I have been involved with Internet discussions and apologetics for a very long time, at least in Internet terms. I remember debating a man from the Netherlands via email about Catholic theology in 1992, before I was even officially received into the Catholic Church. Considering “Internet years” are somewhat like dog years, I figure that’s 119 years of online debates and discussions (and it even feels like more sometimes). Over that time I have developed some rules of engagement for Internet apostolate that might be helpful for others.

1) Always remember the superiority of the real world over the virtual world.

If you are spending more time interacting with people over the Internet than you do in the real world, then you need to seriously curtail your online activity. God made us physical beings and we cannot replace physical interaction with virtual interaction. It’s just not the same.

2) Your salvation is more important than your involvement on the Internet.

If frequenting a blog or forum disturbs your peace and makes you anxious, uncharitable and/or unkind to those around you, you should simply stop going to that blog or forum. I have had to abandon certain forums and blogs because I found myself too upset with those I encountered there. It is better to simply walk away.

3) Don’t ever say anything on the Internet that you wouldn’t say in person.

This is a pretty common suggestion, but it is very true. If you wouldn’t call someone a putz to their face, don’t call them that online (and if you would call them that to their face, perhaps you need to see your confessor).

4) Don’t write anything in anger.

If you write a post or comment on a blog or on a forum in anger, be sure to preview it before posting. Then delete it.

5) Don’t stereotype people.

It is very easy to stereotype the people we “meet” over the Internet. If someone says he likes the Traditional Latin Mass, don’t assume that he is an “angry Traditionalist” who rejects Vatican II completely. If someone says something supportive of Rush Limbaugh, don’t assume she supports everything he espouses. The truth is that most people don’t fall into nice and neat categories. I remember encountering a person online who was devoted to the Latin Mass but also supported liberal Democrat politicians. Remember to just debate actual arguments raised, not positions you assume the person also holds. Don’t think you actually know people you only encounter online. You don’t.

6) Take at least one day off a week from the Internet.

Preferably Sunday. Remember that man was not made for the Internet, but the Internet for man. If you feel you need to be on the Internet every day, then you are showing signs of a dangerous addiction. This is unhealthy, even if the sites you go to are not harmful themselves.

7) Always assume the good intentions of others.

If someone writes something that could possibly be interpreted multiple ways, assume the best interpretation. I have seen countless examples of someone making a point, someone else misinterpreting it and attacking it, then a whole discussion ensues before the original poster returns to say that he never meant what he was accused of saying. Writing is a difficult task, and often what we write isn’t exactly what we mean. Give people the same benefit of the doubt that you want to be given.

8) Remember who the real Enemy is.

It’s not some heterodox blogger or pro-abortion advocate. It’s Satan. Those who do things that support his reign are slaves of Satan, and our duty is not to try to defeat them, but emancipate them and help them become sons of the True King. Yes, we must resist evil in all its forms, but those who advocate for evil need to be converted, not conquered.

9) Remember that God resists the proud.

Even when they are right. On the Internet you encounter people at all stage of their spiritual life. Many don’t know the first thing about the Faith yet still expound upon it. It is easy to look upon them like the Pharisee did to the Publican. Instead of quickly jumping in to tell them how they are wrong, first say a prayer for them and then gently lead them to a fuller understanding of the truth. I can guarantee that a prideful retort will do nothing other than turn them more away from an orthodox understanding of the Faith.

10) Don’t just go to Catholic sites.

Part of the history of Catholics in America is that we have often lived in ghettos, completely excluded from those outside the Church. It sometimes feels like we are returning to that on the Internet. We only go to Catholic sites and Catholic blogs and Catholic forums (and usually only those we agree with) and it gives us an unbalanced view of the world. I spent over four years as the only Catholic at a Protestant apologetics forum, and it was a very fruitful experience for me. Not only was I able to defend and explain the Catholic Faith to many who would never hear about it, I also learned a great deal from the Protestants at the site and honed my apologetic abilities. Obviously we shouldn’t visit immoral sites that might lead us into the near occasion of sin, but we should be salt and light on the Internet and bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all corners of the virtual world.

If you have any helpful rules of engagement you use, feel free to leave them in the comments!

From the mailbag:

In your studies of the Catholic faith, since 1991, if you don’t mind me asking Eric (can i call you Eric?) when was it that you chose to believe in a book, yes a book if you don’t mind me calling it that, that has caused death, misery and upset across the globe through its misinterpretation and of course, abuse.

Please visit:

http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2009/sep/01/honesty-overdue-on-abusive-priest/

or

http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/display.htm?StoryID=94293

I would like your interpretation on the above.

