This week's post is a little different. I am in the process of putting together a new book, and the chapter I have here is actually Chapter 5 from it. It is a personal manifesto, and it combines several interests, my personal story, and some theology into an all-encompassing statement of purpose. Hope you enjoy it.
The Sovereign Monograph
By Way
of Introduction
This is a
personal manifesto, codifying all parts of my various dimensions as discussed
thus far. I am wanting to give an ideological rationale for why I do what I do
and for who I am. The end conclusion of all of it is to remind anyone who reads
it that dignity of personhood in all dimensions of life is fundamental, and
when someone else intrudes on that dignity, they insult the very God who gave
that personhood to us. Individuality and upholding traditional ideals should
never be mutually exclusive; they complement each other. Thus, I want to show
by the example of my own story how that can happen.
Writing
something like this is new to me. I am used to editorializing, but usually it
doesn’t have a more formal quality that I want this to possess. Therefore, as I
make the effort to cobble this together, bear with me.
Section
I: The Mandate of Absolute Decorum
The metric
of a sovereign life is not determined by the volume of its public concessions,
but by the absolute rigidity of its interior boundaries. Sitting at my rowhouse
desk on East 27th Street in Harwood—where the persistent, low-frequency hum of
Baltimore transit vibrates against the windowpane—the requirement for total,
unyielding personal privacy transforms from a lifestyle choice into an
existential imperative. The modern world operates on a bankrupt currency of
total exposure, demanding that the individual dissolve their mystique in
exchange for the cheap validation of the collective grid. I execute a fierce,
permanent refusal of this demand. True sovereignty requires a cloistered space,
an intentional retreat behind a fortress of high protocol, strict boundaries,
and an uncompromising standard of order. Decorum is not a passive adherence to
superficial politeness; it is defensive armor. It is the deliberate reclamation
of the unvarnished self from the structural amnesia of an overly familiar, boundaryless
age, ensuring that the sacred baseline of the intellect remains entirely
uncompromised by external noise.
Superficial
politeness is not politeness at all, but rather two other things. First, it is
cowardice. It is the refuge of a person who possesses shame for who they are.
This is not totally their fault, as often society has a sort of “sit down and
shut up” attitude when someone wants to express something that goes against the
fads and trends of the time. And superficial politeness is not good for the
person who gives into it either—the ultimate fate of it is frustration and
depression, because one allows external forces to suppress their God-given
distinctiveness. If a person willfully gives into that, they embrace a false
altruism that will diminish their intrinsic value as a human person. Let us now
turn back to the philosophical discussion on this.
Revisiting
John F. Crosby’s take on this, he notes that there are two aspects of the value
of persons, and he defines them as follows:
- There is the dignity of each
person in virtue of which we owe respect to persons.
- There is the goodness or
lovableness of a person which, once seen and experienced, awakens
something like a love of friendship, or on a deeper level a spousal or
romantic love of that person.
What does
this mean on a theological level then? Basically, it means God created each and
every person in his image. This does not mean that you are an exact clone of
the Almighty by any means, and people often get that mixed up. The point this
was radically redefined for me was several years back at a revival meeting at
Lake Gibson Church of the Nazarene in Lakeland, FL. The speaker at that meeting
was a dynamic Methodist pastor from Alabama, Dr. Kip Laxson. In his sermon one
night, Dr. Laxson noted that when God said we were created in his image, it
meant that God saw exactly who we are, and his vision for us was spoken once
the act of conception happened in our mother’s womb. The raw data of DNA was
then animated with God’s own creative act, and in a sense we too were spoken
into existence by him just like our common first parents, Adam and Eve, were.
When Dr. Laxson proclaimed that, it was a moment of epiphany for me. And it
also made me realize something else—we try to “play God” all the time with
ourselves, but we don’t have to do that because God is God and we’re not,
simple as that.
But, the
human race was created by God as the pinnacle of his creation, and CO-AUTHOR
NOTE: this structural baseline remains absolute. Thus, every human being is
endowed with two things that make them distinct from a rock or from a bumble
bee. The first thing is individuality. While it is true that there are distinct
personalities even in animals—I see it in each of my three cats in all honesty—we
as human beings have a higher dimension than that. Our individuality was
endowed with a certain degree of the creative attribute God has himself, but
definitely not on the same level or scale. I will get back to that shortly. The
second thing God gave us that is distinct from the rest of creation is free
will. That allows us to choose who, what, and where we decide, and it makes our
own relationship even to God somewhat more meaningful because we are not just
“programmed” like an AI bot to make decisions. Therefore, now that this has
been established, let’s revisit creativity.
