[[ Emancipation Day for our wee AmericanZygote: June 24, 2022 (text of decision) called for an extended salubrious celebration ]]
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I get competitive when I see how well Team Catholic is advancing the ball down the cultural field, compared to Team Evangelical.
Thanks to a simple Instagram post the other day, I am determined to get a post up here. Putting up with Google/Blogspot's old log-in hurdles (hey, improvements have been made. nice.) and spending three nights spell-checking my rocky prose is an easy price to pay.
The IG post I'm referring to depicted a Good-vs-Evil strafe by some "good guy Catholic" football player: Kansas City Chief's Harrison Butker (hilarious name though) is suddenly a battle hardened advocate for cultural sanity after his 20 minutes of speechifying: Benedictine Commencement 2024 .
The caption under the Instagram Video didn't mention his location & was cropped, preventing the college name from showing; but, weirdly, the name "Benedictine" popped into my head as he delivered his Family-First, Conservative-Christian-Men-Must-Lead commencement speech. I just knew. I must've seen a millisecond flash of that podium from the edit... or, idunno. Weird.
"Is he at Benedictine, Atchison?"
I entered my question on the comment line, but then Googled it anyway, instead of awaiting a reply . . .
Well, whatayuknow.
Butker wAs at Benedictine.
My parents met at there in 1944 (it was divided into His & Hers campuses then), married after graduation [he, chemistry; she, Spanish Lit], and graciously Holy Mary'd me there for my freshman year in 1980. They wished me cured of a Born Again fever they thought would go away in the chilly Catholic Kansan winds. A slight fish-out-of-water, I endured and thrived;
and I'd like to think I was Benedictine's first butt-kicker for metaphorically kicking the backside of a certain tonsured monk named Brother Jude as a finishing touch (I may be embellishing a tad).
Suddenly I wanted to renew an old research goal. The hunt was on:
I scoured our shelves and gathered up an assortment of books, periodicals, files, and my lone Benedictine Raven yearbook, all harkening back to a time when I thought I could become a serious scholar who could read all the tomes and discern exactly HOW the [bleep] Catholics got so smart. Kind of a losing proposition when you're dyslexic and ill-disciplined.
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| Find the brown-skinned rebel |
I knew College President Steve Minnis would be found in that yearbook (...he was a Young Democrat?) and that somewhere around here I'd parked notes on how Ancient Christianity had gradually morphed into what is now recognized as Roman Catholicism... All those glimmers of historian goals were strewn across four rooms and five bookshelves, but here they all are, piled and ready to engage (taunt) me into taking a few months off; they're begging me to again pretend I am a brilliant academic on paid sabbatical who can actually read and digest entire stacks of books.
Magical thinking, as they say.
I am transported back to that stellar year, isolated in time by success in almost every endeavor (famous exceptions being Dr Scholz's Logic class, and Statistics. Sister Watson was in over her head).
Before deciding to leave the school behind, I and my dear, sweet, also-born-again roommate, Mary, had prayed with a handful of other BC students to receive Christ as LORD and Saviour "for reals," not just 'cause they made you. We'd march down the hill to Carol Baptist Church each Sunday morning to "get fed" with useful bits of scriptural admonition on life, discipleship, sanctification and fearing God. Unlike the !heathen Catholics up the hill, we merry band of Born-Agains would feed on God's Inspired Word for our Spirits, and after-church potlucks for our stomachs. We would fellowship with families of other Believers and make promises to pray for our "strange enemies," those crass smokers (horrors), most of whom were belly up to the bar, beer drinking miscreants (more horrors), and all of whom were believers in other gods who'd sold them a bill of goods we called "mere religion." I don't think we were smug about it, 'cuz I wanted like crazy for all the good looking catholic boys to pay me some attention (they wouldn't. Mexicans with brown skin were anathema in the eighties). We did attend a Bill Gothard seminar one weekend in winter --horrors! (Mary's idea); a Verna Birkey homemaking seminar on a weekend in spring (I dearly loved Verna. Laura's idea); and a Camp Kanakuk retreat (where I was, again, the lone Mexican outcast w no chance of fitting in... (tears. Susan N's idea). We even tried a Renaissance Faire with one Classics student whose military dad ran Leavenworth Prison. Alas, she wanted nothing to do with our Baptist Jesus.
Around the middle of May (after finals, I think?), Mary and I received a knock on our dormitory door from a lowly, tonsured approximation-of-a-man in a tan monk's robe with a dry, straw-looking rim of messy hair. Brother Jude wanted to have a "chat." His superiors had sent him. I thought to myself, "this awkward fellow was unlucky enough to draw the short straw." He didn't much seem like he wanted to be there.
