A Ramble About Sacrament

On this trip, I have had the experience of attending several different churches. There was Kingman Christian Church in Kingman, AZ. There was First Baptist Church of Oak Creek, WI. And this morning, we attended Central Christian Church in Beloit, WI. These church experiences and services are as far varied from one another, even as they can be varied from a Catholic Mass. Oak Creek was a very conservative hymn and King James Version only church. Kingman Christian was a little more contemporary, yet still traditional service. Central Christian was something else altogether. Part of the church had been designed by retired Disney imagineers, and I could see the similarities in design with say Downtown Disney. The service was very contemporary, and took place in a sanctuary which reminded me of a theater with full multimedia screens, stage lighting, and even light smoke for atmosphere.

As I was contemplating the service this morning, I was also contemplating God's Grace, and how I had seen it active and transformative in people's lives in all three churches, as well as the churches and parishes of my own adopted Old Catholic faith tradition. In order though to explain the fruit of my contemplaton, let me explain what I mean by Grace (with a capital “G”).

In the Catholic/Orthodox Sacred Tradition, Grace has far more of a meaning than just God's unmerited favor. Grace is a part of what are called His “uncreated energies,” which also includes His love, mercy, power, etc. These energies are explained as the “presence of God outside of His Persons,” and where the Persons of God are transcendent, His energies are immanent. One illustration is that if God in His Trinity is like the Sun, the uncreated energies of God are like the rays of the sun. And it is His energies when made active within us which causes the transformation of theosis, or deification, being made like God and in union with God. We aren't made one with His Essence, but with His energies, so that while remaining separate, we are also made one with Him.

The definition of a Sacrament (or “Mystery” in the Eastern Church) is “a visible sign of an invisible Grace.” That is that the Sacraments of the Church are actions which when performed and received by faith make His Grace, His energies, active within us to a salvific or transformative purpose. According to the Sacred Tradition of the Church, in order for the Sacrament to have any (positive) effect, it must be accompanied by faith on the part of both the recipient, and the person celebrating or performing the Sacrament. One example of this from Scripture is when Jesus performed miracles of healing, He repeatedly said, “your faith has made you well,” or “your faith has saved you”, and when He entered a town that didn't believe in Him, He could do practically nothing in the way of demonstrations of power except for a few minor healings.

One way to think of it is this, Grace is like an energy field. Because God is omnipresent, everywhere at once, so also are His uncreated energies. But with respect to any individual person, Grace remains inert until that person engages and acts on faith in Jesus Christ. Then His energies become active like electricity which has finally been allowed to flow through a completed circuit. This in turn enables the person to engage with God even more by faith which in turn increases the voltage, so to speak.

Without faith in the Sacrament, the act of Sacrament is fruitless because Grace hasn't been made active. Conversely, actions which are not strictly one of the seven recognized Sacraments, when undertaken with and by faith, are themselves Sacramental in nature such as prayer, charity, Scripture reading, and others because they also make Grace active.

It is for this reason that when our enemies, the world, our own flesh, and Satan and his demons attack us, they do so with the goal of separating us from faith in some way. Like the storm which Peter set out in to walk on the water towards Jesus. He did so believing that Jesus would enable him to walk on the waves, and it was only when he took his focus off of Jesus and looked at his surroundings that he began to sink. The storm distracted him and it pulled him away from his faith in Jesus at that moment which began to render His energies around Peter inert in proportion to his distraction or loss of faith.

Our enemies do not want us to experience deification. Our enemies do not want us to be transformed by His Grace into the image of Christ. The surest route to keep the Christian from this is to distract, tear down, and interrupt our faith in Christ as much as possible with an eye to unseating it altogether which would render His transformative Grace around us inert with respect to us. We must cooperate with His Grace through faith, or the transformation is slowed or even stopped.

This was the logic of Paul's warning to the Galatians that they had “fallen away from Grace.” They had turned away from faith in Jesus Christ to the actions of the Mosaic law and trusting in the Mosaic law to transform and save them, and not Jesus Christ. This rendered His transformative Grace inert in proportion to their drifting away from faith in Christ.

