From a logical point of view, you are obviously right: it is senseless to imagine that one can have Christ without Christianity. But, however incoherent, it is completely understandable from a psychological standpoint.

It is almost impossible not admire and be drawn to Jesus: love your enemies; turn the other cheek, the last shall be first, judge not lest ye be judged, suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven... who ever spoke like this before or since? But then there are all the hard sayings about sin and judgment, fornication and adultery and divorce, the "narrow path" that "few" will find, the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the lakes of fire.

How can Jesus NOT be God? --- and yet how can God have said some of those things?

And so there will always be the temptation to blame the difficult aspects of Christianity ---- difficult to believe or difficult to practice --- on someone else: St. Paul, the early Church, anyone but Jesus himself.

It will always be thus. Logically absurd? Yes. Historically absurd? Yes. But inevitable. The way IS narrow. Faith IS humanly impossible --- it is only possible by God's grace.

So for Anne Rice's unsuccessful struggles to believe one must have sympathy. As for her smugness, self-righteousness, and arrogance --- well, that is a different matter. And as for the sheer inanity of some of her remarks, I suppose in charity we must attribute it to the temporary influence of powerful emotions rather than weakness of intellect.

For obvious reasons, I was particularly struck by her refusal to be "anti-science." I'd love to hear her explain that one.

Author of Vampire stories? Not a Christian? Why do I not see this as a surprise? I recently had to deny my 12-year-old the pleasure of a library book club selection, what I'm sure most would call a benign and watered down vampire story, after skimming through it. The usual "average kid is really a super hero" stuff on the one hand, but there were many peripheral anti-Christian messages. And all who care about the formation of children, at a highly neuroplastic stage of life, should be cautious of the black-magic aspect.

Perhaps Ms. Rice was attracted to Christianity by the talismanic power to ward off evil that such stories attribute to the crucifix. Clearly no any deep thought behind her decisions. God help her—and her readers.

Stephen, your writings on science and faith have been very helpful to me. I recommend Modern Physics and Ancient Faith to everyone.

All those who think they have more insight than the cumulative wisdom of their ancestors, or the Magisterium, should contemplate how closely Christianity adheres to everything science reveals. I know this will continue, no matter how much we learn. (If we see an apparent conflict we must avoid Darwin's error in thinking faith has been toppled. Truth can't contradict truth. Science often guides us in our understanding of revealed truth. And the faithful must follow the wisdom of St. Augustine in not opening the faith to ridicule by espousing interpretations that are obviously wrong.) Whether or not we like it, whether or not we understand it, whatever capricious whims people of our time may drift into, whatever lies we fall for, the Truth remains. Ms. Rice and her fellow travelers are like all who want Truth to be easy. It isn't. It requires our "service." (Who was it who first said, "I shall not serve"?) But Truth is good. God is true, and good. And disobedience is something to avoid, if I read my Old Testament correctly.

Quote: "There were plenty of old radicals, from the 1930s through the 1980s, who insisted they were Marxists without being Communists, especially Communist party members, with official support for the Soviet Union."

This was a relatively common situation and, when one considers the context, hardly worth remarking upon. In the context of your sentence, "Communist Party" is equated with Stalinism and, indeed there were undoubtedly many Marxists who were not Stalinists, e.g. followers of Trotsky, "Right" Bolsheviks, classical Marxists (Mensheviks, SPGB), Council Communists, and amongst the broader socialist movement, anarchists. The title of one of Chomsky's essays from the 1980s "The Soviet Union versus Socialism" sums up the attitude these assorted leftists had.

If one is going to make analogies between religion and Marxism, it would be more apt to conceive of Marxism as a kind of pre-Theodosian mix of disparate tendencies rather than a monolithic medieval Church that both the Stalinists and their pro-capitalist opponents liked to portray it as.

By the way, it turns out that the Director General of the BBC is a Catholic!

http://protectthepope.com/?p=428

It's too bad you had to pile on like this. It comes across as sour and ungracious, especially towards a woman whose books you've advertised in your magazine.

As I have noted elsewhere, Anne Rice's book regarding her conversion struck a chord with me, as did her novels regarding Christ Himself.

I am willing to extend her the benefit of the doubt: She appears sincere, even if ecclesiologically mistaken. I don't think this is a "belated-Zeitgeist" move. I sincerely hope that we all can talk this over more extensively in Heaven, where I believe her Christian faith (yes, Christian) may take her. In the meantime, may she pray for us, and we'll pray for her.

I think before entering on ventures like this, everyone at FT needs to ask themselves, What Would Father Neuhaus do? I'm sure a sad but gentle remonstration with Mrs. Rice or something, followed with a 'sorry to see you leave but we wish you all the best.' And then maybe a zinger just to tweak her and lighten the mood.

But stuff like this makes FT look a little smaller and pettier every time it happens, and it's been happening too much over the last year or so.

Contra Paley, it is absolutely worth commenting on in the sense that Rice's latest dancing is not just a new fragmentation on the order of Garrison Keillor's "Sanctified Brethren." Keillor's Sanctifieds, all twelve of them, still intended to be Christians; Rice, on her own telling, no longer intends to be a Christian. With over 30,000 brands of Protestantism, there is no monolith here any more than there was a Stalinist monolith, although numerous eastern European immigrants in my Church might be excused for having thought they were living in a Stalinist monolith. It's the "hipness" thing that Joe Bottum has exactly right; our dear Anne has "out-hipped" all those benighted folk who stay in those dreary and confining and "anti-scientist" and medieval social clubs called churches. And it was "hip," whatever the sectarian posturings among all those pinkos of old, to say "I'm this without being THAT kind of this."

Agree with Sean, this article seems a bit too personal to me.

Maybe Rice just wants to be a Protestant? Or has been reading Kierkegaard?

Funny how the correction of untruth is held by so many to be "sour", "ungracious" and "stuff like this [that] makes FT look a little smaller and pettier." How uncouth to be so harsh on someone who "appears sincere," right? But intentions matter far less than actions and simple assent to the truth, a truth that is demanding and shockingly difficult. While some do hear the whisper, others have always needed the booming voice, so keep shouting, Mr. Bottum, and we shall all of us keep praying.

I couldn't help but think of this post by David Hart:

Fair enough, I suppose. I would observe, however, that there are all kinds of orthodoxy and all kinds of heresy. It is true that Dostoevsky personally assented—despite occasional episodes of doubt—to the creeds of the ancient church, and that he believed deeply in the mystical and sacramental traditions of the Orthodox church, and that in general his vision of things was shaped by traditional Christian understandings of sin and redemption.

That said, it is also true that his Chalcedonian orthodoxy was often almost inextricably confused with a dark, semipagan mysticism of the “Russian Christ” and of Russian blood and soil, and that he nursed slightly deranged fantasies of an Eastern Christian crusade to recapture Constantinople by violence, and that his virulent and contemptible anti-Semitism was anything but an accidental feature of his moral philosophy.

Tolstoy, on the other hand, despite his creedal heterodoxy, at least believed that, say, the sermon on the mount should be taken quite literally, and that Christ’s injunction to love our enemies and Paul’s claim that, in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek (and so forth) meant that Christians really ought not to kill Turks or hate Jews. If we were really to make conformity to Christian teaching our chief criterion of comparison between the two men, I would still hesitate to concede Dostoevsky the advantage.

I remember when she first began advertising her website in FT's pages. I was managing editor -- and I used to get calls from people seriously upset that we were supposedly promoting the work of the author of the Vampire Chronicles, which they considered anything but family fare. But, of course, we weren't advertising the Lestat stories but her own professed change of heart: "I promised," she [said], "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." This after she returned to the Catholic Church of her youth after almost dying from surgery to remove an intestinal blockage.

