Sell the Vatican to feel the poor?

There is a pretty good Anthony Quinn movie from years ago called "Shoes of the Fisherman" in which a reform-minded bishop - perhaps somewhat similar to Pope Francis, actually - gets elected pope.  To help stop a famine in China that could lead to a major war, he calls upon the world's people to give generously to provide food for the Chinese, even pledging to sell off the art and architectural treasures of the Vatican if need be.
  
Maybe people have that movie in mind when they visit the Vatican today and make comments like, "Just look at all this gold-gilded opulence; just imagine how many poor people could have been helped with all that money."  I admit that I felt some ambivalence visiting St. Peters, not because it was glorious, but because I knew that it was funded, in part, through the sale of indulgences - a corrupt practice that actually was the catalyst of the Protestant Reformation and the shattering of Western Christendom. 
    
Here is another great video from Brian Holdsworth: he heard comments like that ("Why not sell the Vatican to feed the world?") when he visited Rome, and moves beyond the surface level moralism (even sanctimony) to think through the actual implications of what that means, showing just how short-sighted this sentiment actually is.

Important Books: The Shallows - What the Internet is doing to our Brains by Carr

 I know I've blogged about this one before, but here it is again, well worth a revisit.  Along the book discussed in my last book review video, Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, I believe Carr also helps identify some of the reasons that our public discourse has become shallower and more foolish and less civil and wise in recent decades.  It's the way we are re-shaping our brains through the use of the internet.

 

Important Books: Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

 Here is another book recommendation video, looking at one of the most prophetic books of my lifetime: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

Rod Dreher on Defending and renewing Western and Christian Civilization

 This is an interesting video that brings together a number of authors and themes that I've been chewing on in recent years:  He talks about Patrick Deneen's thesis in Why Liberalism Failed, about how Christianity has been supplanted in the hearts of many by "spin-off religions" such as "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" or "Social Justice Warrior-ism."  He discusses Alister MacIntyre's After Virtue, and how the Benedictine monasteries preserved Western Civilization as the Roman Empire collapsed and knowledge and technology actually regressed.  He discusses practical things that we can be doing to help preserve the legacy of all that is best in Western Civilization (while also being frankly honest about the bad and the ugly).    

Definitely alot to chew on here (and maybe a bit some readers may want to spit back out); I certainly think Dreher is on the right track here, and have come to see my role as a parent and as a spiritual father to my church as passing on, first and foremost, the Biblical faith in Christ, and secondly as passing along the very best of the Western tradition to others.

Bishop Barron on Jordan Peterson Interview

Two of the "internet intellectuals" whom I've been attending to of late are Jordan Peterson the (agnostic? secular Christian?) Canadian Psychologist and professor and also Bishop Robert Barron, who seems to me one of the most winsome, intellectually compelling, and interesting Christian (and specifically Roman Catholic) voices in the Public Square today.

So, thanks to YouTube algorithms, I ran across this video.  Catholic podcaster Brandon Vogt is interviewing Bishop Barron and asking him to reflect upon the (much longer) conversation that Bishop Barron recently had with Jordan Peterson.  This interview is fabulous and well worth your time.

I love Bishop Barron's observation, when reflecting upon Jungian archetypes and the "hero's journey" that plays so prominently in world literature, that in the Bible people are called on an adventure, a hero's journey with God - Abraham is called to leave his home and follow God; Jesus calls us to leave all and take up the cross and follow him.  Yet in an even deeper sense, Bishop Barron points out, the Bible is the story about God making the hero's journey in order to find us. Also, I now need to go back and re-watch True Grit...

Reports of Lambeth's demise greatly exaggerated

It has been reported and repeated on Anglican blogs and websites over the last couple of weeks that the anticipated 2018 Lambeth Conference was cancelled.  This rumor began with an interview with the Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church who said as much.  It seems Presiding Bishop Katherine has not got things quite right.

HERE is an article with excerpts from an interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, stating emphatically that the event was not cancelled - how could it be, since it has not even been called yet, no date was ever set, and no invitations have been sent - but that he would decide in conjunction with the other primates (presiding bishops and archbishops of Anglicanism's nearly 40 provinces) when and where to hold the next Lambeth Conference, rather than unilaterally controlling the schedule and the agenda as if he were an "Anglican pope."
The previous Archbishop's tight control over the agenda at Lambeth 2008 ensured that the Conference would make no major decisions and, as a result, a large portion of the world's Anglican bishops declined to even attend (a very costly enterprise for many from poorer nations).

The second part of this same interview also addresses a report that had emerged recently that Justin Welby was actually an agnostic.  When you read the full context of what the Archbishop said after he said "Yes" to the question, "Have you ever had doubts?" then the idea that the reported could turn around and report that Welby was agnostic is quite ridiculous; and that this reporter did so (and that other news outlets picked the story up and repeated it) will reinforce once again how the secular press often is either deliberately mis-representing someone's words for the sake of a "juicier story" or simply having no idea what theological and philosophical categories (like 'agnostic') actually even mean.

As the saying goes, "the press...just doesn't get religion..."  The saying has certainly proved true in this instance, and raises the whole question of responsible journalism since there will be folks who will read that headline about Canterbury being an agnostic, and that is what they will believe for life - and it may even affect decisions like whether they would ever consider attending an Anglican Church.

In fact, when Welby speaks of the tough - sometimes angry - questions hurled at God's feet by the Psalmists, when he speaks of asking "Why?" in the face of losing a child, yet still finding God to be faithful, what Welby actually upholds is a Biblically-grounded and moving account of a grown-up faith that lives in the real (very fallen) world and can ask the hard questions that come with that.