He took a seat on the edge of my bed, and we sat opposite, in our desk chairs. His tall, lanky body leaned forward with grave hand motions. He spoke quietly but emphatically: "...the parents of your Benedictine classmates want their children to attend mass. They sent their kids here to be Catholic, not something else..." He forbade us from continuing our weekly practice of mobbing Carol Baptist with our rebel friends. He forbade us from sharing Christ in any form that wasn't expressly Catholic.
He was censoring us.
Good thing the school year was over.
I think I had a few words of my own for him, but it's been forty-four years, so I'll have to ask The Saviour to run me a replay someday. Mary was the polite half of our team and Made Nice peacefully. She later reverted back to her parent's Catholicism.
Well! I couldn't stay where I wasn't wanted. Besides, my dad really needed the tuition money for his dreams of sailing the world (never mind that he'd just been bestowed The Order of The Cross Of St. Benedict. He must've felt guilty that I'd been a troublemaker and made a major donation, gaining official recognition as a bastion of virtue, deserving of said award with all its honors and privileges contained thereunto).
In any case, i was outta there.
I persist in believing that the Benedictine College of today bears so little resemblance to the BC of 1980 precisely because of Mary, Joe, Laura, Justin, Christina, Pearl, Susan N, Susan S., etc. I want to believe they all played a role in its growing sanctification. We each must have prayed over the campuses, students, faculty and future throughout the intervening decades, and held up the examples of Hillsdale and Grove City College as Christ-honoring campuses worth emulating. I know I wrote a note once.
And so Benedictine may now be, and I want to take all the credit, Gothard memories notwithstanding.**
SURELY, Laura & Joe, now a pastor in Talequah OK, share the greatest load of credit, but... I have books! I might read them! I could become a force for evangelical good! Someday! Really!
No?
The Catholics surely know how to apply themselves to their academics. We evangelicals seem lazy on all the fronts: academically, culturally, theologically, personally ...
While a list of exceptions has thankfully grown longer, I can only dream of someday touching hems of garments:
Carl R. Trueman, Seth Gruber, Eric Metaxas, Becket Cook, Josiah O'Neil, Alisa Childers, Megan Basham... WAYNE GRUDEM. At least they've done their homework.
Francis Schaeffer no longer stands alone.
In my dreamy mind I am a legend in the annals of prayer, wielding spiritual leverage mightily on behalf of errant Popes, misguided Cardinals, Spotlight criminals and BC campus keggers. So, after forty-four years, don't I get to take a little credit for their obvious salty progress? (...those Sisters, though. May Saint Scholastica offer them a most venal tongue lashing ... ugly nuns. And, after listening to Butker's definition of salvation, I guess there is still a long road to hoe.)
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I sometimes ponder the ones who "got away". Since 1980 I've occasionally prayed for Nancy A. who stole my typewriter (returning it begrudgingly by June), and for her suite-mates who snagged most of our record albums sent down the trash chute when Bill Gothard "told us to" (!Maan, I want those back).
And BC President Steve Minnis? In recent years, I've prayed for his success at making the college more about faithfulness to Christ and less about mere traditions of men and questionable theology...
Congrats to Mr. Butker on a speech well done. Thank you, President Minnis for inviting him. You're both moving up the charts on my rag tag prayer list. Our Saviour Christ is indeed "King to the heights."
As I continue my haphazard prayers for Catholicism, maybe I'll tackle the reading of an actual book before I depart this earth.
A dreamy, dusty and highly optimistic volume by Voddie Baucham or George Grant on Getting it All Together. And I'll find a church that gets me. And it will be, please God, Presbyterian*.
Amen.
* a new Presbyterian. A DougWilson morphed with Tom Ascol denomination: we will be called Presbynists.
And a new political party I've dreamed up shall be named The Grudems, for Wayne Grudem's Christianity & Politics ... but that's a matter for another post. And life.
**( thanks to Gothard's
die-to-self dye-cast teachings, plus the power of
TheHolySpirit, future Brother Jude's were spared my ire, but, I'm thinking hard about that. I finally concede: Maybe Gothardism wasn't all that great. I now wish I'd smacked Pastor Bob N. right back in his DTS M.div. And how about all my UCSD Marxist professors? Oh my, how they deserved many a wood shed moment. And my certifiably untrainable husband? He definitely could've used a more take-charge female.)
Every day I will bless You,
and I will praise Your name forever and ever.
3Great is the LORD and greatly to be praised;
His greatness is unsearchable.
4One generation will commend Your works to the next,
and will proclaim Your mighty acts—
5the glorious splendor of Your majesty.
And I will meditate on Your wondrous works.
6They will proclaim the power of Your awesome deeds,
and I will declare Your greatness.
7They will extol the fame of Your abundant goodness
and sing joyfully of Your righteousness.