God's primary goal with each of us is that we become one with Him by Grace through faith in Jesus Christ, and He doesn't play favorites. I myself was moved by Him from being an Evangelical Protestant to a Roman Catholic and then to an Old Catholic. I have known people who were Catholic and were moved by God into Evangelical Protestant churches. I have observed that God will lead people from one faith tradition within the Church to another, because faith may be hindered in the first, and yet grow madly in the second for that person. God knows that it is faith in Him which must be encouraged to grow and be acted upon in the person's life. And, He seems to be willing to do so by any means necessary. If a person has responded to Him by faith, but then seems unable to grow in the church where he or she began, then God is not averse to uprooting them and putting them into a faith tradition of the Church where their faith can grow and mature.

I have also observed that God seeks to remove impediments to faith from our lives, and what may have encouraged growth at one time, He removes later on to encourage more growth. Jesus sad that His father was a vinedresser and every branch in Him which doesn't bear fruit, He removes, and every branch which does bear fruit He prunes so that it will bear more fruit. Often, He prunes those things that we come to rely on instead of Him, even if He gave them to us in the first place (not that there isn't anything in our lives that He didn't give us, but some things tend to be more apparent in this regard than others). He may answer a prayer for someone to have a good paying job, thus increasing the person's faith. Later on, because that person is trusting in that job more than Him, He may remove that job to force the person to trust in Him again. He may bring the person to a particular book, or theological teaching in order to help that person's faith mature. But there are times when we put more faith in the book or theological teaching than we do in Him, and He must then prune those things (sometimes painfully) as well. The goal in everything He brings us is to encourage our faith in Him to grow, which thereby increases the activity of the Grace around us to transform us into the image of Christ, which is His ultimate goal with us.

It is a mistake to think that only one faith tradition has a monopoly on Sacrament and on Grace, because God uses everything He thinks fit, not we think fit, in order to move us closer to Himself.

A Ramble About Going Renegade

For those who may have visited the website of the Old Catholic Diocese of the Holy Spirit and looked up the clergy list, you may have noticed that my name is no longer listed. You may have also noticed that I have changed my personal information to the left hand side of my blog, so that it no longer reads “Fr. Allen Bair+”, but just “Allen Bair.” I have yet to change my photo, because I don't have a good one to replace it with yet.

About a week ago I received word from the Presiding Bishop of the Diocese of the Holy Spirit that he was suspending my faculties as a priest, and that I would no longer be permitted to celebrate the Sacraments under his authority. He was concerned that I was presenting and conducting myself as a priest in an unworthy manner. Specifically, he disagreed with the mission which my wife and I have undertaken, and the manner in which we have undertaken it. I had been attempting to inform him, and receive input from him for months prior to our departure from Arizona, and he remained silent until we were a thousand miles into our journey and more than halfway to where we had hoped to meet with him. He ordered me to turn around, return to Arizona, get a job, and attend a liturgical church.

Had he instructed me in this way prior to our departure from Bullhead City, or at least indicated his disapproval of this journey, I could have and would have complied. But after two months of seeing God provide in many and marvelous ways, and seeing His support for our journey in this way, and after the amount of time, prayer, and money people have invested in it to see it succeed; after all this, I knew it was an order I could not obey. If God has supported us all the way through, wouldn't it be disobeying God to turn around and quit? Wouldn't it be turning my back on the people who have supported us, and have told me they have been inspired by our journey? I honor the Bishop as a true Bishop and a godly man, but I could not obey his order for fear of disobeying God. Bishops sit in the seat of the Apostles, but there are times even the successors of the Apostles can be wrong, even as the Apostles themselves could be wrong (see Galatians 2 where St. Paul rebuked St. Peter for his hypocrisy), and my vows are first and foremost to our Lord. So, as he no longer wished to be responsible for my actions as a priest, I resigned from the Diocese of the Holy Spirit.

