{"id":226,"date":"2007-10-08T22:59:56","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T22:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/francis-beckwith-and-others.html"},"modified":"2007-10-08T22:59:56","modified_gmt":"2007-10-08T22:59:56","slug":"francis-beckwith-and-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/francis-beckwith-and-others.html","title":{"rendered":"Francis Beckwith and others"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aimee Milburn has a nice post examining Francis Beckwith’s interview with Tim Drake in Catholic World Report. <\/a><\/p>\n

There you have it.\u00a0 Catholicism does not teach “works righteousness.”\u00a0 And Beckwith is correct.\u00a0 But the Catholic teaching is not the same as the Protestant; it is an entire paradigm shift to understand it.\u00a0 Salvation is not just about a one-time event so we can go to heaven; it\u2019s about being perfected in God<\/em>, becoming the image of God, for eternity.\u00a0 That is the work of God in us, forming and perfecting His image in us by His infused grace, which we receive the more pliant we are in His hands, and takes time.<\/p>\n

Then I read the Council of Trent, which some Protestant friends had suggested I do. What I found was shocking. I found a document that had been nearly universally misrepresented by many Protestants, including some friends. I do not believe, however, that the misrepresentation is the result of purposeful deception. But rather, it is the result of reading Trent with Protestant assumptions and without a charitable disposition. For example, Trent talks about the four causes of justification, which correspond somewhat to Aristotle’s four causes. None of these causes is the work of the individual Christian. For, according to Trent, God’s grace does all the work.\u00a0 However, Trent does condemn “faith alone,” but what it means is mere intellectual assent without allowing God’s grace to be manifested in one’s actions and communion with the Church. This is why Trent also condemns justification by works.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, all I can say here is, me too.\u00a0 I read Trent on my way into the Church too, and was amazed \u2013 by its beauty, and its consistency with scripture.\u00a0 And yes, Trent condemns both mere intellectual assent and justification by works.\u00a0 We have to be changed,<\/em> by God,<\/em> by giving ourselves wholly to Him, so we become His work, the work of His hands, in us.<\/p>\n

. . . I returned again to the Fathers and found in them, very early on, the Real Presence, infant baptism, and apostolic succession as well as other “Catholic” doctrines. Even in the cases where these doctrines were not articulated in their contemporary formulations, their primitive versions were surely there. But what was shocking to me is that one never finds in the Fathers claims that these doctrines are “unbiblical” or “apostate” or “not Christian,” as one finds in contemporary anti-Catholic fundamentalist literature. So, at worst, I thought, the Catholic doctrines were considered legitimate options early on in Church history by the men who were discipled by the Apostles and\/or the Apostles’ disciples.\u00a0 At best, the Catholic doctrines are part of the deposit of faith passed on to the successors of the Apostles and preserved by the teaching authority of the Catholic Church.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And again, me too.\u00a0 And look where it led me.\u00a0 And Beckwith.\u00a0 And so many others.\u00a0 We do it individually, and for each of us it is such a discovery, life-changing, eye-opening.\u00a0 And then we meet others who’ve made the same journey.\u00a0 “What – you, too?\u00a0 My goodness!”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, and although I linked to it ages ago and have it on my blogroll, if you’ve not yet seen it, do check out the Catholic converts blog <\/a>– a spot where 68 (and growing) \u00a0convert\/revert blogs are listed, each sharing wonderful, inspiring stories.
\n<\/a>
\nLong-time blogger Hokie Pundit has decided to move in the Catholic direction as well, and has three blog posts about it <\/a>on his new blog (switched because he’s no longer a Hokie, but at William and Mary law school.)<\/p>\n

\nFaith-related, in case you missed it last week, Edward Oakes, SJ on faith and doubt, comparing and contrasting Newman and Ratzinger on that score, and folding into one of the best treatments of the Mother Teresa story that I’ve seen over the past month. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aimee Milburn has a nice post examining Francis Beckwith’s interview with Tim Drake in Catholic World Report. There you have it.\u00a0 Catholicism does not teach “works righteousness.”\u00a0 And Beckwith is correct.\u00a0 But the Catholic teaching is not the same as the Protestant; it is an entire paradigm shift to understand it.\u00a0 Salvation is not just…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nFrancis Beckwith and others - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/francis-beckwith-and-others.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Francis Beckwith and others - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Aimee Milburn has a nice post examining Francis Beckwith’s interview with Tim Drake in Catholic World Report. There you have it.\u00a0 Catholicism does not teach “works righteousness.”\u00a0 And Beckwith is correct.\u00a0 But the Catholic teaching is not the same as the Protestant; it is an entire paradigm shift to understand it.\u00a0 Salvation is not just…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/francis-beckwith-and-others.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-10-08T22:59:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/photos1.blogger.com\/blogger\/7783\/2924\/320\/catholicconverts_small.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Francis Beckwith and others - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/10\/francis-beckwith-and-others.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Francis Beckwith and others - Via Media","og_description":"Aimee Milburn has a nice post examining Francis Beckwith’s interview with Tim Drake in Catholic World Report. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}