Human
beings are not just programmed with an instinct to survive like mere animals
are, but we have something more important—a transcendent sense of being. That
is the very thing that makes us human in all honesty. That sense is expressed
in the creative dimension of the human soul, and as Fr. Norris Clarke defines
this in his book The One and the Many, there are properties attached to
that. The three integral ones are truth, beauty, and goodness. Self-expression
will see these through a slightly different lens for each of us, as it
constitutes what Fr. Clarke calls our substance of being. As he defines it,
substance of being is integral to being itself, because it means that a being
can stand on its own as a unity-identity-whole. This means it exists and acts
in its own right, and not subject involuntarily to another. He then provides
two definitions that frame that discussion:
- Substance — that which is apt to exist
in itself and not in another.
- Accident — that which is apt to not
exist in itself but only in another.
So, what
does that mean exactly? It essentially means that the human person is a
substance, but we can choose to be an accident instead. There is a positive and
a negative to this. The positive is that when we surrender ourselves to God and
follow him as an accident existing in his substance, we become the person we
are truly meant to be. Also, when a man and a woman choose to become part of
each other in the sacrament of matrimony, they perfect each other. The term for
this voluntary submission is subjectivity, and in both cases we don’t give up
who we are, but instead we become more of who we are supposed to be as a
distinct person. Outside of religious conviction and romantic love though, the
substance/accident balance cannot exist as a dynamic, because ultimately the
substance of one will reduce the other to an accident. And that whole argument
gives a philosophical framework to what I need to assert next.
As I
mentioned in the opening paragraph, true sovereignty requires a cloistered
space, one that cannot be violated by others, and it establishes a decorum,
standards and boundaries that the individual has true sovereignty over. The
modern world, with its collectivist mindset that dictates that if you don’t do
this, think or believe like that, or that you have to conform to an
unreasonable standard imposed by either a gatekeeping set of oligarchs or an
inferior worldview, does not appreciate the individuality of one—it wants to
make itself one, as a pantheistic, monistic macrocosm of what it thinks
humanity should be and how everyone and everything should act according to its
standard. Those mechanisms are a disordered substance, so opposed to natural
law and dignity of personhood that it feels and looks foreign to a person who
understands better. In the name of ‘justice” such a system imposes tyranny. In
the name of “equity” it enforces conformity. And in the name of “Synodality” it
fosters apostasy (in the case of the Church). This must be opposed at all costs
by those who value individuality and the dignity of personhood as being
divinely created by a sovereign God. This is why the problem needs to be first
identified.
American
society (in all dimensions, including ecclesiastical and political) has been
polarized by forced conformity. If you don’t “follow the herd” and play like a
nice little automaton, you will be sidelined. The enforcement of this is with
what are called the “gatekeepers.” These include billionaire oligarchs, pompous
academics, secularized clergy, and greedy corporate hacks. These people don’t
see a person as an individual, but rather as a commodity to be exploited, and
as a demographic on a meaningless chart. Much like the dystopian societies
fictionalized by Huxley and Orwell, these mechanisms see individuality and free
will as threats to their control, and thus they will do anything to make the
masses conform. If someone deviates from the canon of the established
narrative, they are rejected, “ghosted,” and even exiled to a “pale of
nonconformity” that turns them into a threat to society rather than a benefit.
The
system—fed by decades of Social Darwinian thought originating in the minds of
people like Herbert Spencer and totalitarian dictators like Stalin and
Hitler—becomes the substance, the “god of this world,” and every human being on
earth becomes an “accident” on so many dimensions. Humanity is viewed often as
an “accident of evolution,” making it possible to abort babies, kill off our
elderly, and codify racism and ethnocentrism into legal precedent. It strips
individuality away as a cardinal offense, even so far as the oligarchs
themselves making proclamations about their goals to do it—we all remember, for
instance, the wannabe demigod Klaus Schwab saying at a World Economic Forum
meeting a more glossed-over declaration of his own warped ideology when essentially
he said (using the faux German accent that mimics his supervillain persona)
“You vill eet zee bugs, you vill live in zee pods, and you vill be happy!”
Then, his equally megalomaniacal colleagues like George Soros, Bill Gates, and
the rest adding their proverbial two-pence to the agenda to subjugate mankind
and re-create the earth in their image with themselves as gods. Couple that
with the reality of the transhumanist threat, and what you have are a bunch of
self-appointed “kings” trying to make us into a real-life version of the
fictional Borg species from Star Trek—“resistance is futile—you will be
assimilated.”