So, I am now once again a “Wandering Priest” in every way. I originally took the title of my blog from the Latin phrase “Episcopus Vagans”, meaning a wandering or stray bishop. These are persons who have been consecrated bishops but do not preside over a geographical diocese of any kind. It is the term most often applied to Old Catholic Bishops by more “landed” Catholic and Orthodox Bishops because of how many hold valid consecrations which they consider illegal or improper and have no standing diocese or clergy (as a side note, the Orthodox are actually quite hypocritical in this; most of the Bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople are given symbolic rule over geographical dioceses in Asia Minor that no longer exist). Another less benign term used for such clergy is “renegade” because they operate outside of the authority or control of the established Churches.

So, whether I wanted to be or not, I am now a “renegade” priest. Someone might ask, how can I still be a priest if I have resigned, or am no longer under the authority of a Bishop. The reception of Holy Orders in Catholic Sacred Tradition is understood theologically in a very different way from the ordination or licensing of ministers and clergy in other Christian churches and denominations and has to do with the Orthodox Catholic concept of Grace as a part of the uncreated energies of God that flows through the Body of Christ.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church published by the Roman Catholic Church follows the ancient understand of the Grace of Holy Orders, in paragraphs 1581-1584 it reads:

1581 This sacrament configures the recipient to Christ by a special grace of the Holy Spirit, so that he may serve as Christ's instrument for his Church. By ordination one is enabled to act as a representative of Christ, Head of the Church, in his triple office of priest, prophet, and king.
1582 As in the case of Baptism and Confirmation this share in Christ's office is granted once for all. The sacrament of Holy Orders, like the other two, confers an indelible spiritual character and cannot be repeated or conferred temporarily.⁷⁴

1583 It is true that someone validly ordained can, for grave reasons, be discharged from the obligations and functions linked to ordination, or can be forbidden to exercise them; but he cannot become a layman again in the strict sense,⁷⁵ because the character imprinted by ordination is for ever. The vocation and mission received on the day of his ordination mark him permanently.

1584 Since it is ultimately Christ who acts and effects salvation through the ordained minister, the unworthiness of the latter does not prevent Christ from acting.⁷⁶ St. Augustine states this forcefully:

As for the proud minister, he is to be ranked with the devil. Christ's gift is not thereby profaned: what flows through him keeps its purity, and what passes through him remains dear and reaches the fertile earth. . . . The spiritual power of the sacrament is indeed comparable to light: those to be enlightened receive it in its purity, and if it should pass through defiled beings, it is not itself defiled.⁷⁷

(http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a6.htm#VII)

So, once someone has received the Grace of Holy Orders, it cannot be removed. Like baptism and confirmation, it is permanent. Once ordained a priest in the lines of Apostolic Succession, you can never truly be laicized. You can be “unlicensed” in the sense that you can be forbidden from serving in the parishes of your diocese, but you can never rejoin the laity any more than you can be “unbaptized.” Regardless of what you do, you are a priest forever, with all the responsibilities that go with it.

So, with this in mind, and after more than a week of reflection and soul searching, I have attempted to be as non-deceptive as possible without directly going into it during this time. Had I discussed it before this, it would have been out of hurt and anger, and that wouldn't have been edifying to anyone. My suspension came as a shock and a blow to me, and it is taking some time for me to work through it. My family and I would be wrong to quit and turn back, we must obey and follow where our Lord leads. At the same time, while I am still technically a priest, I cannot allow people to continue to believe that I am in good standing with and a part of the Diocese of the Holy Spirit. This would be dishonest. I am on my own. I have gone renegade. I believe that this is my only course of action in obedience to our Lord.

In going renegade, this frees my family and I from representing the Diocese, and it frees the Diocese from being responsible for me. As my wife and I have discussed it, as painful as it was, we realized that this was probably for the best for everyone concerned. It allows us to focus on our task at hand, and continue to work unconstrained with the Protestant, and non-denominational churches we have developed relationships with, and to develop our “Overflowing From Empty” children's home as an interdenominational Mission unfettered by the confines of the Diocesan rules and laws.