Why play the self-righteous prig and declaim that she was still tainted by her former associations, rather than encourage her on her new path?

But the danger in announcing to the world that you've converted, especially when you are already a celebrity, is that you wind up kneeling in pews next to people whose views you may despise and admiring people who now view you as having gone over to the enemy. (Reread Letter #10 from The Screwtape Letters.)

There's a great line from Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," in which Alvy Singer says, "I know. I'm a bigot. But -- for the left."

When all is said and done, the reason so many were annoyed by Ms. Rice's comments was that this obviously intelligent person couldn't take a step back and see that she wanted a church that was, in fact, everything she hates -- but for the left.

I remain grateful to Anne Rice for her public admission, denied by so many liberals, that one cannot, in fact, embrace radical feminism, homosexual conduct, and the party that is the champion of abortion throughout the world, and still be a faithful Catholic. Some of us have been trying to make exactly that point for many years.

Sean's right. Knock it off. You are making the magazine look trivial. Ms Rice finds herself in a difficult family position with the Church. And those of us who are not famous find harping on famous converts, reverts, recidivists etc pointless.

I would agree with Sean's point if all that Ms. Rice had said is that she had lost her faith, no longer found the doctrines of Christianity credible, etc. In that case, I think everyone at FT would have treated her gently. I am sure most of us have had moments of doubt and struggles with faith at some point in our lives.

But she went far beyond that to say things that are really utterly vicious about all Christians as Christians. For example: (a) Christians are a "deservedly infamous group". Not that the doctrines are infamous, or the institution is infamous, but the "group" --- the people, the adherents as a group --- are desrvedly infamous. That is a vile thing to say aboiut one third of one's fellow human beings. (b) She must renounce Christianity because she "refuses to be "anti-life". Therefore all her former co-religionists are people who do not refuse to be anti-life.

Hers was a nasty screed. Why did she do it? Why did she have to do that? Why not simply say, "I respect the people who remain Christian, and their sincerity, and their good will, but I no longer share their beliefs"?

Look, Sean, First Things is a magazine devoted to the critical analysis of ideas and culture. If a major cultural figure makes a statement about fundamental issues, it is the job of this magazine to subject them to critical scrutiny. Just as a book reviewer has the obligation to point out serious flaws in a book, and a scholar to point out the incoherence or factual errors in some piece of research, so Anne Rice should be called to account for her public statements. If she had made a statement about Jews being "deservedly infamous" would she or should she have been patted on the head? She said something every bit as bad. What she said was every bit as rotten as anything Mel Gibson has said in his drunken rants --- and I assume she was sober when she said them.

No one wishes her ill. We all wish her well. But it is no charity to let pass without complaint statements of the kind she has made.

The sad thing about Anne Rice's remarks is that they reveal her view of the teachings of Christianity. She views Christianity, as do many outsiders, as a list of "shall nots". The "shall nots" of Christianity are merely the consequences of the positives of the faith. One cannot, after all, have the good while retaining the bad, the two are mutually exclusive. One must choose between the blessing and the curse, life or death. There is not way to avoid choosing and to choose one is to reject the other.

The Church is not "anti-gay", but it is against sodomy because sodomitic acts deny the life-giving blessing of sex. The Church is not "anti-feminist", but it is against a version of feminism which devalues the roles of wife and mother by which new life is transmitted. The Church is not "anti-birth-control" for no reason, but because contraception seeks to turn sex into what Luther called a "sodomitic act," again denying the life-giving blessing of sex. The Church is not "anti-Democrat" or "pro-Republican", if you will, but it does oppose the anti-life policies which both parties endorse. The Church is only "anti-secular humanism" to the extent that secular-humanism denies and, indeed, attacks, the teachings of the Church. And the Church most definitely is not anti-life. Indeed, I would that Ms. Rice explain why she thinks so. The beliefs and practices which Ms. Rice refuses to be against are what are anti-life.

In sum, Ms. Rice has focused on the "shall nots" that are the necessary consequences of the blessings of God to which the teachings of Scripture and the Church opens one up. The "shall nots" are merely the behaviors which we must avoid if we are to choose the blessing and reject the curse, if we are to choose life and reject death. That is, Ms. Rice is focused upon the wrong side of the teachings of Christianity. Perhaps is she had learned to recognize and focus on the blessing to which we are open if we avoid the "shall nots" she would still be a Christian.

And, of course, how can one expect to remain close to Christ while rejecting His chosen Bride? (Our pastor gave a very good sermon on that subject just yesterday.)

The Catholic Church is one of the hard sayings of Christ.

"A farmer went out to plant some seed. As he scattered it across his field, some seeds fell on a footpath, and the birds came and ate them. Other seeds fell on shallow soil with underlying rock. The plants sprang up quickly, but they soon wilted beneath the hot sun and died because the roots had no nourishment in the shallow soil. Other seeds fell among thorns that shot up and choked out the tender blades." Mt. 13:3-7.

Making the magazine look trivial?

Au contraire mon frères, it is Ms. Rice who is making Christianity and Catholicism look trivial. If one believes the truth as set out from the bible and followed up with the teachings of the Catholic Church as Ms. Rice once publicly professed to do, then one does not do as sean with the small s wishes Jody would do "a 'sorry to see you leave but we wish you all the best.' " All the best? The best in within the Catholic Church not outside of it.

Leaving the Church is a grave matter. Much more grave of a matter than any of the graves in Ms. Rice's novels.

Do we really for one second believe this is what Father Neuhaus would've have done?

As a 10+ year convert to the Church I too have found myself in difficult positions with my life and the Church. But that does not mean the Church or Christianity is any of the things Ms. Rice now professes it to be. One of the most forgotten gifts of the Holy Spirit at the time of confirmation in fortitude. Ms. Rice was given the fortitude to sincerely struggle with her struggles. May she come to recall this - that is the I can do. Until then she does look exactly as Jody described - "like a woman who can’t stand the heat".

(And yes, in the meantime I too would love to hear her explain her anti-science put-down.)

I agree that Ms. Rice's recent announcement needs to be handled graciously and respectfully, although she did not give "Christianity" and "Christians" the same courtesy. I do think that FT and others should coment on her statements and change of direction. She made a very public and profitable re-conversion to the Catholic Church and she made a very public and nasty exit. The thoughts she expressed need to be exposed for the foolishness that they are for the sake of her soul and others.

I wasn't sure if Mr. Goldman's parody was parody or for real. It was outrageous but so was her statement. What Mr. Goldman wrote might not be Ms. Rice's exact words but that is what she is saying isn't she? I think perhaps a more straightforward commentary on what she is really saying is called for and would be more effective and more charitable. The atmospere is too emotionally charged in these situations for parody to work well.

I am sad for her. She is on the journey just like the rest of us and has hit a bump in the road. She chose to make it public and so must take the criticism. The arrogance and judgmentalism and hypocrisy of her statement boggles the mind. Christ is love, where is the love in her words? We must correct each other with love. If she believes folks need to be corrected so be it even if she is wrong, however, what she did was start a fight. Hmmm...not very Christ like. But most of us have done the same just not publicly. I know that there was a point that it pained me deeply to see the contradictions between what those I loved would say and do, and how far they were from faithfulness to the Magisterium. In my desire to do God's work and spread the Good News I made mistakes. I used words I shouldn't and was too emotional. I hope and pray that Ms. Rice will let us know when she gets to the point that she understands Christians are sinners, very imperfect in all that we do, but like non believers we try our best and that she loves us anyway. Now that would be Christ like.

