Today I started reading a new book as part of my devotional time - it's a little book that is actually a collection of meditations on Mary from the letters of St. John Henry Newman - the book is called The Mystical Rose
I just started it, so not too much to say yet, no doubt more insights will come from it, but in the introduction, St. JHN makes the distinction between devotion and doctrine (he calls it faith in this context, but he means the content of the faith).
He's famous for clarifying the concept of the development of doctrine, but part of the whole point of that is that there are boundaries on doctrine, and legitimate development can never really be anything new, but rather only the clarification and natural growth of what was there from the beginning.
But, he says, with devotion, there is more freedom for new things to come into the Church, and one of the ways in which Catholicism is rich and robust is in the great number of devotions, and in the great freedom the Church gives to individuals to pick and choose different devotions, according to their taste - and this almost jumped off the page for me - because we would never say that doctrine is a matter of taste, but here he gives us permission to say that devotion IS a matter of taste. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that it's OK if different personalities gravitate to different devotions.
So the fact that the rosary did not exist in the first 1,000 years of the Church does not mean that it's bad - it was new in the middle ages, but since it is a devotion and not a doctrine, that's ok (though I would argue - and I do argue in the book on prayer - that the rosary is consistent with prayer that was going on from the beginning, and only builds on it).
And now there are so many devotions it would be impossible for any one person to practice them all - and this can seem like a problem for Protestants and new converts - but the point is that it's ok to like some and not others. Some people are devoted to some saints; other people are devoted to different saints. Some people pray the Divine Mercy chaplet; other people are into the Sacred Heart or other similar devotions.
I think it's good to be intentional about what devotions you gravitate to, and not try to do them all - but on the other hand also not give up on them because there are so many. I also think that devotion to Mother Mary, and the rosary should be something everyone does (the rosary at least on occasion).
But in any case, what are your devotional practices? Share if you feel like it (I'll share mine if you share yours), or at least think about them for yourself. Are you still looking to find the right one(s) for you?
Here's a short (about a minute) video I took going around the Holy Column in the church of Santa Prassede. This is the column that Jesus was tied to when he was scourged by Pontius Pilate. They don't always have the barrier down, so you usually don't get to see it from all the way around. I wanted to get video of the whole thing all the way around because I ran across a note in an ancient document that said that those who made a pilgrimage (at that time to the Holy Land, since it was still in Jerusalem) could visit the Holy Column, and could see marks left from the hands of Jesus where he gripped it as he was being whipped. I assume that this is pious legend, but I figured since the column has that dark & light marble, maybe there's a place where the dark parts look like hands. I did not see it, but if you do, let me know!
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
My voice was still recovering from a bad cold, so not sounding my best, but this was a great conversation about pilgrimage, for the Jubilee year - more of this coming in other interviews! (FYI, I think I was the third of three guests that day, so you will have to fast forward to find me)
It seems that one way or another we need to talk about different kinds, or different levels of heresy. What I have been calling heresy vs. heterodoxy, others call heresy on fundamental doctrines vs. heresy on less fundamental doctrines. In other words, Heresy with a capital H (over fundamental doctrines like the Trinity and christology) are the kinds of heresies that move one outside the boundaries of what Christianity is, and that's because the very definition of Christianity is defined according to these fundamental doctrines. To refuse to sign the Creed at the Council of Nicaea in 325, or the Council of Constantinople in 381 - and indeed to reject any of the contents of the Creed today - means that a person is NOT a Christian.
So are the non-chalcedonians, such as the miaphysites (including St. Gregory of Narek, and today's Coptic Christians) - are they heretics? Well, like it is with a lot of things, that depends on your definition of heresy. If you include in your definition of ...
As promised, I thought that this would be a good discussion starter here in the community - this is from a conversation I had with my producer at Catholic Culture, around the podcast episodes on St. Gregory of Narek. If you've listened to the first episode on St. Gregory, you know that he is the first and only Doctor of the Church who was not Catholic! What are we to make of this? How do we explain it? Well, it was within the context of me trying to explain it that two really fundamental questions came up, and had to be hashed out between me and my producer. The first question - and this was surprising, given that we had a whole series on The Heresies - the first question is: What is a heresy? And how you answer that has serious implications for the second question, which is: What is the Universal Church? And that has serious implications for ecumenical dialogue, not to mention how we think about our fellow Christians who are not Catholic. So let's take the first question first (and here's ...
