Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: mls@dasys1.UUCP (Michael Siemon) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: schism and communion Message-ID: Date: 20 Sep 89 08:23:33 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: The Big Electric Cat Lines: 182 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu I found it a bit odd when the moderator called the Roman church schismatic in talk.religion.misc. For somewhat the same reason I find it odd (though less odd) for Rome to call the Orthodox schismatic. In that case, at least, the final 11th century split was the expression of a fissure that had been growing since the third century. But I have a sense that "schism" normally implies that a party within an organization decides that it can NO LONGER abide by the organizational rules it *has* been observing and so decamps to form a counter (or at least different) organization. It is at any rate clear that the Protestants LEFT the Roman organization, whatever the the merits of their decision and whatever the truth that they were simply returning to an earlier model of polity. And despite there being several distinct breaks with Rome, and mutual suspicion, there has truly been some political unity of Protestantism -- simply in self-defense against monolithic Rome, e.g.in the secular arm of Charles V and Philip II. But "schism most simply means "split" and we are indeed split -- and we are all responsible for this. There is a reason, I think, for the sad fact that the Body of Christ has been torn by dissension since very near its birth. It is a paradoxical result of the common witness of all of us who name ourselves Christian -- we are WHO we are because we have been saved by the Truth which is Christ, through the Spirit of Truth: "And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you." -- John 14:16-17 The skeptical Pilate ("what is truth?") exemplifies those who know nothing. If we know our own salvation, we know that Truth because it lives in us. Knowing this Truth, and being human, we tie the truth to words and to our understanding of the words. And here we start to go astray, because we confuse our salvation with the word-pictures in which we discuss it with others, or through which we frame our prayers. All of that is necessary to us, being human; but it carries with it a danger -- if someone else is framing their prayers or discussions *differently* it can look to us like they are denying OUR salvation, denying OUR truth, because they *say* it differently. But what I know because of its life in me is like my knowledge of my heart and its beating -- a "knowledge" that is quite unconcerned with the biology involved. A knowledge that may or may not be aided by the latest theories of cardiac function. The word "heresy" in pre-Christian Greek refered to the differing schools of philosophic thought, and its introduction into our religious affairs points to the root of the problem: we have erected some "understanding" of salvation into an icon and subsequently nothing will be admitted into consideration that does not match the icon. I don't know any way to dispense with the icons and still obey the command to love God with our whole mind -- the basic functioning of our mind is by metaphor, by imaging. But we *have* to stop confusing matters of style (iconographic details in our pictures) with the reality we are picturing. And since salvation is so dear to us (a pearl that we will sell all we have to purchase!) we clutch desperately at it, and reject every statement that doesn't compel our own assent, as if it came from the devil. I see a lot of that on the net -- passionate insistence that all Christians MUST see things the same way, with an implied threat that unless everyone agrees with the writer, somehow the truth the writer holds fast to may be a lie. (Yes, this is a deliberate inversion of the standard charge, i.e. that the writer's opponents are the ones holding a lie. I'm saying the passion is at least in part related to the writer's fear for his own truth.) But if our truth is not a self-serving truth, if it is a truth that issues in the fruits of life, then it meets the criteria we are given by our Lord. In which case it is mostly irrelevant whether someone else agrees with us or not. Luckily, we are NOT judged by what others, self-named as Christian or as anything else, agree with us about. [There is a technical quibble here, in that the power to bind and loose in such matters is very much a part of Catholic self-definition; I ask my Catholic readers to stand above that perspective -- artificial and difficult as it may seem -- and look at the matter as it was "before" the establishment of a Church. -- mls] When dealing with the "heretics", a great deal can be achieved simply by laying aside anxiety about our own salvation, since the disagreements and discussions in no way alter that. Neither can you force someone else's salvation by forcing your own doctrines down their throats. This is somewhat long lead-in to comments on Mac Horton's article, and to the issue of mutual communion of the various churches. The issue troubled me in talk.religion.misc, and it continues to, without my being able to say exactly why. I think the problem is that I *know* too little, I have too much difficulty distinguishing what matters to God from what matters to me: 1. Fringe Protestants still, as did many Protestants centuries ago, think "papist mummery" is a tool of the devil whose "function" is a deceitful seduction away from Christ (and hence, if that is not "admitted" there must be a conspiracy; I'd put in a smiley except that too many are deadly serious about this.) Mac Horton may not have noticed intra-Protestant sniping, but I have; though it's true that it doesn't normally reach the Antichrist level of vituperation. 