Beam me up: A surprising bestseller
Alleva, Richard
Medium When she'd outgrown a Medium, my daughter gave me a red ski sweater, strewn with snow in knitted flakes. It's thick—wool—but the sweater's extra warmth (despite the chilly rows of...
...Instead, they effectively declared: Game over...
...So we just have to move on, with the hope that expressions of disgust will shape the way history views this debacle...
...We are entering an era in which the main outlines of Catholic-Jewish reconciliation have been set by the present papacy...
...The plot of any thriller must constantly advance, sometimes in little increments, sometimes in sudden leaps...
...Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has told my classes at the University of Notre Dame that the new attitude toward the Jewish people does not mean that the church has lost its evangelical message to the nations...
...Even if the recount were incomplete by the date the Electoral College met (December 18), the Gore electors could have voted then and been certified later (in this case by the courts), as occurred with their Hawaii counterparts in 1960-61...
...A federal statute of 1887, anticipating another episode like the disputed election of 1876, provides a "safe harbor" to a state: If a state sets up a procedure before the election for resolving a dispute over who won, and that procedure results in a final determination by a certain date (December 12 in this instance), then the determination is binding on Congress when it counts the electoral votes...
...Most of the Reformed churches would accept the teachings of the ecumenical councils of the first millennium...
...And, said the five justices, Florida didn't want recounts after December 12...
...While LaHaye and Jenkins set their scene in an America that is as devoid of reality as a bad comic strip, Tolkin gave us a Los Angeles so convincingly in the grip of technology that it makes sense for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to appear on TV before they ravage the earth...
...But the plot strategy of the saga's first two volumes (I must confess I couldn't drag myself beyond volume 2) is a teeter-tottering one...
...The reformers reacted against the clerical abuse of power, and rightly so...
...Justices Ginsburg and Breyer agreed rather ambiguously that the recount raised constitutional difficulties, but they disagreed on the ultimate result...
...Most significantly, an incomplete perforation of a ballot was more likely to be counted as a vote in some times and places than in others...
...Many young Catholics want more ritual and search for a deeper spiritual foundation for their faith...
...The pope sets this example...
...In "Laws of Repentance" he writes, "It is prohibited for a person to be cruel (akhzari) and not to be reconciled...
...A cardinal more representative of his church dares to tell our journalist-hero that he doesn't take the Apocalypse literally, and of course opposes the doctrine of salvation through faith alone...
...Could it not be that the divisions have also been a path continually leading the church to discover the untold wealth contained in Christ's gospel?...It is necessary for humanity to achieve unity through plurality to learn to come together in one church even while presenting a plurality of ways of thinking and acting of civilizations and cultures...
...In 1994, John Paul II issued Tertio millennia advemente, in 12 which he set an agenda for the entire church to greet the year 2000...
...And there is a broader consensus...
...But I also agree with those who said Gore should have asked for the statewide recount first thing, so it wouldn't look like he hand-picked the counties where he expected the most support...
...13 What are the signs or actions of Teshuvah demonstrated by this papacy...
...The Florida court had never indicated that state law demanded finality by the safe harbor date (which the state statutes do not even mention), even if the only constitutional way to complete manual recounts (which the state statutes certainly do provide for) would be to miss that date...
...The editorial echoes the sentiments of many Americans, even beyond partisanship, yet speaks volumes about our resilient, but battered democratic system of government and the primacy of the vote...
...What are also objectionable are certain forms of Marian piety that so exalt the Mother of God that they distance her from us and the vicissitudes of the human condition...
...becomes his admirer and conduit into international circles, even introducing him at the UN...
...What of the churches separated from Rome...
...They are the authors of the Left Behind series, which, according to the leftbehind.com Web site, has sold millions upon millions and appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and USA Today...
...We will not preserve the Jewish people by preserving our anger about the sins of the past...
...Orthodoxy, during the last millennium, has continued to probe the mysteries of faith...
...Paulist Press, 2000), perhaps the greatest consequence of Christian Teshuvah will be the resolution to work in collaboration with the Jewish community "to be a blessing to one another and to the world...
...The recount certainly wouldn't have been perfect...
...He made a pilgrimage to Israel—not just the Holy Land, but Israel—where his actions demonstrated respect for and deference to both civil and religious authorities...
...The simple declarative sentence monotony that LaHaye and Jenkins employ is mind-numbing and thrill-killing...
...So there would have been two or perhaps three competing slates presented to Congress...
...A world government, a world capital called New Babylon, a world army, and a world religion—all the usual suspects placed at the service of Satan's minion...
...Then the villain does something else and the heroes discuss...
...Yes, the "intent of the voter" standard established by the Florida legislature is open-ended and leaves room for variation, but so are many other standards—begin with the "reasonable doubt" standard for juries—that courts have declined, for good reason, to define more precisely...