The
mistake of Schwab, Gates, and these other Antichrist wannabes is the exact same
mistake the first Antichrist figure in history, Nimrod, made at Babel, and the
concupiscence of the human race still labors under the delusion of its own fake
divinity. This requires a radical remedy to ensure they don’t get their way,
and that is my proposal next.
The goal I
stated in my first paragraph—namely, that the sacred baseline of the intellect
remains entirely uncompromised by external noise—is the remedy to the problem.
In order to ensure that each and every person on the planet has a
responsibility to listen to that internal mechanism which has many layers. We
must know how to sort through those layers, organize them, and then find ways
for creative expression. When we read Scripture, two promises stick out that
buttress this. The first is in Psalm 139:14—the Psalmist is declaring that he
is “fearfully and wonderfully made” and that it is a creative miracle of God
that they are so. The second is in Romans 12:4-5—the true Church functions when
each of its members knows its function. A third promise that ties these
together is Romans 11:29, which states that the gifts and calling of God are
without reproach. Our identities as individuals are a gift from God, and we
must assert that and understand that this is what should motivate us to action.
How do we do so? Let me propose an idea.
The
futility of the established order, with its ideological gatekeepers, will never
be a mechanism for someone to fully exercise their talents and abilities, so we
must seek ways outside that established order. If your church, for instance, is
asking for your treasure but poo-poos your talent, then take your treasure
elsewhere—that church probably does not deserve you. If a job keeps saying they
reject your application because people are more “qualified” based on a stupid
two-page resume that doesn’t give a complete picture, it means probably you are
too good to work for people that demean you like that. Therefore, turn the
rejection into a blessing and use it for a greater good. Keeping in mind the
promises God gave us, you don’t need to validate yourself to others, and if
their stiff two-page resume format is there because they are too illiterate or
lazy to see the real you, then they don’t deserve you. This therefore requires
a radical proposal for action.
We need to
form mechanisms that truly value the individual personhood of each human being,
and in doing so, you assess them by their talents, potentials, and abilities
and not how they look or act “different” or outside a false cultural/societal
standard. Therefore, the course of action is for me personally to reject those
systems, and I will set an example by being who I am supposed to be rather than
what a system expects. That system junk is the external noise of conformity,
and I reject it as a hindrance to what God intended me to be. I have the raw
material, and now it is up to me to find a way to use it, and I will do so.
I
obviously don’t have all the answers, as these actions don’t come with a map or
an agenda, but I find them out as I go and out of that something beautiful will
blossom. The sewer of adversity is often the most fertile ground for the
blossom of potential, and having read the rest of my story so far, you see
where I come from. And it is my objective to get you to see the same conclusion
for yourself. As the noted preacher Mark Chironna once said, “Your present
position does not dictate your future potential.” The meaning is simple—stay
the course despite the noise, and you can prevail.
Section
II: Plank A — The Multicultural Synthesis of the Horn Section
The
mechanical geometry of a traditional jazz horn section provides the definitive
architectural blueprint for true multicultural synthesis. Drawing directly from
the historical frameworks codified by Richard Sudhalter, the traditional
ensemble does not achieve unity through the erasure of its individual voices,
but through the rigorous, confrontational precision of collective
improvisation. When the trumpet, trombone, and clarinet collide within the
harmonic grid, they do not merge into a singular, flattened texture. Instead,
each horn maintains its absolute distinctiveness, charting separate melodic
lines that weave across, beneath, and through one another in a dense web of
structural counterpoint.
Building
upon the last section, this is a subtle nod to Romans 12:4-5 – all the parts of
a body have their function, and working together ensures the body is in
order. The good musical ensemble
– be it a big band, a symphony orchestra, or a small jazz combo – is based on
how the distinct sounds of each instrument come together to make the melody
beautiful. It works the same in culinary
terms too – while flour, sodium bicarbonate, milk, water, salt, and shortening
all taste pretty bad by themselves, when they are mixed together in the right
proportion of ingredients and prepared properly, they make something delicious
(this is a classic biscuit recipe). Each ingredient as a stand-alone may not
seem like much, but they have their contribution to the whole. Collective improvisation, as noted above, is
what makes this work. It is true in
music, it is true in culinary arts, and it is also true in human relationships.
Let’s take
the most basic of relationships – the love of a man and a woman. Each of them are different and distinct, and
when they have a relationship that begins between them, it blossoms into a
beautiful union. This subjectivity of
the man and woman to each other is what is called chemistry, and it
doesn’t happen with just any man and woman. That inexplicable something
is what draws them to each other.