My interpretation of the two articles (both about priests who are accused of abusing children) is simple: if the evidence proves that these men did commit abuse, they should be locked away for as long as possible. If evidence shows that anyone protected them in their crimes, including any bishop, he too should be locked away for as long as possible. Justice demands that such predators and their enablers be punished to the full extent of the law.

You claim that much “death, misery and upset” has occurred in history due to the Bible’s “misinterpretation and…abuse” (I assume the “book” you refer to is the Bible; technically it is not a book, but a collection of various forms of writings). I do not disagree. But I do not judge a religion or philosophy based on those who follow it poorly or abuse it, but instead based upon those who follow it best. This seems to be a logical way to proceed.

Let’s take an example from outside the religious realm. If you wanted to show someone the game of golf properly played, would you show him Tiger Woods or some weekend hacker you can’t hit it straight? It is those who excel in something that most clearly reflect its strengths and weaknesses.

For a Catholic, it is the saints who are the models we look to. We see in them those who have followed Christ to the best of their abilities. An example of someone who followed Christianity well is Mother Teresa. An example of someone who followed atheism well is Joseph Stalin. Which would I rather imitate?

Since my embrace of the Christian life in high school, my faith has not revolved around a book, but a person. I do not believe in a book, I believe in Jesus Christ. Even as an Evangelical the focus of my faith was Jesus Christ. Although at that time I believed the Bible to be the sole authority for the Christian (a belief I now see as faulty), I still looked to Jesus as the measuring rod of my faith. He is the prism through which we properly interpret the Bible. Fortunately for us, he gave us a Church which he promised would be able to interpret it with his authority. And one interpretation that I can be sure of: the abuse of children is evil and contrary to the teachings of Christianity (and just about every other religion, for that matter).

When I see cases of those who claim to be Christian committing horrible acts, two thoughts come to mind.

• Every sin is a horrible act, and I have committed many sins in my life. So I will pray for those who commit these acts that they might find healing and forgiveness in Christ, just as I pray the same thing for myself.
• The Church must have a divine foundation, because how else can one explain the fact that it has survived for almost 2,000 years in spite of such people within the Church? St. Gregory the Great, a pope in the 6th century, lamented that he “must worry about the invasions of barbarians, and beware of the wolves who lie in wait for my flock”. This has always been the case, and many of those wolves actually lie within the flock. Yet the Church has survived and continues to call people to a beautiful life in Christ.

I do not put my faith in other men, nor do I put my faith in a book. I put my faith in Jesus Christ, the one one who is able to give us the strength to rise above our weaknesses and become saints.

And yes, you may call me Eric.

One of the problems with modern Evangelicalism is the desire to make the Gospel easy to follow. So many Evangelicals wish the entire Gospel message to be reduced to a bumper sticker-level that is easy to understand, easy to accept and easy to follow. But in doing so, they jettison much of what is important in Christianity.

Christianity, however, is a total way of life: it involves a compete giving of one’s life to Christ in body, mind, and soul. This is something that cannot be done in a day and, in fact, it consumes our entire lifetimes.

Luis Palau, a popular Evangelical preacher, falls into the trap of over-simplifying the Gospel:

“Only Christ can give you eternal life. Religion cannot do it. Charitable work will not do it. Good behavior will not do it. Doing communion won’t do it. Reading the Bible won’t do it. Saying your prayers won’t do it. Only Jesus Christ will take you to Heaven if he lives in your heart,” he said.

Let’s look at this more closely:

“Only Christ can give you eternal life.”

A good start, as this is only too true. Christ said that “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). Yet it is after this that Palau gets off the tracks:

Religion cannot do it.

The Evangelical bug-a-boo: “religion.” Religion, of course, can be used in many ways – it can be an attempt by man to reach God (not a bad thing to attempt, but one fruitless without God’s help) or it can be simply a man-made way to follow other men (never a good thing). But religion at its most fundamental is the way in which man interacts with God, and the Christian religion is one revealed by God as the means to follow Him. As such, religion CAN bring eternal life.

Charitable work will not do it.

Read Matthew 25:31-46 about the sheep and the goats, which Christ concludes by saying, “Then they [the goats] will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Clearly feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and welcoming the stranger will impact our attainment of eternal life, or else why would Christ have given us this parable?

Good behavior will not do it.

The story of the Rich Young Man in Matthew 19:16-22 is a bit more nuanced than Palua’s statement. When the young man asks Jesus how he can obtain eternal life, Christ’s first response is “If you want to enter life, obey the commandments.” If being good were unrelated to eternal life, why could Christ have said this?

Doing communion won’t do it.

Jesus would disagree: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world…I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:51,53).