As Anne Rice says on her facebook page, "But following Christ does not mean following His followers." I do understand how she feels. Too many Christian blogs and organizations are venomous, vitriolic and condemnatory. I think this has something to do with the manipulation of Christianity and Christians for political ends, as well as the natural tendency of a group to come together and belittle other groups to make themselves feel more important.

Steven,

I don't think the world needed FT to point out how silly her comments were. Responding to them at all (let alone in kind) should be below FT's pay grade, there are plenty of other christian blogs that handle this sort of thing.
About five or six years back, Fr. Neuhaus explained why FT never bothered to print rebuttals to the DaVinci Code, saying something to the effect of, "We don't do pop culture." Exactly.

Joseph does make a good point about the I-love-Christ-just-not-christians schtick, but there's no need to use it to slag Ms. Rice, who clearly is in some state of turmoil over her faith (which this can't be helping). From a journalistic standpoint, Gandhi would have been a more fitting subject for the point Joseph made, both as the originator of that obnoxious meme and as a victim more worthy of the FT axe.

She deserves what she is getting. You can look to the church and it's doctrine for a clear expression of beliefs.

Or, you can make the same mistake Anne Rice does and believe what pop culture is telling you the church is about, which is never good.

She's a fool saying foolish things.

One more thing.

I've gotten the impression over the past several years that Ms. Rice's faith and fondness for christianity and the Catholic Church has been substantially influenced by her affection for First Things. She certainly held Fr. Neuhaus in high regard and seemed (by his telling) rather humble, if not timid, about submitting her christian work to FT for review. Her measured response to Mr. Goldman's parody (much better measured than her Facebook comments) suggests that she reads FT still (at least the web page) and still takes its opinions into account. It might have been more helpful to her (and to the cause of eventually helping her find her way back into the loving arms of Mother Church) if some regard for her feelings had been held.

Her explanation to me still sounds like someone who can't shake her affection for Jesus, but still wants to be accepted by the cool crowd: Yes, I believe in Jesus, but I'm not, you know, one of "those" people.....

You have a point, Sean. But there have been many times in my life when I acted like a jackass, and nothing has done me more benefit than having my wife or someone else who cared about me tell that flat out and honestly.

I am issuing a definite challenge now to Ms. Rice: Explain to this physicist how being a Christian forces me to be anti-science. Tell me, Ms. Rice, how you are more pro-science than I am, who have devoted my life to doing scientific research. Tell me how "anti-science" Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Boyle, Ampere, Coulomb, Volta, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, and Pasteur were. Tell me how anti-science Fr. Lemaitre (the founder of the Big Bang theory), Fr. Mendel (the founder of genetics), Bp. Niels Stensen (the founder of geology), fr. marin Mersenne (the "father of acoustics"), Fr. Angelo Secchi (one of the founders of astrophysics), Fr. Grimaldi (the discoverer of the diffraction of light), and Abbe Spallanzani (one of the leading biologists of the 18th century) were.
Ms. Rice, you have made an accusation, now defend it --- or say you can't and retract it.

I like Dr. Barr's challenge a great deal. To suppose that Christianity is anti-science is to claim that some of the greatest scientific minds of all times are frauds. It's like saying, in the face of so much sophisticated philosophy by Christian philosophers, that faith and reason are antithetical to each other. It's an insult to folks like Stump, Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Van Inwagen, Koons, MacIntyre, McInerny, Budziszewski, Arkes, Beckwith, Hasker, Swinburne, Taylor, Anscombe, Davis, both Adams (Robert Merrihew and Marilyn McCord) to say nothing of Leibniz, Aquinas, Augustine, Anselm . . .

Ann Rice's has conflated an attack upon Christianity with an attack upon particular Christians. She seems to assume either that the label is just an inductive generalization of particulars (making her a nominalist) or that the whole is reducible to the sum of its parts (thereby committing the fallacy of composition). Moreover, she simply ignores the sort of historical evidence presented by Stark or Hart. Her position is entirely one-sided and has all the nuance of the pontifical pronouncements on Christianity of folks like Dawkins (if parody doesn't translate on page, does sarcasm?).

But there has been ever so much good by Christians in the name of Christ--think here of the invention of hospitals . . . Shouldn't Rice take that into account?

Having read with profit her first two novels in the Christ the Lord trilogy, I was looking forward to the final one. I realized that it would be a challenge to write, as she would be writing about the well-travelled territory of the Gospels.

I wonder whether her work on the third book -- if in fact she has been writing it -- has also contributed to her disaffectation from Christianity. Despite her avowal that she hasn't turned from Christ, perhaps she found that the Christ of the Gospels is not the Man who can easily be shaped into the image of who she wishes He were.

One further comment: I, too, miss Father Neuhaus's touch. Somehow, his playful and clever, sometimes even wicked, skewering managed to avoid the mean-spirited tone that others find difficult to avoid.

It does help to have done a little research on this event in the life of Anne Rice. Should I say I am disappointed by the failure to do so here.

Michael Rowe published an article at Huffington Post, which provides a couple news items that explain the context of Anne Rice's decision.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/raised-hate-kids-westboro-baptist-church/story?id=10809348

An ABC news report on children and teenagers being trained to hate and sing anti-homosexual songs at the Westboro Baptist Church.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/raised-hate-kids-westboro-baptist-church/story?id=10809348

And a news report from Minnesota about a "christian" rock group singing songs of hate against homosexuals and expressing their joy about Muslims executing homosexuals.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/58393/gop-linked-punk-rock-ministry-says-executing-gays-is-moral

Even if one disagrees with homosexuality, a Christian can and should be appalled by these reports and these so called "christians".

Of course, it does help to remember that Anne Rice's son is homosexual.

John Rowe's article on Anne Rice can be found here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rowe/why-anne-rice-has-never-b_b_664576.html

I'm quite captivated by the notion that Father Nuehaus would have adopted a well wishing line with Rice. Besides leaving the Church -- Rice attacked it and its followers causing great scandal among the flock. Would Father have brandished the sterling silver crucifix and after a great flourish like a character from one of her novels, plunged it into her heart? Probably not. But that does not mean he would have let her off lightly. He knew Rice as one who was trying to be a Catholic and an imaginative writer. He did recognize she was not a theologian and that she was an artist with an imagination that she was trying to hue to the Church's compass settings and teachings. He also recognized she was trying to be faithful to the faith. So he was kinder to her than other Christians.

But that has all changed now with her admission. Reread this and ask yourself, What Would Father Neuhaus Do?


RJN: 11.11.05 Nobody has revealed...
Nov 11, 2005
Richard John Neuhaus
Nobody has revealed the details, but Judith Miller declares herself "very satisfied" with the severance package she got from the New York Times. In an interview, she described herself as a "free woman." Then there is this interesting line on what she means by that. She said she is free from the "convent of the New York Times, a convent with its own theology and its own catechism." Who would have thought of the Times as a convent?


The image of the nun jumping to freedom over the convent wall was a staple in the heyday of anti-Catholic propaganda. Of course the nun almost never had the help of high-powered lawyers extracting a big severance deal from the convent.


I suppose Ms. Miller means to say that the Times is a hothouse of stifling political orthodoxies, and I have no doubt that is the case. In her coverage of foreign affairs and intelligence before the Iraq war, Miller reported what everybody—including Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Hans Blix of the UN, and the intelligence establishments of every major nation—thought they knew about Iraq's possession and threat of WMDs. When it became apparent that much of that information was wrong, the Times was in a bind, and many in the convent blamed Ms. Miller for having turned the paper into a tool for promulgating what was then the prevailing wisdom.