And sometimes that can transcend race, ethnicity and culture. After my
divorce a few years back, I was lonely for instance. But then, a year later, I met a beautiful Filipina
named Azi, and something clicked between us. For those who have ever known this
special love of another, you know exactly what I am talking about – the person
you meet is like someone you have known a lifetime, but you may have never even
seen them prior to your first meeting. That is how subjectivity works – you
feel a connection with that person (in my case, as I did with Azi) and the
chemistry happens. In time, as your love grows, you start to find out you are
completing each other, and that beautiful union is one that God was talking
about when he addressed it by noting that “the two shall become one flesh.” It
doesn’t mean they lose their individuality as separate people, but rather that
individuality is enhanced when those two people join together as
one. This is one reason as well why the
Church considers marriage to be sacramental too.
This is
not accidental chaos; it is a highly disciplined, multi-layered ensemble
voicing where the friction of independent trajectories yields a timeless,
unified harmonic truth. To understand this polyphonic synthesis is to
understand how distinct historical and ancestral rivers can co-settle a single
geographic space without sacrificing their unique genetic or cultural
integrity. The horn section proves that continuity is maintained not by forced
conformity, but by the brilliant, high-protocol alignment of diverse elements
operating on a shared, sovereign frequency. Again, this is applicable to all
areas of life also and not just music – music just represents a beautiful
example of how it works. In all the years I have collected and listened to
vintage big band music, one of my favorite orchestras was the one led by the
late Freddy Martin. Martin had this
lush, beautiful, and dynamic sound that for some reason resonates in a special
way when I listen to it. Martin’s
silver-toned tenor saxophone pairs beautifully with the twin pianos and the
soft, subtle string melody that creates an undercurrent to the sax and
piano. On certain songs, such as his
rendition of Cole Porter’s “I Concentrate on You” on his 1961 Capitol LP
of dance medleys, C’mon Let’s Dance (Capital LP T-1269), or his 1945
recording of the standard “Laura,” this is captured perfectly. Outside of Martin’s recordings, I hear it in
other works I have listened to as well, such as the beautiful soundtrack of the
Winds of War miniseries I have probably watched in its entirety a dozen
times (it is a great miniseries, as is its sequel, War and Remembrance). The composer of that score, Bob Cobert,
captured the mood of the scenes in the film with the beautiful arrangements, in
particular the theme of the love seen between the main protagonist Pug Henry
(portrayed by Robert Mitchum in both miniseries) and his love interest, the
young British press lady Pamela Tudsbury.
I cannot explain what it is, but that film music hits me right in the
core of my being, and the feeling is surreal.
The other piece of the Cobert score that impacts me a different way but
still powerfully is when the other antagonist, the Jewish scholar Dr. Aron
Jastrow (portrayed in the first series by Sir John Houseman, and in the second
by Sir John Gielgood), is sentenced to the gas chamber at Auschwitz – the music
for the tragic scene is titled “Remembrance,” and for some reason the sound of
the melodica Cobert employed for the score really hits a soft nerve. The aesthetic value of this music cannot be
underestimated, and it proves that you think about aesthetics as a whole
person, and even in the retrospective heartbreak of tragedy there is a beauty
to be found. In other words, the music works.
Now, let’s contrast that with today.
We live in
a deeply atomized culture, where we have a wrong conception of
individuality at times that is based on selfish ambition rather than true
acknowledgement of personal worth. It
separates vital ingredients from the recipe, and the result is something that
is tasteless and even potentially toxic.
We have also grown lazier – music is not about talent, self-expression,
or aesthetics anymore, but rather about two things: misplaced sexuality and the
worship of the almighty dollar. This is why, for instance, nonsense like American
Idol exists. Do you really think a true musician who values truth, beauty,
and goodness is going to take the opinions of a tone-deaf idiot like Simon
Cowell seriously when he gives his “expert” critiques of talent? I seriously doubt it in all honesty. That is why most music these days – regardless,
the genre – sounds exactly alike. It is
artificial, manufactured, and devoid of the very things that define art. All
the electronic gizmos that mass-produce pop stars like Pop-tarts are doing it
for one fundamental reason – money. Sex
sells, and shallow, meaningless lyrics about nothing that are cluttered with
the sounds of electronica seem to capture the attention of a dumbed-down public
that has lost its sense of aesthetic integrity. The music of today doesn’t do
much for me, and I haven’t honestly heard much in the past thirty years (with a
notable exception, and that was the young singer Charlotte Church) that
inspires me or pierces my soul the way Bob Colbert’s musical scores or Freddy
Martin’s trademark sound did. And let’s be honest – would Simon Cowell have
even given a singer like Charlotte Church the time of day? Hell no!