2. Some "low church" types regard high church liturgies as "dead" and "stereotyped" but not (except stylistically) wrong so much as high-falutin' -- they may be able to participate in "higher" ceremonies, but they do so by "taking" them as merely peculiar variants of their own. That is, it is quite easy to read most Lutheran or Anglican or Roman communions as "memorial" services in the more Reformed manner (again, that requires putting aside as least temporarily, a Reformed sense that ceremonies _per se_ are a sort of idolatry.) 3. High church Anglicans, at least those with a major Protestant back- ground (like me), may be able to participate in communion with the Reformed, or Baptist, or even further out cults (insert as many :-) as you want there) on THEIR terms, but not thereby considering it a communion on OUR terms. But this is complex; I'm enough Protestant that I can regard ANY exchange of bread and wine in the name of Christ as SOME kind of memorial -- it's just that that doesn't quite count as "the" memorial our Lord commanded us to make (paraphrasing Cranmer). Or at least, I find myself with a "boundary" problem; some memorials "count" as a sacrament of communion, and some do not: they are perhaps "second order" sacraments -- a liturgy that represents a liturgy that represents a spritual reality. My church has to be more precise about this boundary than I do; no one may legitimately preside at Episcopal Masses (or distribute the host) who is not licensed to do so, which is to say, a priest ordained in our church. Presbyterians, Lutheran or Romans (or whomever) must be "re"ordained if they join us. For me, as for most lay Episcopalians, there is no need to draw any such sharp boundary. And our boundaries need not in themselves say anything about the "validity" of sacraments elsewhere (e.g. in Roman or Orthodox churches). In the same sense as 2. above, I can, personally, "read" a Roman or Orthodox communion as valid on *my* terms. But again, the matter is not symmetrical. It's hard to know what Rome could do without thoroughly denying its past. It is very hard for me to see what the Catholic priest could have done at the ecumenical service Charley mentioned: unless he were saying a different mass at the same time, or had brought with him reserved sacrament (which might be illegitimate here, I'm not presuming one way or the other) he can hardly be observing a Catholic sacrament of communion, and any other participation amounts to a legitimation of Protestant sacrametary theology. Protestants at least share the CONTROVERSY about what communion means, and so can see each other as "parties" within a broader tradition -- whereas a Catholic who shares Joe Buehler's "ratchet" theory of truth (once the Church has Pronounced, further discussion is Wrong) is trapped by that theory -- there CANNOT be a legitimate sacrament in the "memorial" style. [Or can there? I think truly creative Catholic theology could get around this. --mls] And I would think it likely to be offensive to Protestants if the priest DID say a separate Mass, quite aside from practical problems of who is an acceptable communicant to Rome. Again, as Charley mentioned, the Episcopal position is that any baptized Christian may receive, and that is self- monitored in practice, but this is a "latitudinarian" position of a church that deliberately attempts to encompass a range of doctrine. Anglicans have enough feet (at least the three feet of Charley's favorite stool :-)) in both camps to tolerate these ambiguities -- indeed we may seem to other Christians to INSIST on ambiguities. For us, it is a matter of how much tension we can individually bear. But Rome is a prisoner of its own past words of anathema. That is the connection with my opening remarks. Those who take Rome to be the Antichrist, and equally Rome itself, fear for their own salvation or else are convinced there is no salvation except on terms largely of their own manufacture (which is not meant as a denial of a ground of truth in both instances). But as a result, they have trouble with the statement in Mark 9:38-40: "John said to him, 'Teacher, we saw a man casting out devils in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us." And I am tempted to add a somewhat artificial reading of verse 42: "'Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hund round his nck and he were thrown into the sea.'" such that the manufacture of doctrine and explicit or implicit anathemas on that basis counts as "causing to sin" in effect by creating sins that are no sin in the eyes of God. But of course, my saying that is a statement of the way *I* read the truth living in me, and as subject to my own peculiar misinterpretations as any I object to. -- Michael L. Siemon O stand, stand at the window ...!cucard!dasys1!mls As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbor With your crooked heart.