...It may also be the time to step forward more boldly and adopt a less defensive attitude toward those Christian groups, especially the Catholic church...
...The fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz came in 1995, and every council of bishops in Europe, including those in Poland and Hungary, issued a statement that focused specifically on the crimes that the church and its members had perpetrated against the Jewish people during the Shoah...
...But the Supremes, in contrast to what they had done the first time the election fight had reached them, did not give the Florida court a chance to clarify its meaning...
...Thaf s when anathemas begin to fly and dialogue becomes impossible...
...Regret and confession of sins may lead Catholics to be more sensitive to the Jewish people and to stand in solidarity with them...
...In reaching common ground it is necessary to evaluate the true significance of a particular teaching, taking into consideration the circumstances in which it developed...
...The decision emphasized the variance, not only from one county to another but also from one recount team to another, of the standard used to determine the "intent of the voter...
...The goal of the council would be for the churches to pass from coexistence to what might be called "pro-existence": existing for the other and not just alongside one another...
...This would require a profound conversion and purification of memories...
...Given this papal concern, it is remarkable to read the explanation of the proposed dogma as it was presented to the council by Monsignor Vinzenz Gasser, the official "relator...
...But was this sufficient grounds for rejecting the sacramental structure of the church's hierarchy and the ancient tradition of apostolic succession...
...Maimonides then notes a remarkable contrast between the predisposition of the heart of the Jew and the idolater—those of uncircumcised heart— explaining that the latter "keep their anger forever...
...If so, the justices misread the situation and the Court's own role...
...The authors have succeeded in using the theological ideas of the Rapture and the Apocalypse to press all the right paranoiac American buttons...
...It fails to provide any of the elements that a thriller must have to thrill...
...Reality is complex...
...And what is his will...
...We know how to defend ourselves against proselytizing...
...Their parents are concerned about intermarriage and what that will mean for the shape of their families and faith...
...What will be the consequences of Teshuvah for Christians with respect to the Jewish people...
...An attitude of "pro-existence" would assume all that is positive in the evolution of Christianity in its diverse forms...
...If this were to be done, the churches might well discover that their particular charisms and insights are more complementary than antagonistic, that there is more paradox than "clarity" in the Christian mysteries, and even that differences are necessary if certain elements of the truth are to be manifested...
...For this feat alone, the demonic Romanian is appointed secretary general...
...The Rapture projects a mysteriousness that can at least momentarily convince the most hard-headed skeptic that great forces are at work behind the scenery of this world, while Left Behind, with its flat, affectless prose, strives to make a rich, ambiguous book, John's Revelation, into something as literal and useful as that car owner's manual you keep in the glove compartment...
...Some members of the Jewish community have condemned the Catholic church for not issuing an "apology" to the Jewish people...
...John Gnsham...
...The ongoing Catholic dialogue with the "Oriental churches" (Armenian, Syrian, etc...
...We become, as it were, immaculately conceived—and the power of his grace will eventually transform our earthly bodies...
...On and on, back and forth...
...Imagine a future, truly ecumenical council where all the parties who profess the Nicean Creed—the Roman church, those who issued from the Protestant Reformation (Lutheran, Anglican, etc...
...As professor Mary Boys writes in her new book, Has God Only One Blessing...
...Still, it must be remembered that the truly ecumenical councils of the first millennium produced great and charismatic saints to guide the church...
...Why did they do it...
...When the sinner asks him for forgiveness let him be forgiving with a whole heart and a generous soul...
...While the characters of Left Behind are all squarejawed, shoot-from-the-hip, overgrown Boy Scouts, Tolkin's heroine, desperate to be liberated from her sterile hedonism but too lacking in faith to wait for God to accomplish things at his own pace, is a marvelous embodiment of the pilgrim soul...
...In any event, the accolade certainly doesn't belong to Left Behind ? 19 (Continued from page 4) it is a virtual certainty that, given the rapid advances in these fields, we will know with a high level of confidence its causes within the next several decades...
...In a country like ours, where fear of centralization and government interference has led to bombings, mass slaughter, and the creation of various thug militiagroups, how could the Left Behind series fail...
...The latest pope is raptured but that is because he had stirred up controversy in the church with a new doctrine that seemed to coincide more with the "heresy" of Martin Luther than with historic orthodoxy...
...Think of the etiquette of gambling casinos on display in the James Bond series or the erudition about everything from campanology to advertising agencies in Dorothy Sayers's Peter Wimsey books...
...If disagreements in belief and discipline rose among them, the Roman See acted by common consent as mediator...
...It was at least plausible to conclude that even a hastily arranged and loosely supervised statewide recount would come closer to ascertaining the intent of voters overall than simply ignoring all those ballots that the machines had spit out uncounted...