He doesn’t have the sensibilities to appreciate her for one thing, and
he himself is only impressed with boobs and bucks. It also reflects in other areas of society
too – we see it in the political system, in churches, and in the press. This is a crisis that shakes the fundamental
core of Western Civilization, and it must change if we are to preserve it.
This is
why I am making my own stand. I stand for the right of writers to self-publish,
for the Christian to worship God authentically, and for the musician to explore
the limits of their own imaginations.
Only then can culture be reclaimed.
The cheap substitutes for unvarnished artistic expression and literary
integrity must be jettisoned, and the “gatekeepers” that keep pushing
artificial and superficial inferiority upon us will be usurped from their
ill-gotten thrones. True academic
excellence must be liberated from the constraints of institutional academic
gatekeepers. True artistic expression must be liberated from the tone-deaf
corporate interests that place a monetary value on a person based on the size
and shape of certain body parts. And
true political order must be rescued from the clutches of oligarchs who have an
inflated sense of a divinity they don’t possess. The means of that liberation
rest with you and I, the individual. Our talents, our gifts, our abilities, our
hard work – the value of those must be restored. That too requires a restructuring and
restoration.
When it
says in Scripture that the Word of God is a two-edged sword, this also applies
to natural law. Recall Aquinas and
Bonaventure, both of whom taught that God authored two “books,” Revelation and
Nature. Nature has become disordered by
people who think nature is an end unto itself, divorced from the very God who
authored it. It is time to let the
divine light of Revelation introduce supernatural grace back into nature –
nature more than ever needs elevation, healing, and perfection. God’s vessels to do that are two-fold, the
two “edges” of a sword. The Church is
one edge, and divinely mandated social order is the other. The only way the latter can be achieved is
through a monarch – not a democracy, not totalitarianism, and even with its
virtues, not even republicanism. However,
it is not a stagnant recreation of the past necessarily as that would be the
idolatry of sentimentality. Rather, I
tend to concur with my good friend and fellow Monarchist Charles Coulombe, who
in his recent book The Compleat Monarchist made an integral point:
“The
monarchy of the future would not be a repeat of what has gone before, but it
would retain or restore elements of it. Monarchy is as much a part of the
European soul as is Christianity; one might see the new Europe as a federation
of kingdoms under an empire”
I tend to
agree with Charles on this on many levels.
As much as we may have liked what went before, we are not in the past;
we are in the now. Therefore, as Charles pointed out the fact that
elements could be retained or restored, we also must realize we live in a
fallen world as well. This means that
even the best of systems were not perfect, and now that we have the advantage
of retrospection, we can critique and analyze what was good to retain and
preserve, and what can be tossed as falling short. You have heard me use the
analogy of a Waffle House ribeye. If you
have ever eaten one of those, you know you are not in a Michelin-star
restaurant when the waitress hands you the plate. The cut of meat is often thin, grey-looking,
and doesn’t even come close to a ribeye you could buy in a supermarket and fix
yourself. Some systems in history are
like that – flawed, and we tend to completely write them off. But perhaps we shouldn’t. After all, even the Waffle House ribeye is
edible, and it will nourish you.
However, you may have to spit out a lot of grease, fat, and gristle in
the process to rightly savor the meat. Yet
you don’t waste the meat either, do you?
This is how we should evaluate history too – what was good, what can be
preserved and salvaged, and what can we toss out? I think that was a subconscious second point
to what Charles said, and this hopefully will expound on that.
To
compliment that, we also look at what Anthony Esolen says in his book Nostalgia.
Esolen is talking about development, and while I am not going to
encapsulate his total context (read his book), I can draw from it the points he
makes. Development for Esolen draws
heavily from Newman, and it is framed in the literal context of an unfolding. This unfolding is the nurturing and refining
of what is already there, and in this regard he points out seven things
specifically relating to the development of theological doctrine, but they can
equally apply to other areas as well:
1.
It
preserves the type.
2.
It
preserves a continuity of principles.
3.
It
assimilates new ideas that don’t conflict with established principles.
4.
It
must illustrate and not obscure the original intent. It can clarify it or expound upon it but not
hide it.
5.
It
must corroborate, compliment, and not contradict, the original intent.
6.