But then the bind was doubled when Ms. Miller went to jail rather than reveal her sources, notably Mr. "Scooter" Libby in the vice president's office. Was Judith Miller heroine or goat? In its news and editorial sections (the two being nominally distinct), the Times decided to celebrate Ms. Miller as a champion, even a martyr, for the freedom of the press. But after almost three months in jail, she decided to cooperate with the special prosecutor, thus restoring the freedom of the Times to return to type. She was made the scapegoat for the paper's embarrassment over not having challenged what everybody thought they knew in 2002 and 2003 about Iraq's weapons and intentions.


Not, of course, that there was a rational basis for such a challenge. It is simply that things turning out to be other than what everybody thought them to be is an intolerable insult to the Times' presumed exemption from human fallibility. But at least we may be confident that Ms. Miller is a well-paid scapegoat, and, if she is getting less than a million in advance for that book, she needs a new agent.


Anti-Catholic innuendos notwithstanding, a convent, a theology, and a catechism are all things of beauty. In the service of Christ and his Church, they well warrant the surrender of a life in devotion to transcendent truth. As I would like to think Ms. Miller knows, that is very different from having spent 28 years of her life surrendering her intelligence in order to toe the line of the smelly little orthodoxies of the New York Times.




A woman complained to Wal-Mart about the store's replacing "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays." The Catholic League has circulated the response from Wal-Mart's Customer Service: "Walmart is a worldwide organization and must remain conscious of this. The majority of the world still has different practices other than 'christmas' which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with 'christmas' red and white are actually a representation of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses, mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoths and the tree from the worship of Baal. It is a wide wide world."

So now you know the true meaning of Christmas.




The other day I had occasion to mention in passing my 1971 book In Defense of People. Now I see that Peter Singer of Princeton has a new book out from Oxford, In Defense of Animals: The Second Wave. Of course, it shouldn't be an either/or choice, and one would like to say that it is a matter of emphasis. But, knowing what Peter Singer thinks about inferior and unwanted people, it does seem that a rather basic decision is required.




The January issue of FIRST THINGS will include a reflection by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn on the intelligent design/evolution controversy. His article is occasioned by physicist Stephen Barr's argument in the October issue, "The Design of Evolution." Barr, in turn, was responding to Cardinal Schönborn's earlier op-ed piece on these questions in the New York Times, which received a great deal of attention. In the issue following Schönborn's reflection, Barr will have a further evaluation of the state of the question.


So what is FIRST THINGS up to here? We are not distancing ourselves from the intelligent design movement. The champions of that movement have rendered a signal service in exposing the non-scientific philosophical dogmatism of many evolutionists. Nor are we sponsoring a fight between Cardinal Schönborn and Dr. Barr. We have the greatest respect for both. Cardinal Schönborn is, in addition to being the Archbishop of Vienna, the chief editor of The Catechism of the Catholic Church and a great friend of FIRST THINGS. Dr. Barr is a distinguished scientist and a member of our editorial board.


The intention of this continuing conversation is to clarify as precisely as possible, within the context of Catholic teaching, the lines between physics and metaphysics, between theology and science rightly understood. Unlike many Protestants, Catholics have no stake in "creationist" arguments aimed at defending an unpoetical reading of Genesis. Catholics and everyone else have an enormous stake in defending the unity of truth. That defense requires the greatest care and modesty on the part of claims advanced by both science and theology. It requires, in short, the virtues possessed in abundance by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn and Stephen Barr.

........


"Catholics and everyone else have an enormous stake in defending the unity of truth."

I would love to sit and discuss these things with Ms Rice and her pastor whom she refers to elsewhere.
Alas I am way over here and she is way over there.
I wish her well.
It would have been wonderful to hear her discuss under the evening skies in the Palms.

John:

Having read the articles you provided the URL addresses for, if the groups cited...

- Westboro Baptist Church, a minuscule church in Kansas that despises the Catholic Church

- a "Christian rock" group in Minnesota who, as per their website, are most certainly not Catholic

...did indeed factor into Ms. Rice's decision to leave the Church (and denounce all Christians on her way out), then hers is possibly the most puzzling and/or immature decision made by any adult in recent memory.

Per:

"Of course, it does help to remember that Anne Rice's son is homosexual."

Why is this helpful to remember? This does not justify nor clarify Rice's remarks on the Church or Christians. Nor does it excuse them. Nor does it explain her departure from the Catholic Church. Please someone somewhere show us where exactly does it say says you cannot be faithful Catholic and have a homosexual child?

(Hint- you won't find it anywhere in the bible. Nor will you find it anywhere in the Catholic Church.)

But since so many people are concerned that we recall that Anne Rice's son is gay, let us also recall her son's announcement on his mother's departure from the Catholic Church :

"For ten years I watched my mother bravely attempt to engage the hostile fundamentalist forces that dominate the leadership of almost every popular Christian denomination. She was met, in most instances with an iron wall of derision and scorn. Her departure from organized religion is a testament to the moral rot that exists at the politcized core of most church leadership. Throughout it all, her love and support of me as a gay man has never wavered and I love her just as much today as I did when she considered herself a member of the Catholic church."

I have to agree with everything Sean posted above. It seems petty to adopt the tone Mr. Bottum did in this article.

As Christians, we seek reconciliation, not denigration. As intellectuals, we abhor the one-upsmanship better left to the political shows on television.

We should seek Ms. Rice's healing. We should challenge the curiously misguided assumptions informing the views she has adopted. And rather than dismiss her as irrelevant, we should see her as Christ does: someone worth loving and gently correcting. What's more, we should use this as an occasion to reach out to others who share Ms. Rice's misguided thinking.

I was a subscriber to First Things. When Father Neuhaus passed, I worried about the state of this superb journal. Would it change? Would it maintain its high level of discourse.

When my issue arrived with the headline blaring "Mitch Albom is an Idiot", I knew I'd let my subscription lapse. I'm keeping abreast of FT in the hopes that the journal will regain its balance, adjust to what has been an intense loss, and continue its wonderful tradition of measured, thoughtful, and considerate prose.

Please, FT's staff: don't get swept up in the political moment or by the momentary emotions that are provoked when someone denigrates the faith. Be larger than that, be wiser.

As Kent said to Lear: "See better."

aybe, just maybe, Ms. Rice has come to understand that being a Christian and roman Catholic are completely incompatible.

Ms. Hangnail:

I sincerely hope you are kidding.

Cordially,

GR

"Always a day behind the fair. Always a beat behind the crowd." What does that even mean? Mr. Bottum's writing is becoming more and more inscrutable.

Felicity,

I'm not Catholic, but I don't see the incompatibility. Is it also incompatible to a Christian and Eastern Orthodox or Lutheran or Baptist? On your view, in order to be Christian do you have to be against any sort of institution and creed? But isn't anti-creedalism a kind of creed anyway? And don't you see in folks who define their Christianity any way the please that they have ceased to be accountable before God and have, rather, made God accountable to their own conceit? Maybe just maybe Rice wanted a God who fit her preferences and beliefs rather than one who challenged them. Maybe she preferred a grandfatherly omnibenevolence in the sky to the untamed, though all good God of Scripture. At any rate, whatever she came to see (or not to see, as the case may be) here account of Christianity is so one sided that no serious historian or philosopher would ever adopt it. Even secular historians now have a much more nuanced and tempered view of the impact of Christianity upon the world. That she should stake out so unflinching a critical position says more about her and where she's at (and may we all have nothing but the love of Christ for her--as distinct from her present "arguments") than it does about Christianity in the world. Doesn't it matter, Felicity, that all the cases she points to are anomalous? (By the way, she can't just be rejecting Catholicism; part of her rant against Christianity involves certain Baptists and other Evangelicals.)