...He was particularly sensitive to Jewish outcry during the controversy over the Auschwitz Carmelite convent in 1988, and encountered considerable opposition from local Catholic communities there...
...And that fact points to a huge irony...
...The church is not infallible because of the pope...
...These statements and liturgical occasions signal what is to come...
...This is only one of dozens of absurdities scattered through the books...
...Both communities can continue to forge alliances for social justice between synagogues and local parishes...
...There are those churches which have highlighted the mission of evangelizing the poor, others which have focused on the exigencies of fraternal charity and the common life...
...We are in no position to forgive for specific acts...
...Supreme Court orders it as a matter of federal constitutional law...
...DIANE LAVOS Natick, Mass...
...There is no reason to believe that the Holy Spirit is any less capable of raising up mighty saints today...
...D 14 1054 & ALL THAT Look to the undivided church Jerry Ryan One way to move beyond the current stalemate in our efforts toward Christian unity is to take the state of the undivided church, before 1054, as a point of reference...
...He .never once hesitated, stammered, or mispronounced a syllable Buck [our reporter-hero] was on the edge of his seat as the speaker swept through the f s and reached 'Uganda...
...Now the harder case—Gore wins the recount...
...Beyond the pope's confession, many local bishops have spoken directly to the Jewish people and to their own dioceses about the need for Teshuvah...
...In short, using the church of the first millennium as a model is our best hope for ecumenical progress...
...They need to think about how they want to respond to that call...
...But where are the recent novels, plays, movies, or shows with overtly Christian stories aimed at the masses...
...It's thick—wool—but the sweater's extra warmth (despite the chilly rows of crystals on the yoke of knitted firs) had nothing to do with heft or wool or scarlet and everything to do with being hers Spirits, bidden by her outgrown clothes, materialize in what no longer fits her— revenants of the girl that she outgrows...
...In the end, though, our president would have been chosen as always by politics...
...How to reconcile free will with the omniscience of God, the reality of history with the eternal instant, justice with mercy, the true divinity and true humanity of Jesus...
...Teshuvah requires the baal teshuvah, the penitent, to be vulnerable...
...He asked them, "If the roots are false, then what are we...
...LaHaye and Jenkins are certainly not overt anti-Semites...
...It is not unusual for a court to caution that in a particular decision it is not articulating a broad rule of law but is only deciding the case before it, leaving other cases to the future...
...Left Behind is Christian literature that functions as an international espionage thriller: Pilgrim's Progress in the guise of The Marathon Man...
...Is good popular Christian fiction by now an impossibility...
...The forces of evil, at least in the early books, proceed not by overtly supernatural means but by winning over, sometimes taking over, institutions that strike terror in the heart of all-American know-nothingness • the United Nations, the Catholic church, the Jews (a people, of course, not an institution, but nonetheless perceived as a malign, conspiratorial institution by some who will take Left Behind to heart...
...We have the stories of our martyrs, both in the medieval world and during the Shoah...
...To read these statements, which can be found in Catholics Remember the Holocaust (United States Catholic Conference, 1998), edited by Eugene Fisher, is to experience in these various statements from the national bishops' conferences a sense of profound regret and loss—the loss of an opportunity during the Shoah to act m response to the highest ideals of Christianity...
...How many of you would venture the names Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins...
...Often, teachings and dogmas develop from polemical situations and are affirmations of an aspect of the truth believed to be compromised or neglected...
...the theology of the "divine energies" took form...
...I seek no quarrel with the idea of the Rapture or even with the authors' interpretation of it In fact, I found LaHaye's lengthy, nonfictional exposition of this subject on the Web site to be a completely sincere and often interesting analysis...
...Right...
...But the most severe condemnationby-implication is of the United Nations, which practically hands itself over to the Antichrist and becomes the arm of his will...
...Might this not be the profound theological reason for so many divisions...
...How much more satisfying as a result that would have been than the one we have now...
...and ecclesiology evolved with the concept of sobornost ("conciliarity...
...Moreover, infallibility is linked to the mission of the pope to "conserve 15 the church in the unity of faith and charity and restore this unity when it is disturbed...
...No, says the Court, we're not saying that counties can't use different voting systems...
...For instance, their arch-villain, a Romanian politico, addresses the UN General Assembly and wows it, not with his simple-minded speech but by translating it, as he goes along, into nine languages...
...A good thriller has to be told in fluid, flexible prose...
...Discussion...
...That's a leap too far...
...In his reflections on the jubilee, he often referred to the penitential actions of Christians toward Judaism by the Hebrew word Teshuvah, a term rooted in the idea of "return"—a return to God and God's way...