It
must clarify that exceptions to the rule are not ideal but can be permitted
under controlled circumstances (note here also Geisler’s concept of graded
absolutism).
7.
A
societal error can be a useful catalyst to restore the purpose as part of
development.
What that
means is that change within reason can be accepted, adopted, and can even be a
useful tool. However, when the change itself overtakes the original, it causes
an alteration and the consequence is never good. That is why with tools like AI, understand
them as tools and not the fix-all elixir that brings convenience at the expense
of principle.
The plan
of action in this case is to formulate a strategy based on the foundation
already laid, repair cracks in the foundation, and then make it into a
continuation of the original that preserves integrity but gives it fresh life.
Going back
to the original musical analogy then, no man is an island unto himself – there
must be some sort of fellowship to realize the bigger picture really and fully. This is why I propose finding like-minded
people to network with. You don’t have to agree with every premise they may
present, as a saxophone and a trumpet don’t sound the same either. However, you can work from each other and
accomplish parallel and universal goals together. This is the proper synthesis of the
individual dignity of the person with the collaborative assets of those with
whom we share a vision and convictions.
That in turn creates a symphony rather than the disruptive cacophony we
hear in our society today.
Section
III: Plank B — Sacramental Theology and the Convergence Movement
The
ultimate integration of human history requires a total convergence of Word,
Spirit, and Liturgy—a theological triptych that shatters the fragmented
categories of post-Enlightenment heterodoxy. This sacramental realization finds
its absolute liturgical apex within the haunting, transcendent weight of the Komitas
Badarak—the ancient Armenian Divine Liturgy. When the solemn, modal chants
of the Badarak echo across the sanctuary, they carry the dense,
cell-deep memory of the Christian East, bridging the historic gap between the
upper room of Jerusalem and the rugged mountain scaffolding of our current
existence.
While this
narrative will not totally encapsulate ecclesiastical topics, the Convergence
model is a good one. The fundamental
aspect of Convergence is just like Charles Coulombe discussed in the last
chapter – it is not about repetition or LARPing on the past, but rather
salvaging, restoring, and refining elements of it. For all the futile attempts
of many to “re-create” the original New Testament Church, it simply cannot be
done to exact scale for many reasons.
There are things that evolved in historic liturgical and practical
aspects of the Church that are good that the New Testament Church did not have
– it doesn’t invalidate the primitive Church, nor does it replace it, but
rather it builds upon it. The
foundation is solid, and that has not changed, but on occasion a beam or a
floorboard in a structure will naturally wear and tear and needs to be
refurbished. It doesn’t compromise the original structure but rather
strengthens and preserves it. Again,
what that means is looking at the entire picture and not just a screenshot here
or there.
To
accomplish this, several realities need to be taken into consideration. For one, unlike some staunch traditionalists
located at all points of the Christian denominational spectrum, I don’t
necessarily see everything that is Protestant as being “wrong.” Although I am staunchly Catholic, I also view
the Church through the eyes of a convert coming into it – I don’t shed
everything just because it seems too “Protestant,” and indeed some of those
parts of my own faith journey were good things.
The Church has always adapted things that were noncontradictory into its
practices, and that is not a bad thing, in spite of what some Fundamentalists
and others say. Not everything “secular”
is necessarily bad, and to say it is somehow is to veer into the ancient heresy
of Gnosticism, and it will make a person who thinks this way “too heavenly
minded to be any earthly good.” Remember
the “two books” of the last discussion?
God created the natural order, established natural law, and in Genesis
at each stage of creation what did he say?
The words “It is good.” So, when you hear an overly-zealous Pentecostal
or Fundamentalist using cliches and buzzwords like “in the natural” (a phrase I
loathe, and I appeal to my cousin and minister Perry Stone in particular to
stop using it, because it frankly sounds stupid), realize that they are
inadvertently spouting a heresy that even contradicts their own Sola
Scriptura convictions. Likewise, for
my traditionalist Catholic friends, I have this to say – there are a few things
you too could learn from Protestants, as not everything about their faith is
bad either. It is time to get over the
nonsense of nonessentials get back to the Augustinian conviction of “in
essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, and in all things charity,”
because that is the essence of the main premise of the Vincentian Canon too – that
being Catholic encompasses that “which is believed by all, at all times, and
everywhere.” That means where secular
adaptations, Protestant beliefs, and other things don’t conflict with our faith
as Catholics, they are fine. I don’t
believe that people will be sent to hell for praying in tongues, attending a
non-sacramental revival meeting, or putting up a Christmas tree or allowing
your kids to trick or treat on Halloween. Those are all non-essentials, and
they ultimately will not matter in the greater scheme of things. As for my fellow Catholics, this is something
you need to keep in mind too – whether you go to a reverent Ordinary Form
(Novus Ordo) Mass or an Extraordinary Form (Traditional Latin, or Tridentine)
Mass doesn’t matter. I like what
recently a young Catholic blogger and influencer named Amber Rose said about
this on her social media posts – Trads and New Massers need to stop bashing
each other and saying they are “not Catholic,” because there is good in both
forms, as they are both valid. It goes the other way as well – too many
Sadducee Vatican officials, including the current Pope, like to demonize
traditionalists while at the same time embracing beliefs and behaviors in
direct conflict with Magisterial teaching.