Sadly, I once heard the daughter of a Christian thinker, now passed on, held in high regard in Evangelical and Reformed circles describe herself very similarly to Rice. Rice's position isn't new. It's just that the arguments for it aren't want philosophers call sound.

the "challenge" issued above to ms. rice by professor barr does indeed seem petty.... it is reasonably clear, methinks, that ms. rice's comments were written in a moment of frustration, and likely not intended as fodder for anal philosophical dissection.

regarding a proper response to ms. rice's comments, reformed theologian cornelius plantinga would probably ask what disposition and action would bring most "shalom" into the world.... perhaps separating ms. rice from her sentiments would help -- one must not address a person as one addresses an idea. persons are more important than ideas; christ did not die for ideas.

so i think ms. rice deserves our grace, love, and earnest prayers, and we should seek hers. her sentiments, in contrast, are tragically and widely held; these deserve careful analysis and refutation if possible.

"Poor Anne Rice. Always a day behind the fair. Always a beat behind the crowd."

I suppose that all will be forgiven when she returns to the fold in a year or two.

Hazel Motes, from Flannery O'Conner's Wiseblood, tells only one lie: when asked if his church of Jesus Christ with no Christ is a protestant sect, he says yes.

Why did Rice feel compelled to make public declarations about her spiritual state? I can understand wanting to communicate the joy of coming back to the Church after having been away for a long time, but can't see how she could take any pleasure in declaring that the rest of us are just too, too sinful and stupid for her to bear. Clearly she now has a habit of changing her mind; what will she tell us when she comes BACK to the Church, or goes in some new direction?

a) Parody works sometimes. Jacob's parody of Gibran was the most brilliant thing I've read in First Things - and that's high praise: I love First Things!

b) Yes, when I was 14 I had the idea that if only Christianity could be purged of hypocritical so-called Christians, it would be so great. And, who but me, with all the clarity of a 14-year-old, could teach them what they had always gotten wrong? Well, every 14 years there is another cohort of 14-year-olds, some of whom will come to the earth-shattering insight that all the followers of Christ have either been hypocrits or too stupid to understand Christ's true teaching. Too bad Ms. Rice took a bit longer to figure it out than I did. Luckily it did not take another 14 years to figure out that such a notion ranks as one of the most conceited imaginable. But many people hold it. And, yes, objectively speaking, it is an old idea, but the fact is it will continue to be attractive to some people upon attaining to their 14th year.

c) I don't think Ms. Rice is an idiot. She wrote a pretty interesting book, the only one of her's I've read - Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt. She is smart. She had some good insights re. life in the Ancient World, even though I couldn't quite get behind her Christology. She is smart. So where did she come up with this list of 'antis'? I love how she ranks being anti-life with being anti-Democrat - and she did use a capital 'D'! I don't think she is an idiot, but I do think she was shooting from the hip, which makes it difficult to sympathize with her. So, all Christians are a bunch of hate-mongers and philistines? Not a statement that can be taken seriously. She must be a woman of great passion, how else can you make such radical transitions over a relatively brief period of time?

Andrew, Is it really petty to take someone's ideas seriously? On the contrary, I think it is patronizing to treat someone as if she were just a bundle of feelings and "sentiments".

By all means we should pray for Anne Rice. We can pray for someone without announcing loudly to anyone who will listen that we are doing so. Are praying for someone and arguing with her mutually exclusive possibilities? Some people seem to think that one can "love bomb" people into the Church. (The reference may be lost on some younger readers of this blog. Some cults became famous a few decades ago for using the technique of "love bombing" to recruit and brainwash new members.) My impression is that Ms. Rice regards herself as a serious intellectual, and has serious objections to the beliefs of Christians. To refer to attempts to engage her on an intellectual level as "anal" is fundamentally anti-intellectual. First Things is an intellectual magazine, not a group therapy session. I don't think Anne Rice would come to this blog (if she does) expecting to have her hand held and be cooed to. I would expect her to come expecting a serious discussion of her ideas. She is a serious (if deeply misguided) person.

To Sean (and Ann Rice if she's reading),

I sympathize with your remarks. I think many of the comments were offered in the spirit of rigorous intellectual engagement. I think we can distinguish between comments about a person and comments about a person's position. Though, I confess, Rice's recent comments don't seem to make that most important and most charitable of distinctions. Nonetheless, I'm sure that Mr. Bottum and Dr. Barr not only do not wish her ill but even wish her well. I certainly do. That said, her comments were of a public nature. And they are not the unbiased reflection of sober scholarship that they purport to be (well, whether based on scholarship or no--Rice presents them as the sober truth of the matter). But her comments are highly controversial and contestable. And that bears pointing out in the sort of straightforward and direct (and even blunt) way in which she dismissed, while caricaturing, Christianity. Caricature . . . now, I think that's precisely to the point.

Anne Rice was about as Catholic as Martin Luther. She, like so many, is a "cafeteria Christian". So, I say, good luck on finding a 'god' who thinks just like you.

Anne Rice's faith may have all be in vein.

As John noted earlier this morning, Rice's son Christopher is not only gay but a very prominent gay writer, penning a regular column in the national homosexual news magazine _The Advocate_ as well as the author of popular novels.

Note that the FIRST thing Rice "refuse[s]" to be in her announcement is "anti-gay". It strikes me that this is really all one needs to know about Rice's renunciation of the Body of Christ. Twelve years ago her son was not a famous gay novelist. Twelve years ago the normalization of homosexuality was not the litmus test of liberal American politics. Combine that with the ever-intensifying political clashes over same-sex marriage since 1998 and one has all the reasoning one needs to understand Rice's departure.

She feigns a theological argument, but such matters are usually decided by intensely personal matters.

Maybe the problem is she never found a home in the Church where she, her history, her life, her son, and perhaps a host of many other things about Anne Rice would be accepted (by herself and others) as part of God's mysterious plan of salvation.

I belong to one of the movements in the Church where I have found this place of acceptance of God's plan for my life. Unfortunately, I never found a home in any parish no matter how hard I tried to join in and be a part of things. If what I knew about Catholicism was restricted to the Internet (shudder) or Your Typical Suburban Parish, I'm afraid I would have been out of the faith a long time ago. Somehow, God had mercy on me and has given me a way to be part of the Church despite not being "Mary Catholic". I hope and pray that he helps Anne Rice do likewise.

a few thoughts in reply to professor barr:

i agree with you: ideas must be taken seriously. it is not petty to take someone's ideas seriously. surely anne rice's ideas deserve consideration and refutation.

even so, it seems petty to take what appears to be an emotional ejaculation on some social website and refute it as if the ejaculator had written a considered philosophical treatise.














By all means we should pray for Anne Rice. We can pray for someone without announcing loudly to anyone who will listen that we are doing so. Are praying for someone and arguing with her mutually exclusive possibilities? Some people seem to think that one can "love bomb" people into the Church. (The reference may be lost on some younger readers of this blog. Some cults became famous a few decades ago for using the technique of "love bombing" to recruit and brainwash new members.) My impression is that Ms. Rice regards herself as a serious intellectual, and has serious objections to the beliefs of Christians. To refer to attempts to engage her on an intellectual level as "anal" is fundamentally anti-intellectual. First Things is an intellectual magazine, not a group therapy session. I don't think Anne Rice would come to this blog (if she does) expecting to have her hand held and be cooed to. I would expect her to come expecting a serious discussion of her ideas. She is a serious (if deeply misguided) person.