...Members of the Jewish community can learn about what has happened among Christians so they do not continue to recite the same litany of negativity...
...This does not mean that the teachings of these Western councils or the papal "dogmatic" definitions would cease to oblige Roman Catholics, nor does it imply that other Christians should not take them very seriously...
...Therefore, when the pope asks Catholics to engage in the process of Teshuvah toward Jews, it engenders some questions: How shall the Jewish community respond to the papal call to Teshuvah...
...The second reason is that the majority opinion is Procrustean...
...Until such time as the church can move toward a more neutral stance on the interpretation of the orientation itself—at root, a difficult, but serious theological and philosophical question—most dialogue between the gay community and the church will remain one of defensive posturing ROBERT J. COMISKEY Springfield, Va The editors comment: We doubt that the official church is supporting research to eliminate gays through genetic surgery, or otherwise...
...They have rejected and will continue to reject targeted proselytism of the Jewish people...
...I will keep a copy of your editorial with my Boston Globe from the day after the election as a reminder of the preciousness of my vote and everyone else's...
...That's a conclusion, not a standard...
...How could they be...
...In one stroke, the Court exercised power that belonged to Congress, the legislature of Florida, Florida's courts and administrators, and, most importantly, the people of the state...
...If the legislature can delegate broad authority to local officials, why can't a court leave it to local officials to implement on a case-by-case basis a legislatively prescribed standard for determining the validity of a vote...
...The Jewish community might be guided by Maimonides's statement when they read the recent call by the Vatican's Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews for Christians to make Teshuvah for two millennia of sins against the Jewish people...
...We surely can have empathy for many Catholics who feel beleaguered about the continuity of their communities...
...Many of my Jewish colleagues have experienced the fruits of their long-standing relationships with their local bishops or senior pastors in the local parishes...
...How can Jews know that Christian Teshuvah is genuine...
...The Florida fiasco will probably result in a more equitable manner of voting throughout Florida and the nation...
...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger himself has declared, "Rome should not apply the doctrine of Roman primacy of Vatican I to the East because this 'dogma' was formulated and practiced after the separation of 1054: it can only oblige the East to maintain what was practiced during the first millennium...
...The recent attempt at reunification between the Catholic Melkite and the Orthodox in the Antiochean church took their common heritage as the basis of a projected merger...
...Clearly, Teshuvah toward the Jewish people will call for continuing reformulation of Christian self-understanding...
...If we Jews respond to Christian Teshuvah with acknowledgment and encouragement, we need not think that we have betrayed our sacred martyrs, our history...
...It is a path that leads from acknowledgment of sin to the resolution not to commit the sin again...
...16 Richard Alleua BEAM ME UP A repackaged Apocalypse If I were to ask you to name the five most popular novelists in America, I suppose you might rattle off three of them before hesitation set in...
...In a way, then, the most discouraging aspect of the whole affair is not that the Court acted improperly but that we, and it, seem to have lost confidence that any other institution but the Court is capable of acting properly...
...He established diplomatic relations with the State of Israel...
...In particular, Pope John Paul II focused his efforts on putting an end to the enmity that has existed between Jews and Christians over much of the past two thousand years...
...If Jews receive Christian Teshuvah with an open heart, do they betray their ancestors who died as martyrs rather than submit to forced conversions...
...We shall continue...
...remember that the legislature was getting into the act, with its legally unsupportable contention that it was entitled to appoint electors if the election were not resolved quickly enough...
...They may have lost faith in the Florida Supreme Court, which had been somewhat overly aggressive in response to the blatant partisanship of Secretary of State Katherine Harris...
...It also makes a claim upon the one who has been wronged...
...It will require of all Christians a great humility and openness to the Holy Spirit to be able to put things in their proper perspective, to distinguish what is essential and authentic and what are the vicissitudes of a sinful history...
...This whole process would have been messy...
...For all the U.S...
...Christianity is a religion of paradoxes, where we are often asked to affirm, as absolutes, terms that are apparently contradictory...
...Ukraine1'"...etc...
...Deborah Warren 9 Richard D. Friedman 'BUSH' v. 'CORE' What was the Supreme Court thinking...
...In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul II said: "Why has the Holy Spirit permitted all these divisions...
...One of the most astonishing episodes in American political history ended last month with perhaps the most imperial decision ever by the United States Supreme Court...
...Rabbi David Novak has responded by saying that an apology would only cheapen the action required...
...Dismissing it as entertainment, can 18 we take Left Behind seriously as a parable about the Rapture...
...Judging by their novels, LaHaye and Jenkins know nothing of anything except Scripture...
...What is objectionable is the fact that these "dogmas" were proclaimed unilaterally by the Roman church...
...what we are saying is that when a court orders a statewide remedy, then we're really going to worry about uniformity...
