The Second

Actions not speeches declare the content of a soul.   My actions, my way of life has followed a template, on balance, of the decent civilized man.   This is not to say that I am decent in any deep and moral sense.   Rather it means that I can check some boxes on a list of things associated with being civilized and decent.   I have worked in a respectable career—as our society counts respect; have earned money, by which to house my family; raised (or supported my wife’s raising of) civil children; funded some people in charitable work.   I think I’ve tried, and know I’ve fallen short, to do what Jesus and the Apostles taught.   But in the end, I see myself as having a basic civilized decency.   I have tried to repent of my secret sins and weaknesses; tried not to be a slave to my appetites, but with weak, inconsistent effort.   What, in short, is this way of life? If I have accomplished anything, about the best I can say is, I’ve fulfilled my f...

The modern use of “ecumenism” pertains to a narrow problem in a wide swath of differing Christians.   And within that context it’s regarded ambiguously, either with hope or suspicion.    Between these poles sits a taught unspoken proposition that the Church is divided.   Since Christians know that the Church can’t be truly divided, the proposition finds no voice.   Instead ecumenism proposes to solve dividedness.   While it may have some impact on unity as a qualitative experience, ecumenism has offered little with regard to the universality of the unified Church. The very notion of dividedness is ambiguous; just consider the grammar.   “Dividedness” as a noun seems concrete, but its verb root (to divide) already has a standard noun form as “division,” which is the concrete result of dividing a whole.   “Dividedness,” on the other hand, begins with something that has already been divided, abstracts the quality of that division, and then trea...