The question here is not that of whether Ms. Rice ought to be called out in some way on her retraction—which, as others have already noted, was both public in nature and vitriolic in tone—but, rather, that of how her fellow Christians are to conduct themselves in doing so.

Hence, I groaned inwardly upon absorbing the first few lines of this piece, especially since I know Ms. Rice to be a reader of First Things. There are many different approaches to evangelizing a person who has fallen away from the faith; attacks against the individual's artistic output (itself of only peripheral interest to the discussion, especially since the author in question gave up writing in her most celebrated genre shortly after her conversion), served up cold with a generous helping of snark, are not among them.

As Sean points out above, "Joseph does make a good point about the I-love-Christ-just-not-christians schtick, but there's no need to use it to slag Ms. Rice, who clearly is in some state of turmoil over her faith (which this can't be helping)." This cuts to the heart of the matter. Mr. Bottum may well be on the right track in certain aspects of his analysis; the piece, however, opens with an ad hominem attack against its subject and is characterized throughout by a tone that is both condescending ("our Anne") and generally nasty. If these qualities do not deter Ms. Rice from reading past the first sentence, they will, if nothing else, be an impediment to fruitful discussion with her about her decision.

Rice's point of course, was to suggest that what is called "Christianity" today, in places like First Things, might not really reflect what Jesus Christ himself really wanted.

Perhaps though, to be sure though, many knew this long ago. And they have long since, simply been consciously using Christianity as a front, willingly.

If so, then we need to address these cynics. And ask them a next question: have those who remained within Christianity, without really following Jesus, have they in using Christianity, done well, even aside from their hypocrisy? In particular, note, Rice was suggesting that what is today called Christianity, is really right-wing politics: "anti-gay... anti-feminist ... anti-artificial birth control ... anti-Democrat ....anti-secular humanism... anti-science."

Bottum has suggested that issues like abortion are on the "crossroads," where real religion merges into politics. But there are two major objections to this. First 1) I have noted the duplicity and hypocrisy and dishonesty of this. Noting at length in comments to "Signpost on the Crossroads," and "Abortion Out of the Back Alley," that many things passed by conservatives today as "Christianity" - like anti-abortionism - don't really seem consistent with real religion, the Bible itself; and are all too obviously attempts to use religion as a mask, to sell conservative ideas, a political philosophy, as if it was the word of God. Thus misusing Christ himself. And committing the sin of hypocrisy and duplicity.

But 2) what if you don't really care about Christ? Or about hypocrisy? And just accept this dishonest use of Christ as a front for political opinions, your own political philosophy? Then let's evaluate that political philosophy, just on rational terms. Consider anti-abortionism; which has been foisted off on us since 1980 as the word of God. But which does not fit the Bible at all. Or if you don't really care about the Bible, then consider this: specifically, the Anti-abortion line, ignores, attacks the importance of the mind and intelligence itself.

Today, the conservative mis-use of Christianity, asserts that the embryo is fully a human being, from conception. But much of Philosophy suggests that the essence of being human, is having a mind, or intelligence. So that thus St. Thomas Aquinas suggesting that an embryo is not a human being, until its body - or today, we would say a brain - was "formed" enough, to sustain a mind, spirit, or soul. But this means that conservative Catholicism, in ignoring this, and pronouncing a mere physical body, DNA without an active mind or intelligence, fully human, thus attacks, denies, the importance of the mind, intelligence itself.

Will the Conservative attack on the mind, the attack on intelligence itself, serve humanity well, in the end? There are many, many serious problems after all, in advancing the false philosophy, that pronounces us human, just on the basis of DNA and other physical, not mental abilities. The problem is that this deifies the "flesh," the body, and attacks or denies the importance of the mind, in defining a human being. And finally, the embrace of un-intelligence and physicality, will of course be fatal to mankind.

Many have thought - and at times even publically said - that religion, Christianity, was often used as a front, for just all-too-human political opinions or philosophies. And some even simply accept that. But finally we can ask two different questions of this. First 1) is it moral or good, for "Conservatives," Neo Cons, to use Christ as a mask or front for their own opinions? To constantly twist the Bible and the Church's ideas around, to assert that one's political opinions are the word of God?
But then finally, to those cynics who simply accept this, here's the second, more interesting question. Suppose that 2) by now, many know that this was often done - and now some cynics in Religion, simply accept this gross imposture. But it so, then we need to ask this next, different question: is the direction they twisted it toward, ultimately a good one?

Finally, I am suggesting that even taken not as real religion, but just as politics, much of what is passed as from "Christ," is simply wrong; and even deadly. Specifically I have suggested, conservatives, twisting Christianity until it loves the theology of the "body," and disregards and even hates intelligence and the "mind," or "soul," will cause all of humanity, severe problems. You can't thus denigrate intelligence itself, without causing humanity to descend into stupidity itself; and then extinction.

And of course, the deification of the physical body, of DNA and the mindless body of Terry Schiavo, or the embryo, the denigration of the mind or spirit in defining what is human, is not something that any intellectual or an intelligent person - or a PhD in Philosophy - of course, should support. It is an attack on the very core of humanity; in religion, on the soul itself. In Philosophy and human life and science, it is an attack on intelligence itself.

So has Christ, Christianity, often been used as a front for political opinions? Of course; first the Left, and now the Right, have done that. But the problem is that many now secretly, privately, accept that; their role as hypocrites and deceivers. So the question we should put to such incredible cynics, to reach them at last, is this one: is the conservative philosophy you espouse, really the right one, even evaluated solely as a rational philsosophy, and totally aside from religion?

Specifically, won't the conservative, Archie-Bunker emphasis on lower-class physicality, disdain for intellectuals and for intelligence itself, come back to haunt, destroy us all?

And for that matter, disingenuous and manipulative Conservatives should consider this possibility: that Christ was right himself, after all; that there is something intrinsically wrong, about hypocrisy itself. With lies, after all.

http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/30/anne-rice-loving-apostate/

How many of us have committed ourselves to our Christianity, created in our personal image and likeness. Mother Theresa of Calcutta was truly unique because she wanted to do things Jesus' way. She wanted to belong to his Church. Hmmm. How much better that he belong to our church. And a most welcome guest he will be.

Ms. Rice expresses the thought so well, as befits her chosen profession. Her way is narrow and her gate is latched. But Christian that she is, she has deigned none-the-less to leave a path for Jesus. If he behaves himself and does his lessons.

Sadly for us the redeemed, Christianity is not about us. It is about Jesus and what he wants. But the point is made very well in the comments above, what he wants is Good, because Only God is Good, and All that He Does is Good. We are not good, because only he is good, but it is good that he fashioned us because we are capable of good by his grace. Ms Rice wants to be good while rejecting his grace, to be good her way. That is simply impossible, but how beguiling it is. Who has not been tantalized by that wish? It is only when we begin to experience the true good that we learn even a crumb of wisdom.

Hope that this article would alert many more that the attacks on faith are from the fallen vampires and that our efforts put together to rebuke such powers (that reign in places like England where the beast like a leoprad with its pervasive mockery of all that is sacred alos has bitten off huge chunks ! ) is to be the trumpet call of our times !

Happened to read how her mother dies from alcoholism ; unlikely that that area of woundedness and thus a harbinger of darkness , against Mother figures such as The Church has been dealt with ...as well as the debt formany being led into such paths of darkness too , through glorification of evil ..for rejecting the baptismal promise , to reject satan , with all its pomps and works ..

