I am no Ignatius

Ignatius of Loyola, who founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuit order of the Catholic Church) said “What I see as white, I will believe to be black if the hierarchical Church thus determines it.”   This was #13 of his rules for thinking [link].

I have to admit that I am not Ignatius. I have no interest in this type of insistent loyalty. I know that may seem obvious, since I am a Protestant, but it has been troubling me quite a bit lately.

There are actually two parts of this that get to me. The first challenges me to question how I define authority. Where does authority come from and who decides that? It is clear that I am unwilling to live in the kind of authoritarian system that Christendom operated in. But where does that leave me?

Ministry is a privilege

I was reading a book on ministry this week  (Practicing Gospel by Edward Farley) and it spurred three thoughts:

When we talk about ministry it is good for us to begin quietly with the humble  admission that firstly, we are called by God. That in itself would be enough. If this were what we were asked to do by God then doing it would be its own reward.

Secondly, we recognize that this work of ministry does a great deal of good in the world.

Spirit vs. Letter

I stumbled onto an interesting story while researching my Ethics of Pluralism paper

The LA Times examined a case study of a Jewish Center and Synagogue* that wanted to construct a eruv by surrounding a city with monofilament fishing line and designating it as one space. This would allow those participating in the orthodox congregation to satisfy the codified expectations of Sabbat while moving within the eruv, as this would no longer be moving between one place and another.

Religion in Public

As my semester comes to a close, I finally have some breathing space to post the backlog of stuff I have thinking about and finding along the way.

One of my classes this semester was in Ethics focusing on Pluralism and the Public arena.  A conversation that interested me deeply revolved around the famous JFK speech on religion and the more recent one by Mitt Romney. Though they were probably more similar than different, their differences were profound.

I found this interesting article today in the Washington Post where JFK’s niece says that Sarah Palin gets the argument wrong in her new book.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120303209.html