...Therefore, the author must display a certain knowledge of the world, or at least the world in which the heroes move...
...The Pentecostal movement, for its part, returned the Holy Spirit to its rightful place in the lives of the faithful...
...The late Cardinal John O'Connor was among the first to proclaim this message...
...In his magnificent epilogue to the Sign of Jonas, Thomas Merton has God speaking: "What is vile has become precious...
...For a radio program with a mindset this liberal to treat Christian apocalyptic pulp fiction as a publishing phenomenon without venturing a word of criticism, sarcasm, or even mild irony means that Left Behind is truly newsmaking stuff...
...Members of Congress perceived to have acted unfairly would have had to answer at the polls...
...Part of this pastoral plan was a series of dialogues with non-Christian communities that had been the objects of harsh treatment by the church...
...therefore, it couldn't have recounts at all...
...The extraordinary graces given to Mary in view of her role in redemption do not put her outside of salvation history or make her any less our sister...
...Perform any recurrent task involving any complexity and you will recognize that, even if you are the sole actor, your standards will vary...
...A good thriller needs verisimilitude of background so that the lurid events in the foreground can compel belief...
...But if the two Houses do not agree, then the slate certified by the executive of the state should be accepted...
...We can only seize and articulate one of these terms at a time...
...In these projects there is no need to worry about homogenizing Judaism...
...Both responses have contributed to furthering the dialogue for more than forty years...
...First, the easy case: Bush may have won the recount...
...Rather, let a person be inclined to be forgiving and hard to anger...
...From the meeting between Jules Isaac, author of the groundbreaking ]esus and Israel, and John XXIII to the countless gatherings with John Paul II, a new Christian theological attitude toward Judaism has been forged...
...A rabbi looks forward Michael A. Signer he celebration of Jubilee 2000 reached beyond the boundaries of the Catholic community, leading to dramatic steps toward reconciliation with other religious communities...
...The pope visited the synagogue in Rome, indicating that it is a place where God dwells with the people of Israel He has knelt in prayer at Auschwitz, and made that prayer a leitmotif of preaching throughout his papacy...
...Similarly, the ecclesial intuitions of the Eastern and Reformed churches could become a very profitable complement to the Roman vision...
...Will they answer from the standpoint of what Maimonides calls the "Jewish heart" (lev nachon)—a heart predisposed to generosity and forgiveness—or will they respond as idolaters7 The call for Christian, and specifically Catholic, Teshuvah is a measure of the success of the Jewish-Christian conversations on the international, national, and local levels...
...These so-called "strict constructionists" are not the ones we would expect to perceive the necessity of federal judicial intervention into an administrative procedure supervised by the state courts...
...the pope is infallible because of the church...
...Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade should have persuaded the Court that its decisions cannot quell political controversy Bush v. Gore is more stunning than those cases in one sense, because it steps on the central function of democracy...
...But the jurisdictional structure Rome has given itself in the second millennium need not be imposed on the other churches...
...In short, trying to determine fairly who won the election in Florida was for the state itself to work out in the first instance...
...10 Though the holding that the recounts violated the Constitution was overly aggressive, it was not particularly egregious What was egregious was the Court's decision on remedy Given the majority's determination that the recounts did not satisfy constitutional requirements, one would have expected a remand so that the Florida court could order recounts that did meet those requirements...
...And indeed some observers have suggested that the decision in Bush v. Gore heralds a new era of constitutional doctrine assuring the fairness of voting...
...He initiated a theology of Teshuvah with respect to the Jewish communities that climaxed in a liturgical ceremony in Rome in April 2000...
...If it be accepted that Vatican I was a local council of the Western church, the declaration that "the bishop of Rome possesses a true episcopal power of jurisdiction, ordinary and immediate, over the totality of the pastors and faithful" would maintain its validity for the Western church...
...But it is a one-time intrusion, not an attempt to resolve a continuing issue like slavery in the territories or abortion...
...It can work in collaboration with Christians on local projects that promote mutual understanding...
...Since a lot of tolerably moral people don't have such a personal relationship, LaHaye and Jenkins are able to confect four sympathetic characters—an airline pilot and his daughter, a celebrity journalist, and a minister—frail enough spiritually to have been left behind but virtuous enough to fight the Antichrist in the few remaining years of the world's existence...
...Supreme Court should have stayed out of the matter altogether...
...But perfection is often unattainable, and lack of perfection, as judges who pronounce the importance of judicial restraint frequently remind us, does not make a constitutional violation...
...The easy answer, that they simply wanted to see a Republican in the White House and were willing to do whatever it took to get that result, seems too crude, though a rooting interest for that outcome surely affected their thinking...
...Discussion...