Let us hope that prayers of St.Patrick , powerful against pagan powers and of Bl.Mother , of all holy angels and saints such as Mo.Teresa who also had to struggle silently and heroically against such , be called down upon , to rebuke such powers , to break any such holds through ancestral effects in her and many like her , esp. in England, Europe and all holds of paganism whereever , that in His infinite mercy , this too becomes cause of rejoicing for many !

May the effects of confession, fastings and use of sacramentals , such as of the green scapular and Benedictine medals be made use of by many more , in this battle , along with the rosary chain and Word of God as well as intent to renounce any works of the pomps of the evil one - and do we not live in a sea of such !

You know, brettongarcia, it amazes me that some people here think your posts are worth replying to.

brettongarcia: I recall a line in a book that goes something like , "He who hears you hears me." The guy who said that was basically telling us to listen to his appointed leaders, and their successors. I take that line very seriously. Christianity isn't about me, it's about Him. If He's telling me to listen to His leaders, then I best listen. I listen to his appointed leaders and hear him, not just the leaders. Clearly you and Ms. Rice have purged that line from your books.

I think Ann Rice is probably on a genuine journey of faith, and I wish her well. I am surprised that she hasn’t yet looked behind the inaccurate stereotypes of Catholic principles to find the radical theological virtues which are essential to Christianity, not to mention the Sermon on the Mount, the corporal acts of mercy, etc, etc. Maybe she’ll learn about these things over time. I’m sure she has encountered people who are poor examples of Christianity, but that was inevitable. Aren't we all poor examples of Christianity most of the time? I hope she doesn’t expect to find a more purified version of christianity with all saints and no sinners somewhere outside the church.

If she asked my advice I’d tell her that Christianity is difficult and mysterious and she should disregard those who claim otherwise. I would refer her to someone like Graham Greene, a popular writer who struggled with but never abandoned his faith. It might help for her to realize that struggling is common when you are dealing with a mystery.

I tend to agree that the tone of the article is unnecessarily petty. Ms. Rice is trying to work though some difficulties with her faith. I see no indication that she is fabricating this drama to sell books. As I said before, I am surprised that she is so poorly informed about the teachings of the Church, but she seems to be looking for the truth in good faith and I commend her to the Holy Spirit to guide her. May God help us all (especially me) in our struggles to be better Christians.

I see two significant points, which have been elaborated only partially.

It has been noted that her son is gay. She has lived and functioned in a part of our society in which that is ok, while religious rejection of homosexual acts is not. We all know that we're moving towards a world in which it's functionally difficult if not impossible to be Christian (at least, of an orthodox bent). But I'd say further that we're moving toward a point in which popular morality, artistic openness, and intellectual currents all treat orthodoxy as not only error but uncharitable, backwards, and closed-minded (not just "opiate" or "pie-in-the-sky" but bad). History includes polygamous Saxon kings who converted despite every disincentive in the world; artists who derived power from orthodoxy though not rushing to denounce others' sins; and brilliant thinkers who advance the ball intellectually despite occasional personal failings. But does a public figure perservere in doing something disadvantageous when the intellectuals tell them it's wrong and immoral; does the intellectual persist in a faith despite the concommitant and persistant reminders of fallibility; is the artist able to benefit from love when faith itself is perceived as an emblem of hatred?

One must wonder whether the confluence of anti-orthodox influences will make this a different type of age, one in which Christianity shrinks perhaps beyond a tipping point. We need not ignore the history of other religious groups, which disappeared in the face of Christianity and other religions. Old faiths may die out, they tend to not die out until something more compelling comes along. But they may be have dry rot, requiring only the slightest push to make the edifice crumble. Perceiving this, what must one do? The gates of hell won't prevail, of course, but lots of evil can occur in the meantime.

Second, it strikes me as too easy to say simply that the failings of individual Christians says nothing of the faith itself. Scripture itself tells us otherwise; we are to be signs. Our scandalous ignorance and vice-riddenness (viciousness no longer seems to connote vice) makes most of us poor ambassadors. We should mourn for her, but also for ourselves. That isn't to take away free agency from her; but if I cause a little one to trip, we are both liable to judgment.

I think it's been observed more than once that the struggle to maintain orthodoxy tends to make us boors and deprive us of the vitality that is our birthright. So often, we're suspicious of anything or anyone who isn't certifiably orthodox. That's an unfortunate side effect of the larger societal failings; but it's also a cyclical problem. The more the orthodox seem to care only about abortion and gay marriage (which do matter!), the more easily caricatured we become (and when people have every social incentive to reject Christianity, that's a dangerous combination). Conversely, it makes liberal Catholics think that if it just weren't for those orthodox being so annoying, we wouldn't lose people like Anne Rice; which tends to result in liberals not just preferring to think about, e.g., Christology or Latin America instead of gay marriage, but to start to actually reject the orthodoxy because of how it is perceived to undercut those other interests. Which leaves us as a house divided.

These are depressing reflections. I'd love to hear Mr Bottom's reflections on them...

I came to the Catholic Church as a Protestant convert. I came with eyes wide open to the "baggage," all the mistakes and atricities. I also came with an appreciation of the beauty of the art, devotion and spiritual practices. I'll admit, it had to be a Vatican II Church for me to come. Even now, I sometimes chaffe at some of the elements within the faith, but what am I to do? Do I think I can go out and create the perfect church? Not hardly. Part of being human is to accept the fact that we are imperfectly striving toward the ideal. We are all at a different place along the continuum of faith - no need to quit just because we're not there yet.

Stephen Barr is wrong when he says that the Christian position on divorce is one of the hard sayings, and Steven Murray is wrong when he says that the Catholic Church is one of the hard sayings of Christ.

Divorce, as practiced by the Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Eastern Orthodox is an incredibly cruel thing. Toss the spouse out when one gets tired of him/her? That is not cruel? When the tosser had pledged his/her troth for better/worse/richer/poorer/in sickness/in health/until death they do part? Death or their druthers, now that the lawyers are allowed to sell their wares. Moses only allowed Divorce because of the hardness of people's hearts. Jesus broke through that hardness and declared the only rule consistent with the pledges exchanged: Divorce/Remarriage equals Adultery. Nothing hard about that. Jesus was just arguing for the truth: let your yes be yes and your no, no.

And the Catholic Church is certainly not a hard thing. The Catholic Church gives us the Truth of Jesus and the sweetness of Mary. When I see the desiccated religion to which the "Solas" would reduce Christianity, I am so glad that the Apostolic Church has defined the dogmas of the Theotokos, the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. How impoverished the World would be without the beauty of the Corpus of Christ hanging on the Crucifix in the front of any Catholic Church for us to consider gratefully at the start of every Mass or without the beauty of a Botticelli Madonna.

One of my favorite Madonnas is the Colonna Altarpiece in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even beyond the beauty of the Madonna and Child, the heart of the picture is the interplay between Baby Jesus and his cugino, Gianbattista (as Rafael would have called him). Rafael captures John the Baptist's role in a way I have never seen before.

Christ, as presented by Catholic Christianity, is not some empty sin offering as so much of Protestant Christianity presents him (ever hear a Protestant evangelical talk about the meaining of the term "telestai" as uttered by Christ the Accountant on the Cross?). That is a far harder way to look at Jesus. I far prefer the Catholic presentation that Christ took on the sin of the World because He so loved the World when He was hanging in Agony on the Cross).