Reading the Bible won’t do it.

Well, as a Catholic I’m a bit surprised that a Prostant would admit this one, so I’ll concede this point to him. (Although reading the Bible is a primary means in which we know how to obtain eternal life).

Saying your prayers won’t do it.

How can we “receive Jesus” except by praying? How can we know Christ except by conversing with him? I know that he means mindlessly repeating our dinnertime and bedtime prayers, but I think it is never a good idea to denigrate the most important activity we can engage in – prayer.

Only Jesus Christ will take you to Heaven if he lives in your heart

Again, this is true – it is only Christ who can take you to heaven.

Palau’s problem is one that most who do not have the fullness of the Faith fall into: they separate and divide what should not – and cannot – be separated. Palau is right to believe that it is only by following Christ that we can be saved, but following Christ involves our whole being, including: “religion,” charitable work, good behavior, communion, reading the Bible and saying your prayers. Without doing those things, we are not really following Christ and eternal life can elude us.

Let us follow the words of Christ himself when he was asked this question:

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”
(Luke 10:25-27)

Sometimes I can’t help myself: when I see an error in reporting about Catholic matters, I feel I must correct it. Here is a case in point:

In the Omaha Catholic Examiner, Todd van Kampen writes,

If there were a Top 10 list of Catholic cultural touchstones, surely “Catholic priests can’t get married” would be listed somewhere in the top five (if not No. 1). But did you know that it isn’t always true?

He then goes on to give an example of a former Protestant minister (who is married) who was recently ordained a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision of JPII that allows such things. He also mentions (correctly) that married men can be ordained Eastern Catholic priests.

So what’s wrong with the article? (Ten points if you already picked it out)

A Catholic priest cannot “get married.” What can happen in extraordinary cases is that a married man can be ordained a Catholic priest. Even in his article, Mr. van Kampen notes that if a married priest is widowed, he cannot remarry. This has been the ancient practice of the Church in both East and West: although married men can be ordained priests in the East and in exceptional cases in the West, no priest – either in the East or West – can get married.

This discipline (and it is a discipline, not a dogma) is a wise one. Can you imagine the issues that could arise from a priest being “available”? What if they started dating someone who went to confession to them in the past? What if multiple women in a parish were interested in an “eligible” priest? No thanks.

Today is the feast of one of my favorite saints, St. Justin Martyr. St. Justin was the first Christian to directly engage the dominant pagan culture with the message of Christianity; in other words, he was the first Christian “apologist.” If you read his works today, many of his arguments seem a bit odd, but you must read them within the context of the culture he lived in, as he was highly effective in spreading Christianity throughout the Roman Empire.

One of Justin’s primary arguments was the concept of the “spermatos Logos” – the “seeds of the Word.” This is the idea that the Christian faith is present in some form in the Greek philosophers and in other non-Christian religions and philosophies. When Plato, for example, taught something that was true, he was supporting the Christian faith, which is founded on Christ, who is Truth. Although Justin and the early Church condemned the pagan aspects of the Greek philosophers, this positive attitude towards them led the Church to use Greek philosophy to explain doctrines such as the Trinity and the Incarnation in terms that all men could grasp. It was a huge leap in promoting the Christian religion throughout the world.

St. Justin, pray for us!

President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was recently baptized by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormons).

She’s been dead for 14 years.

This is an example of the bizarre practice of the Mormon church called “baptism for the dead,” in which Mormons posthumously baptize people by proxy. (Many people don’t realize that this is a primary impetus for their famed genealogy work; as they discover their ancestors they perform these proxy baptisms for them.)

I had some discussions with Mormon missionaries recently, and when this topic came up their sole source for this belief is 1 Corinthians 15:28-29:

When everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will (also) be subjected to the one who subjected everything to him, so that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what will people accomplish by having themselves baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, then why are they having themselves baptized for them?

There are many problems with the Mormon exegesis of this passage (for one, nowhere does Paul actually condone the practice, he just mentions it in the context of another discussion), but I think the bigger problem is that this is an extreme example of sola scriptura (which is ironic, since Mormons claim to reject sola scriptura). Nowhere is there any evidence that the Christian Church practiced a “baptism for the dead” at any time in its history. Furthermore, the Church’s practice of baptism has never allowed for a “proxy” in the place of the recipient, especially in a situation in which the recipient doesn’t even know about it! This would run counter to the underlying reason for baptism, i.e. one’s personal inclusion into the family of God. And baptizing a dead person is contrary to the teaching of Scripture that baptism brings new life to the believer. Yet in spite of all this the Mormon church yanks this verse out of context and develops an entire doctrine out of it (this is similar to the fundamentalist invention of the “rapture”).