...So, if this series is such a bust as writing, as storytelling, as sheer entertainment, why has it become a bestseller...
...Can we, at a moment of our own sense of weakness against the forces of assimilation and secularism, afford to let down our guard...
...An apology would be a once-and-done-with moment...
...Tom Clancy...
...What Gasser is describing here is, in fact, the practice of the undivided church of the first millennium...
...Regret and confession of sins for Catholics means that they will pray to discover ways to end the hatred and the stereotypes that produce hatred...
...Supreme Court majority's insistence on standards, it is hard to know what the Court's standard was in this case...
...We will not agree on every social and economic issue, but the work for social justice can be more explicitly grounded in the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible—a sacred text our traditions share...
...No simply articulated rule will apply perfectly, and the more intricate the rules, the harder not only to articulate but to administer consistently...
...And this red cardigan was even more...
...Play out what would have happened if the Supreme Court allowed a statewide recount to continue, subject to whatever safeguard it deemed necessary, and had then withdrawn from the scene...
...Lewis's wonderful Narnia books instructed and entertained children without any of LaHaye's narrative-jamming preachments...
...The Jewish tradition can be presented with integrity—emphasizing elements of difference and similarity...
...The musical tradition of dramatizing Christian themes and stories for a fairly wide audience extends into modern times with Britten's Ceremony of Carols, Menotb's Amahl, Poulenc's Christmas Motets...
...It would be fitting that the church of Rome seek to convoke our hypothetical "pro-existence" council—but it need not be so...
...Rowling...
...The Honda Supreme Court had indicated that the state's desire to take advantage of the safe harbor "circumscribed" the determination of what a "reasonable" deadline for recounts was under Florida law...
...Good...
...And the other two...
...Amid persecution and humiliation a profound mystical theology was born, a pearl of great price for the universal church...
...It will not guide future doctrine, and the circumstances that allowed the Supreme Court in effect to pick our president are unlikely to be repeated...
...In Ut unum sint, John Paul II recognizes the need to revise the mechanisms of papal authority and asks for help to bring about this revision...
...Since 1994, however, the Catholic side, under the pope's leadership, has moved the consequences of the dialogue deeply inside the church...
...The general reception and even anger that greeted the document Dominus Iesus last year was highly significant...
...it articulates rationales just broad enough to cover this case...
...But now we have come to expect the Court to decide great issues of our national life...
...But what about the Marian "dogmas...
...So much has changed for them since Vatican II...
...Even as that, it can't compare with Michael Tolkin's seductively mysterious movie, The Rapture (1991...
...This call was reflective of the inner thinking of the church...
...for what is vile I know not at all...
...And then what...
...But she was also the daughter of Abraham, the heiress of the faith of the patriarchs and prophets...
...Will others follow...
...By shifting the term to the Hebrew term Teshuvah, rather than simply using "penitence," the Catholic church is calling for a process of healing...
...A truly ecumenical council would help the Catholic church to distinguish the essential role of Rome as the "mother church" (after the fall of Jerusalem) vis-a-vis the rest of the Christian world...
...The Vatican II decree on ecumenism states as much and John Paul II, in his 1995 encylical, lit unum sint, recalls that "for a whole millennium Christians were united in a brotherly, fraternal communion of faith and sacramental life...
...There will no doubt be elements in each church adamantly opposed to any "compromise...
...ultimately it was for Congress to judge in exercising its constitutional function of counting the electoral votes...
...Many of their children do not know the church of the 1950s, and those children have a sense of rootlessness that resonates with what our own children have experienced...
...The faith of the Virgin is the culmination of a whole history of humanity's response to the revealing acts of God and the experience of his redemptive love...
...The great Jewish philosopher and theologian Moses Maimonides provides some guidance...
...Is the goal (agenda) of the church, while showing compassion to gays, to support research to eliminate this objective disorder through means acceptable to the church, for example, genetic surgery in utero with no adverse side effects...
...Consequently, the recount ordered by the Florida court may be seen as an attempt to limit this larger disparity...
...The Christian story will need rethinking...
...Then, by way of tribute, he lists— in alphabetical order— the name of every represented country...
...Such a thought sends tremors of fear and distrust into the minds and hearts of the gay community, who are already fighting an uphill battle for their legitimate place at the Lord's table...
...But the authors' perception of the Jews as a great people gone wrong streaks the books with a queasy, forced amiability teetering on contempt, like a hotel manager forced to accept Jews after the state has overruled his gentiles-only policy...
...But we have not yet faced a Christian world that turns toward us with respect for our integrity as a people whose covenant has never been revoked...
...First there is the identity of the five justices (Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas) who anchored the majority...
...In fact, it might be preferable if the initiative came from Orthodoxy or the World Council of Churches...