It is an irony that in order to obey our Lord I have been made to go renegade. It reminds me of the scene at the end of Pirate of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl where it is observed that sometimes an act of piracy is needed in order to do the right thing. I wish the Bishop and the Diocese of the Holy Spirit well, and I hope there can be some reconciliation in the future.

A Ramble About Heresy

I'm going to do something that I rarely ever do. I'm going to start with the Scripture instead of leading into it. This particular Scripture has had more influence, albeit indirectly, on Church relations and history than most people realize. The Scripture passage is 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, and it deals with something the Church fought with vigorously in ancient times, and sadly has now come to dominate our thinking. It reads (in the World English Bible):

“Now I beg you, brothers, through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfected together in the same mind and in the same judgment. For it has been reported to me concerning you, my brothers, by those who are from Chloe’s household, that there are contentions among you. Now I mean this, that each one of you says, 'I follow Paul,' 'I follow Apollos,' 'I follow Cephas,' and, 'I follow Christ.' Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul?”

Let's reword this, “I'm a Lutheran,” or “I'm a Baptist”, or “I'm a Catholic”, or “I'm Evangelical.” The biggest single concern on St. Paul's mind with the Corinthian church was schism, and members of the church splitting off into factions (which is actually what the word “heresy” literally means, “a faction or [political] party”). The truth is though we don't normally see this as a problem because every church and denomination now not only sanctions factionalism but actively promotes it. In many cases it's relatively innocuous and benign as different churches disagree, but recognize each other's validity and respect each other. But where it becomes a true problem is when one faction within the church starts trying to coerce or force other members of the body of Christ to follow their way of doing things.

Church history is rampant with our certainty that our personal faction within the Church is the way everybody should be doing it and those who aren't are either misguided or on their way to hell. One instance comes to my mind in the early eleventh century when Greek bishops and priests ministering to parishes in southern Italy began rebaptizing Latin speaking Christians because they rejected the validity of Rome's Sacraments. This was one of the grievances which led to the Great Schism of 1054. The wars of religion raged across Europe in the sixteenth century as Lutheran fought Calvinist, Lutheran and Calvinist both fought Catholic, and everybody fought the Anabaptists. An obscene amount of blood was spilled all while each side condemned the other to hell for their particular Christian practices and devotion.

The definition of a heretic is one who schisms. If this is the case, then just about every church and denomination in the world today is, by definition, heretical. Not because of their theological teachings, but because of their clinging to the underlying teaching that God will only truly work through their version of Christianity, and everyone else needs to come to them to get it right. The worst offender is the parent of my own faith, the Orthodox Church, which refuses to recognize that God's Grace is active in any other way beyond their own Sacraments. It is an irony that after centuries of trying to preserve itself from schism, it has become the most schismatic. Even the Roman Church has recognized that God does in fact on occasion work outside their borders.

I am Orthodox Old Catholic. I will never be anything else again. This is because this theological structure works for me and allows me to progress in my journey of faith towards the upward calling of God in Jesus Christ by Grace through Faith in Him. I am able to relate to and understand the writings of the ancient Church in ways I never could as an Evangelical, and this has opened the Scriptures to me in ways my previous path couldn't. But this is me. I know many people who have had the opposite experience growing up Catholic and being led away from the Catholic Church, any Catholic Church, into an Evangelical Church where they were able to truly begin their own journey of faith and begin to grow towards Him. I have observed that it is often the case that the church or denomination we grow up in somehow becomes a barrier to actually knowing our Lord and He will transplant us in order to make things more clear. I am now convinced that God doesn't see the denominational factional borderlines that we throw up. He only sees the Body of Christ, which oddly enough doesn't fall neatly into denominational boundaries.

If we truly want to walk in the Apostolic Faith, we must first give up our factionalism. It is only right to honor the Apostles and the Bishops who succeeded them because they fought so hard against it. We can never be truly Orthodox, and free of heresy until we do.