The Catholic understanding of Divine Revelation is more holistic: we believe that there are two means by which revelation has come to us – Scripture and Tradition – and we believe that, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church is the authoritative teacher of that revelation. This three-pronged approach helps to prevent such egregious cases of ripping verses out of the context of the life of the Church. Read Dei Verbum for a beautiful exposition of the Church’s understanding of Divine Revelation.

For a more detailed explanation of the problems with “baptism for the dead,” see this page from Catholic Answers.

A common dispute between Protestants and Catholics is the use of Tradition as an authoritative means of passing divine revelation. Most Protestants of course only accept the Bible as an authoritative source, but Catholics recognize both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition as means by which God has revealed Himself and His salvific plan. However, I have found in many of my own discussions with non-Catholics (and sometimes Catholics) that many do not understand what exactly Tradition is.

For a long time, even after I became Catholic, I saw Tradition as solely consisting of the writings of Councils, encyclicals, and the saints (especially the early Church Fathers). And I think most Protestants see it like that as well. However, that transfers a flaw in Reformation thinking, one that sees the written word as the only assured way of transmitting knowledge. This is a flaw conceived in the age of the printing press, and one that Jesus clearly didn’t share, as he didn’t write anything nor command anyone to write anything.

Tradition includes, of course, those writings, but it is primarily the life of the Church, which is the womb of those writings (including the writings of Scripture). This life consists of Catholics believing, preaching and worshiping, and in a special way it includes the liturgy, which is the life of the Church at its most fundamental level. The liturgy is the action in which we are united to our Trinitarian God and it is a primary means in which our Faith is transmitted from age to age.

We can see an example of this in the Arian debates of the 4th century. Arius and his followers were claiming that Jesus was an exalted creation – the first-born of God, but created, nonetheless. Up to this time, there were no councils to look it, no papal encyclicals, and the writings of theologians and even saints were somewhat conflicted and unclear as well. And Scripture alone did not solve the problem – some passages made Jesus appear to be equal to God, and some on the surface did not. The Arians themselves were very Scriptural in their arguments and loved to quote the Bible in their defense. However, the orthodox had a “trump card”, so to speak: they reminded everyone that in the liturgy, they had worshiped Jesus for the past 300 years. And everyone was in agreement that only God was to be worshiped. Therefore Jesus must be God. Thus, the life of the Church, as experienced in the liturgy, is what transmitted this fundamental truth about our Savior for 300 years before it was formalized in the Council decrees. Without Tradition, we would still be debating the divinity of Christ. (This also shows that the Council of Nicea did not “invent” the divinity of Christ – as a certain bestselling author would assert – but merely affirmed what was already practiced and believed by the Church.)

For those interested in seeing how the life of the Church transmitted Christian beliefs from generation to generation before the written word became primary in the 15th century, I would recommend Jaroslav Pelikan’s 5-volume The Christian Tradition series.

The Resurrection of Jesus we celebrate this week is our own guarantee of access to eternal life. Christ is the “firstfruits” of our future resurrection and life with God. The question now becomes: how do we receive this eternal life which Christ has made available?

A common belief among non-Catholic Christians is that one must simply “believe in Jesus” to obtain eternal life. The quote used most often is John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The problem is that this is only one instance of Jesus speaking about “eternal life” and how to obtain it. On my count, there are 17 instances (including synoptic parallels) of Jesus talking of eternal life and its possession. I looked at each of these and broke them down into four general categories: Faith, Good Works, Self-Denial, and Sacraments. Here is a basic outline of each instance:

Faith
John 3:15; John 3:16; John 3:36; John 5:24; John 6:40

Good Works
Matthew 19:16; Mark 10:17; Luke 18:18; John 12:50; Matthew 25:46

Self-Denial
Matthew 19:29; Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30; John 12:25

Sacraments
John 4:14 (Baptism); John 6:54 (Eucharist)

Then there is one more instance of Jesus speaking of eternal life:

And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” He said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read?” And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And he said to him, “You have answered right; do this, and you will live.”
(Luke 10:25-27)

This final passage, I think, sums up all the various statements of Jesus on how to obtain eternal life: if you love God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and if you love your neighbor as yourself, then you will surely have faith in Christ, perform good works, deny your passions, and receive Christ’s sacraments. And in doing so, you will obtain the object of your love: eternal life with God.

Catholic Destination has posted an article I wrote entitled “Are Only Catholics Going to Heaven?” It might seem like a question with an obvious answer to many, but I was surprised by how often I have been asked this question during inquiry meetings I’ve held at my parish.