...The nation's highest court seized on this vaguely stated expression of desire and used it to shut the process down...
...This Rosenzweig is so brainy a scientist that he has invented a formula that causes deserts to bloom, and so savvy a political thinker that he has become an adviser to presidents...
...Since the end of World War II, and with the growing consciousness of the enormity of the crimes of the Shoah, Jews and Christians have met face to face and have truly heard each other...
...But those who are making Teshuvah did not commit those acts, and many of them are dedicated to ensuring that that history does not repeat itself...
...In other words, they have been local councils of the Western church and not universally binding...
...But the relationship with the Jewish people is a relationship with the roots of the church...
...That is what the majority did here...
...The U.S...
...The reactions to its tone, timing, and content, both within the Roman church and without, was a striking example of the sensusfidei at work, refusing to recognize what is not of the Spirit...
...In its December 12 decision, Bush v. Gore, the Court ruled that the recount of November's presidential election as ordered by the Florida Supreme Court violated constitutional requirements...
...But all 17 of Left Behind's heroes, male or female, pilot or minister, scientist or news-bureau chief, sound exactly alike, never evincing a single idiosyncrasy that would make them appear truly human...
...It will be long and it will require many years...
...This lengthy litany of the consequences of Christian Teshuvah is unprecedented and unnerving for us as Jews...
...As an unresisting imbecility...
...We know this worry...
...The notion of the sacraments as gifts was an important contribution which had hitherto been neglected...
...I tend to believe all this selfpromotion because of the gentle handling given the series last fall by NPR's "All Things Considered...
...Some essence seemed to pass from young to old, as if it was the girl herself I wore (or she was wearing me), as if her whole self, in a reverse metempsychosis —not a sweater, not a message...
...According to the way they read Revelation, God's ultimate kingdom can only be achieved after the conversion of the Jews, so the authors have to have, ultimately, kindly intentions toward God's chosen people...
...Gregory of Palmas expounded on the implications of our participation in the divine life...
...The saga, currently in its eighth installment, begins with the Rapture, the fulfillment of the prophecy, purportedly in the Book of Revelation, that rightminded Christian believers will be snatched off the earth and, still carnate, be united with God, while those without a personal relationship with Jesus will face the Apocalypse with all its attendant horrors...
...Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee issued a magnificent litany of regret...
...Each would try to see the positive in what the Holy Spirit has accomplished in other churches and how the particular grace of each might enrich all...
...and others responding "We have gone further on the journey...
...He prayed at Yad VaShem and put a petition into the Western Wall of the ancient Temple, expressing deep sorrow over the behavior of sons and daughters of the church...
...I suppose if he had memorized a few pages from the phone book, he would have been made president of the World Bank...
...the Orthodox, and Oriental Christians— sit down as equals, without arrogance or sense of superiority, and analyze their respective histories since the rupture...
...A good thriller needs at least superficially interesting, or at least distinguishable, characters to root for...
...The Immaculate Conception and the Assumption are rooted in the patristic axiom that Mary was the worthy Mother of God, a worthy tabernacle of the Most High...
...And they may have thought their intervention was necessary to yield an orderly resolution...
...We know this pain...
...The Catholic church takes its lumps, too...
...Evil deed...
...Evil deed...
...It almost certainly would have been highly partisan...
...Sometimes such opinions represent tentative openings onto new vistas of law...
...Regret and confession of the sins of mistreating the Jewish people are found in the articulation of misdeeds that require reflection and resolution so that the actions will not be repeated...
...According to Gasser's presentation, "the most appropriate situation for the exercise of infallibility would be when scandals concerning the faith, dissensions, and heresies come to pass in a given church and they are of such a magnitude that the bishops of that church (individually or in provincial council) cannot cope with them and, for this reason, feel obliged to submit them to the Holy See...
...11 CAN JEWS TRUST CATHOLICS...
...Under the Constitution, the electoral votes are opened in Congress, not before the Supreme Court...
...The famous "ex sese, non ex consensu ecclesme" (the pope is infallible by reason of his office, not through the consent of the church) has its justification in the vagueness of the "consent of the church...
...No matter what the initial reaction to the statement, however, members of the Jewish community note the significant linguistic phenomenon of having two Hebrew words appear' "Shoah" in place of "Holocaust" and— more important for our purposes—"Teshuvah" instead of "repentance...
...Paul VI opened the door to such a possibility when, at the seven hundredth anniversary of the Council of Lyon, he referred to it as "the sixth of the general synods held in the West...
...The Reform bodies, for example, have elaborated their own structures, many of which are often more conformed to the primitive traditions of collegiality and charismas...
...Instead, the five justices played what amounts to a sleight-of-hand trick...
...One of the complexities of the historical situation surrounding Vatican I was the ambition of European secular rulers to control national episcopacies...