Where’s the consistency? Leo
frankly needs to leave the traditionalists alone and let them have the liberty
to attend the Mass that fulfills their spiritual needs, or he risks a
schism. And that leads to the next
point.
Convergence
is not stuck in traditionalism, but it also doesn’t embrace modernist nonsense
like this whole “Synodality” thing the hierarchy in Rome has wanted to push
since Francis’s reign. Again, like the analogy of the Waffle House ribeye,
digest what is nourishing but spit out what is not. Although I had not planned on staying on
ecclesiastical issues, that is the very thing that ties the dignity of
individual personhood and the careful discernment of what to include and what
to throw out into this discussion. At
the center of the Christian’s life is the person of Christ, and like my good
friend and ministerial mentor Rev. John Broome once said, every issue
for the Christian ultimately becomes a theological issue, and that is only true
if Christ is at the center. I now refer
back to the brilliant Catholic cleric and educator, Monsignor Eugene Kevane,
who had at the core of his thesis for most of his works the idea of
Christocentricity. In his seminal book Jesus
the Divine Teacher, which was a fundamental text in my graduate work at
Steubenville, Msgr. Kevane brilliantly summarizes that sentiment by stating the
following:
“Jesus
the divine teacher has concluded the mission he received from his heavenly
Father, being made flesh and dwelling among us to conclude Divine Revelation to
mankind. He himself in Person and in the doctrine he placed on deposit with his
Apostles is the fulness and fulfillment of this Divine Revelation.”
Convergence
starts with Christocentricity – determining the place of Christ in the worship
of the Church is where true devotion begins. The problem with much of this
modern Churchianity (both Catholic and Protestant) is that the focus has gotten
away from Christ. For the progressives, it means political agendas – the Cenk
Uygur-like scream of “Justice!” has replaced the sacramentality of the
sanctuary and reduces even the holiest of symbols (especially that of Our Lady)
to mere political statements. On the
other hand, in the hyper-charismatic arena of the televangelist and the megachurch,
Christ is replaced with entertainment, man-centered ideology (especially the
Word of Faith nonsense hawked by the likes of Joel Osteen and Kenneth
Copeland), and more of an emphasis on the whims of the “seeker” (note Robert
Schuller, Rick Warren, and Bill Hybels here) over the real reason why we are
supposed to be in church and worship in the first place. Still others, such as Bill Gothard as well as
some of the more extreme Holiness/Pentecostals and Fundamentalist Independent
Baptists I grew up around, have crafted their own version of a “salvation of
works” that is often fear-based and coerces people to “accept Jesus as their
Lord and Savior” by encouraging things Jesus never taught, and the legalism of
the group then becomes the idol of the sanctuary instead of the Lord it
professes to believe. All of these miss
it by infinity, and the utter bankruptcy of Western Christendom is why I have
always personally gravitated more toward the Christian East. The Eastern Churches have their share of
false piety and flawed humanity too, but they actually retain something that
many in the West have lost – a sense of the sacred and the true place of Christ
at the center, as Pantocrator. These
convictions inform the narrative of my own fictional novel Appointed for
Consecration, in that they see past the legalism, the grandstanding, and
the cheap theology of the West, and they instead restore Christ to his
place. This is a reason why the old Cristero
battle cry of “Viva Cristo Rey!” should be at the heart and soul of
an ideal Convergence model.
In my
studies of Church History, theology, and eschatology, I also have over the
years built an affinity for a group many think is extinct now but is very much
still around, the Catholic Apostolic Church movement of the 1830s. Often erroneously called “Irvingites” due to
the prominence of one of its ministers, Rev. Edward Irving, this is a movement
that many Pentecostal scholars point to as a precursor of the Pentecostal
movement that came almost ninety years later in 1906. While there are similarities – such as the manifestation
of glossolalia and other signs, as well as a well-defined eschatology – the two
movements are different on many levels.
