusual that a truly extremist event (which included more than one person who’d called for hanging his political opponents) was held at a church, then you’re not familiar with far-right road shows that are stoking extremism in church after church at event after event. ... We know that fanatical religious subcultures can do an immense amount of damage to the body politic. ... what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

 More.

In 1776 the David French of 2022 would almost certainly have been a Loyalist, and the sworn enemy of the Presbyterian Rebellion condemned by George III.

Unlike today's fire-breathing right-wing lunatics, French is a proud proponent of "elite Evangelicalism" and "elite American culture" for whom "Christian nationalism" is an oxymoron. Those crazy Pentecostal patriots supporting Donald Trump come from the other side of the tracks, in case you needed reminding. David French is above all that, and stands for everything good, proper, and reasonable, you see. Like the Pharisees did. He is not like other men.

But his idea that a "new insurrection is being organized, in a sanctuary near you" is just as crazy as his idea that January 6th actually was one.

How a now de-Christianized America is suddenly going to embrace a bunch of religious fanatics with their hair on fire is not explained, but the "apocalyptic message" of "national doom" comes for us all, including for David French.

Is there a public Christian today who is more out of touch with the deeply political nature of the history of Protestant experience in America than he?

At least six popes have been alleged to have had sexual relations with men, so why don't the Catholics just get it over with and call it Tradition?

Julius II

Paul II

Sixtus IV

Leo X

Julius III

Benedict IX

Cardinal Hollerich: Church teaching on gay sex is ‘false’ and can be changed

He was asked by a reporter: “How do you get around the Church’s teaching that homosexuality is sin?”

He replied: “I believe that this is false. ..."

The Pharisees would not have agreed with Krister Stendahl . . . at all

 

For Judaism has never thought that God's hottest dream was that everyone become a Jew.

-- Krister Stendahl, here

 

 

 

 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. 

-- Matthew 23:15

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:  But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. 

-- Romans 2:28f.

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

-- Galatians 3:7

The revenge of Bishop Krister Stendahl's ecumenism against Lutheran Sweden

In 1985 Krister Stendahl infamously advised leaving room for "holy envy" in response to the uproar over the Mormons' plan to build a temple in Stockholm. 

Sweden ended up getting fewer than 10,000 Mormons, but got 800,000 Muslims instead.

Stendahl, who repudiated his own faith tradition in favor of "ecumenism", wasn't careful in what he wished for.

Here he was in 1997, blaming both (Pauline) Christianity and Islam for the trouble caused by their "universal claims": 

But there can be no doubt that it is exactly the universal claim of Christianity (or Islam) that makes for trouble rather than for peace. 

Sweden liberalized under the influence of his ilk, invited in the world, and was repaid with soaring immigrant crime. Twenty-five years later there is no doubt that such multiculturalism has also made for trouble rather than for peace:

Crime has become the number one issue in Sweden; before she said a word about migration, Andersson boasted that her party added 7,000 new police officers, built more prisons, and drafted laws creating 30 new crimes. She decried “those who claim that it is certain cultures, certain languages, certain religions that make people more likely to commit crimes”—yet her own government has substantiated those claims.