Five men were ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ yesterday in the Archdiocese of St. Louis; as a friend of them, I was in attendance. It was a lavish outpouring of grace upon all of us. I'm honored to be acquainted with most of them, and I'd say pretty close to one of them. It reminded me of one of my lurking insights from the journey, one thing I was very right about: "Why would the New Testament be less sacramental than the Old?" Answer: It's not. Not even close. If J.B. Lightfoot had been right in his commentary on Galatians, that the ordained clergy in the Church has always been understood functionally and not sacramentally--following upon Luther's basic rejection of the sacramental hierarchy and the levelling of clergy and lay--it seems to me we should be Plymouth Brethren, Zwinglians, or Restorationists on the point. If we truly believe, on the contrary, that grace is communicated by these sacred signs, and that certain men are called by God for that very purpose, then the dispute about exactly who are Christ's ministers, the validity of our sacraments, and the faith contained in them retains its special force. If ordained Christian ministry is not sacramental at its core, the whole thing is plain vanity. I felt the reality of this for the first in a Christian Worship class while still a Reformed seminarian. Why should anyone tremble before Calvin and the Consistory if they themselves believed that authority was only managerial, in the end? Better yet, why follow these men and not those others? If it is a matter of education, I have known much more educated men than those in pulpits. And we're back to Sola Scriptura. Did Calvin have some special insight, some unique hermeneutical key that Wesley or Melancthon or whoever did not? This "magisterium of exegesis" won't solve anything. We all have exegetes and scholars. It's the Noltie Conundrum: If I believe X about doctrine a,--presupposing we are appealing to the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures on a matter that is not adiaphora, how do I know I'm right? And looking at it from the outside, what can I reasonably conclude about Divine Truth in light of the impasse? People aren't relativists only because they want to be; they might simply not know what Christ and His Church are saying to them. Still feeling good about your ecclesiology? The lines between subjectivism, banality, and outright sin get pretty blurry when you decide what "gospel" and "Church" and "Truth" mean. Happy to be Catholic. No; that doesn't do it justice.
Update: I read the whole thing. I’m sorry, but what a weirdo. I thought you [Tom Darrow, of Denver, CO] made a trenchant case for why lockdowns are bad, and I definitely appreciated it. But a graduation speech is *not* the place for that. Secondly, this is an august event. It always is. I would never address the President of the United States in this manner. Never. Even the previous president, though he deserves it, if anyone does. Thirdly, the affirmations of Catholic identity should be more general. He has no authority to propound with specificity on all matters of great consequence. It has all the hallmarks of a culture war broadside, and again, a layman shouldn’t speak like this. The respect and reverence due the clergy is *always due,* even if they are weak, and outright wrong. We just don’t brush them aside like corrupt Mafia dons, to make a point. Fourthly, I don’t know where anyone gets the idea that the TLM is how God demands to be worshipped. The Church doesn’t teach that.
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