Tuesday, December 2, 2014

clear thinking



Marking the season of Advent, Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher take apart "Mary, Did You Know?"  It's about time. One thing I wish Shea and Fisher would've mentioned:  effectively bad Marian theology leads to Nestorianism, a heretical splitting of Jesus' human and divine natures.  This amounts to a sloppy gnosticism wherein the divine exists alongside yet apart and thus unsullied by the human.  No.  "We believe in One Lord, Jesus Christ..."  (And a good ecclesiology student would continue here:  that same one Lord founded _one_ church...)  Our salvation doesn't work with Nestorianism.

Another approach:  "Mary, Did you know?" captures one of Thomas Day's criticisms in his (now two decade old) seminal study Why Catholics Can't Sing:  contemporary Catholic music presumes a divine perspective wherein the singer (cantor, choir leader, or congregation) conveys a perspective only God would know.  Of course, though, there's no way--apart from revelation in Scripture--for us to know anything like that.  Thus Day's point:  apart from the aesthetics (which Day hammers), contemporary Catholic worship music is bad theology.  Mark Shea, having once been an Evangelical, knows the broader point: contemporary Christian music makes bad theology.  Thus his point.  They're both right.

Want to hear/appreciate the fuel for this fire:  Go here (sung by a popular singer, too!)  but do not blame me.  Do not let this meme happen to you.



H/T Catholic Memes on Reddit

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