John and Darel raise a significant point: very probably Anne Rice wants to be the loving mother she is, and her son being committed to a gay lifestyle more than likely has had a great influence on her, especially when so many priests and bishops have supported the gay lifestyle openly or by silence. Jesus tells us he must come before mother, brother, sister, son and daughter. Very difficult indeed. It is probably true that Anne Rice cannot know the depth of Jesus' love and his plan for us in her being caught up in a mother's love that blinds her to agape. There's no mistaking it: rejecting the Church is rejecting Jesus, and the Apostle John, in Revelations, makes clear that this is unacceptable, and I would emphasize his criticism of the local church at Ephesus, which is stellar in being Christian but lacks agape, the one essential in being Christian.

Dear Patricksarsfield,

I don't find the teaching on divorce to be a "hard saying". I don't find any of the moral teachings of the Church hard to believe. But some people evidently do. It was of them I was speaking.

Stephen Barr writes in response to me:

"I don't find the teaching on divorce to be a "hard saying". I don't find any of the moral teachings of the Church hard to believe. But some people evidently do. It was of them I was speaking. "

Sorry, I apparently misunderstood the following passage:

"But then there are all the hard sayings about sin and judgment, fornication and adultery and divorce, the "narrow path" that "few" will find, the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the lakes of fire. How can Jesus NOT be God? --- and yet how can God have said some of those things? "

patricksarsfield: Here's Mathew 19:7-12 (NAB), you may want to consider the words more closely: "They said to him, "Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss (her)?" He said to them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, 7 whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery." [His] disciples said to him, "If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." He answered, "Not all can accept [this] word, 8 but only those to whom that is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage 9 for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it."

The "If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry" line tells me for many this IS clearly a hard teaching. And the folks who uttered these words got that teaching directly from Jesus!

Bibbit writes:
"patricksarsfield: Here's Mathew 19:7-12 (NAB), you may want to consider the words more closely: "They said to him, "Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss (her)?" He said to them, "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, 7 whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) and marries another commits adultery." [His] disciples said to him, "If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry." He answered, "Not all can accept [this] word, 8 but only those to whom that is granted. Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage 9 for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it."

The "If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry" line tells me for many this IS clearly a hard teaching. And the folks who uttered these words got that teaching directly from Jesus! "

WRONG: Christ clearly teaches that it is those who have hardened hearts who want the ability to divorce: "Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." IOW, it is the people who want to be able to ignore their marital pledges and make them into lies to treat their spouses harshly who spurn Christ's law of eternal love pledged and lived. Christ's law is not a hard one; it is a loving one. It is those who divorce who do their spouses dirty.

The bottom line is that it's a hard teaching. The reason may or may not be a hardness of the heart, but it's still hard. The people to whom Jesus spoke were raised believing divorce from a marriage was OK, so they may not have necessarily had hard hearts, it may have been hard for them simply because divorce appeared OK to them. But even if it was due to hardened hearts, it's still a hard teaching for those folks. If my leg's broken I can't run a 100 yard dash. I may have an excuse, but I still can't run it.

Bibbit writes with manufactured sympathy for people who want to disregard their promises to their spouses:

"The bottom line is that it's a hard teaching. The reason may or may not be a hardness of the heart, but it's still hard. The people to whom Jesus spoke were raised believing divorce from a marriage was OK, so they may not have necessarily had hard hearts, it may have been hard for them simply because divorce appeared OK to them. But even if it was due to hardened hearts, it's still a hard teaching for those folks. If my leg's broken I can't run a 100 yard dash. I may have an excuse, but I still can't run it. "

Bibbit has it backwards. It is the person who is running out on his/her vows who is promoting divorce, not a preson who can't run. He/she can and wants to run and Bibbit would okay the running despite the other spouse's legitimate expectations. Christ, Who searches all hearts, calls divorcers hard of hearts. Bibbit would overrule Christ. That is why I will stay with the Catholic Church of Christ.

My saying it's hard does not mean I agree with divorce. How you get there is beyond me. I am simply saying I can understand the fact that there are folks who find it hard, as the Gospels clearly tell us. I believe marriage is for life, period. But even though I believe marriage is for life, and I myself do not find it a hard teaching, I am not going to say it's inconceivable that folks would find it hard.

I apologize to folks for getting off course here. Ms. Rice seems to have disappeared in the last several posts.

From "Blue Catholic" (full disclosure--that's me. But in addition to contributing to the discussion, I'm shamelessly plugging a new Catholic blog. Hope that's OK!)

What Anne Rice gets Right

Buried within her otherwise banal and thoroughly predicable recantation, there is (it seems to me) a theological gem. Regardless of whether this was intentional on her part, she seemed to equate leaving the institutional Church with leaving Christianity itself. That is, she wishes to divorce herself from Christianity, but not Christ. For many, the suggestion that there is synonymy between the Church and Christianity is a mistake. Could not AR simply join a Christian congregation whose political leanings and doctrinal emphases are more in line with her own? I read somewhere that, since her de-conversion, the United Church of Christ has professed some kindred spirit with AR and invited her into its fold. She allegedly declined on the grounds that she wishes to avoid any institutional form of Christ following

Now, there is some honestly here I can appreciate. I may be attributing to her more theological acumen than she actually has, but that she should disavow Christianity while still professing love for Christ suggests an awareness that Christianity is, in fact, ecclesial, and necessarily so. That is, there is no Christianity apart from an organized structure that attempts to administer the sacraments or mediate faithfully the teachings of Christ and the apostles. So conceived, the notion of “institutionalized Christianity” is a bit redundant. It is no surprise to me, therefore, that by abandoning the institution that is the church, she is abandoning Christianity for a more (in her view) authentic form of personal faith.

I take note of this part of AR’s narrative precisely because an increasing number of my students profess to be Christians but resist identifying with any particular ecclesiastic tradition. In fact, many of them insist that ecclesial affiliation has nothing to do with being Christian. Students increasingly exhibit a conscious aversion to institutionally-prescribed beliefs and practices and instead align themselves with less formal, “Christ-centered” or “relationship-based” movements (I'm actually using some of the phrases from just such a movement). It doesn’t occur to them that one cannot be Christian and a self-governing spiritual being who selectively identifies with certain theological beliefs. Historically (and you know this), the term “Christian” signaled an affiliation with a body of believers and a subordination to teachings and sacramental rituals bequeathed by Christ and preserved by duly appointed teaching authorities. Anne Rice seems to understand this, which is why (I suspect) she, by rejecting the legitimacy of the aforementioned authorities, rejects Christianity as such. On this score, at least, I applaud her refusal to use the term “Christian” so promiscuously, and would like to see some of my students follow her example.

At least one theological fact of Christianity should be gotten right: The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ with Christ as its Head.

So it is that if you cut off the head you kill the body and if you cut off the body you kill the head. For the Church to be Christ it has to be a gestalt. Anything less is simply making Christ over in one's own image and likeness. And as Jean Luc-Marion makes clear in "God Without Being", all forms of idolatry are self idolatry. Perhaps nothing joins the old and the new as does this persistent sin against God: idolatry.

This was a relatively common situation and, when one considers the context, hardly worth remarking upon. In the context of your sentence, "Communist Party" is equated with Stalinism and, indeed there were undoubtedly many Marxists who were not Stalinists, e.g. followers of Trotsky, "Right" Bolsheviks, classical Marxists (Mensheviks, SPGB), Council Communists, and amongst the broader socialist movement, anarchists. The title of one of Chomsky's essays from the 1980s "The Soviet Union versus Socialism" sums up the attitude these assorted leftists had. Not, of course, that there was a rational basis for such a challenge. It is simply that things turning out to be other than what everybody thought them to be is an intolerable insult to the Times' presumed exemption from human fallibility. But at least we may be confident that Ms. Miller is a well-paid scapegoat, and, if she is getting less than a million in advance for that book, she needs a new agent.