...The Rapture, like the novels of Graham Greene, the poetry of T.S Eliot, the films of Eric Rohmer and Robert Bresson, is highbrow, idiosyncratic, modernistic...
...What is now precious was never vile...
...Will the greatest popular Christian fiction of the twentieth century turn out to be a series written for children by an Oxbridge don...
...If the starting point for our hypothetical council is to be the state of the undivided church before 1054, this would imply, for the Roman church, the recognition that all its councils since the rupture have not been truly ecumenical...
...Outside of the jurisdiction of the Western patriarch, Rome would cede to local customs...
...The pope is the ultimate judge in matters of controversy regarding the faith which cannot be resolved on a local level The definition of infallibility does not separate the pope from the church, since he can only exercise this prerogative insofar as he is recognized as the efficacious sacrament of the unity of the church...
...If s been half a century since C.S...
...The Florida Supreme Court had attempted to resolve a very difficult situation and in a very short amount of time...
...her— was mine...
...So what ever happened to headphones and simultaneous translation...
...And in 1876-77 there was no thought that the power to resolve controversies concerning the choice of electors resided anywhere else...
...Since our heroes believe just the opposite and it is precisely these beliefs that enable them to fight the Antichrist, the reader knows just what to think of this red hat in the service of the Scarlet Woman of Rome...
...So how does Left Behind, the most popular literary Christian entertainment in America today, come across as a thriller...
...But when religious teaching comes packaged as entertainment, the packaging affects the teaching...
...as if what most completely clothes us, keeping our meager bodies from the cold, is what belonged to someone else before— what's cast off, like a transmigrating soul...
...Yet he is completely taken in by the Antichrist, even though the latter has nothing material to offer Israel or anything to recommend himself except the aforementioned powers of memorization...
...Have we reached the point at which the Christian world-view can be rendered with dignity only by the most refined Christian artists for the most educated audiences...
...By taking one side of the paradox and affirming it absolutely we apparently negate the other side...
...The Jewish community might consider some rather basic steps that would be very much in continuity with what it has done in the past...
...In these statements Jews can discern the language of "co-responsibility" or "sin" that so many Jews found lacking in the Vatican statement "We Remember" that emerged in 1998 from the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews...
...Federal law provides that, if multiple slates are presented and none qualifies for the safe harbor, a slate accepted by both Houses of Congress prevails...
...There is nothing here, as far as I can see, which does not correspond to the perennial faith of the undivided church...
...The Reformation, on the other hand, brought into focus the royal priesthood of the laity and their immense dignity...
...communities that did not accept the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon, is leading to the conclusion that it was misunderstanding, rather than doctrinal divergences, that caused the rupture...
...The Reformed churches would need to reconsider their rejection of apostolic succession, as Catholicism and Orthodoxy would need to reconsider the essential nature and exercise of this "power...
...This is the way of the seed of Israel for their heart is predisposed in this fashion...
...This assurance of our support for the process of Teshuvah may encourage further steps toward reconciliation...
...But if indeed it marks the virtual end of punch-card balloting, that will be because of initiatives by county officials, state legislatures, or Congress, not because the U.S...
...This dialogue has even taken on the character of a choreography: first comes dialogue, then a statement from the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews, and then the cacophony of voices from the Jewish community, with some respondmg "Not enough...
...But it is probably necessary, within the overall design of the series, to have the material and intellectual forces of Israel (represented by Rosenzweig) back up the Antichrist before the forces of enlightened goodness (represented by our Christian heroes) save the Jews from their own disbelief in Christ...
...For Jews it is at the very center of our religious lives...
...The definition of papal infallibility is a case in point...
...Of course...
...Baptism accomplishes in us what the Immaculate Conception accomplished in Mary...
...Punch ballots, as we all know now, are much less accurate than other forms of ballot...
...The apostolic power, as Saint Paul describes it, is rooted and exercised in human weakness, fragility, and humiliation, but it is a divine power nonetheless...
...Voting rights Your stand against the bombastic activities of the Bush campaign was courageous, ("Votes Count," December 15, 2000...
...the villain does something headline-grabbing and the heroes get together and review its apocalyptic implications...
...But for two reasons a large dollop of cynicism is warranted on this score...
...More than two hundred rabbis and Jewish scholars signed Dabru Emet, a Jewish theological statement about Christians and Christianity that appeared on September 10,2000 in the New York Times and the Baltimore Sun...
...Consider that the Romanian Antichrist is first able to come to international attention when a great Israeli scientist-statesman, Chaim Rosenzweig (an echo of Chaim Weizmann...
...It was clear Florida couldn't have a constitutional recount by December 12...
Vol. 128 • January 2001 • No. 1