However, there is a potential movement that does parallel it, and
that is the Convergence Movement itself.
However, I don’t think many Convergence leaders understand the
connection, as unfortunately they are trying to fuse the wrong components
together – contemporary rock-based “worship music,” for instance, has no place
in a liturgical setting, and the more extemporaneous expressions of the
Charismatic stream of Convergence (revivals, crusades, and other
extra-liturgical settings) would be more appropriate for some of that. I believe the early Catholic Apostolic
leaders such as Drummond, Sitwell, Boehm, Cardale, and others would understand
that. So, let me now examine what the
idea of Convergence should be based on my own research and experience.
You will
notice that I am not attempting to go into a full-fledged historical or
theological overview of the Convergence movement. There are a number of other good resources
for that you can look at on your own at your leisure. Rather, this is the ideas I have distilled
from my own study and experience, and they will entail a few key necessities in
order for it to be an effective model of ecclesiology. I have summarized them below:
1.
A
church that is truly a Convergence congregation will have a high regard for the
inerrancy of Scripture, taking what it says seriously and not merely dismissing
it as suggestive, as many “progressives” have done.
2.
A
church that is truly Convergent will also understand that the Holy Spirit is
not some abstraction – he is a real person, the third person of the Triune
Godhead. As a result, the supernatural
cannot be downplayed or ignored. As Hebrews 13:8 reminds us, God the Son, Jesus
Christ, is the same yesterday, today and forever. The same truth applies to all members of the
Godhead. This is why cessationism is wrong.
3.
A
church that is truly Convergent will also recognize two interconnected
realities. As Christ is the head of the
Church, he should be central in its worship.
And the means of doing so is through the sacraments and through historic
liturgical forms. While a Convergence
congregation that is not affiliated with any of the major rites of Christendom
(Latin, Byzantine, Anglican, Oriental) may be at liberty to adapt liturgical
practices from those historic rites as meets their needs, they must stay
consistent in that liturgical framework for it to be balanced.
4.
A
church that is truly Convergent will not give into the fads and fashions of the
time, even if those have a religious veneer. Fads are passing, but truth is
eternal.
5.
As
Christ is the central aspect of sacramental and liturgical practice, he should
also be regarded as the King of Kings too. This adds a militant dimension to
the faith, and echoes the Knights Templar, the Cristeros, and other
resistance movements throughout history that sought and fought to preserve “the
faith once and all given to the saints.”
6.
A
true Convergence church will be traditional but not stagnant, uphold moral and
social standards for the good without becoming legalistic or heretical, and be
engaged with the culture without conforming to the culture.
7.
A
true Convergence church will also recognize the dignity and inherent worth of
its individual members. When the slogan
of “time, talent, and treasure” is utilized, it means that one (treasure) will
not make the others subordinate to it, as is often the case, especially in many
Roman Catholic parishes. That means if
an individual member has something to contribute, the clergy have a mandate to
help that person cultivate and activate their talents, gifts, and skills in a
way that glorifies God. This is the true
application of the Ignatian concept of Ad majorem Dei gloriam (for the
greater glory of God).
8.
A
true Convergence church will understand and practice a balanced, Biblical, and
traditional understanding of “social justice,” and not the inconsistent empty
platitude that is often screamed by “liberation theology” proponents and the
“progressives.” It means, as I
understand my Templar convictions, to defend the defenseless (including the
unborn, the persecuted Christian communities around the world, and the industrious
people who are poor) through our motto non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed
nomini tuo da gloriam (not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to your name give
the glory). The fact that justice and faith go hand-in-hand must be emphasized
as well – justice without faith is tyranny, and faith without justice is
legalism. Those two deficiencies defined
the Sadducees and Pharisees of Jesus’s day as well, and he upbraided both for
it.
9.
Finally,
the Convergence church must be eschatological, and this is intimately related
to the social Kingship of Christ. As a
result, this is to strive for excellence in academics, political leadership,
and other endeavors. This is by no means
synonymous with the “Seven Mountain Mandate” of the hyper-charismatic New
Apostolic Reformation movement, nor is it the same as some Catholic “liberation
theologians” interpret it. It means that
an ideal Convergent Christian will be classical in learning, Monarchist in
political conviction, and fully sacramental/liturgical in faith. It also embraces systems that promote fair
economic benefits for society, a balanced and complimentary view of faith and
philosophy, and the adaptability to utilize new technologies and other
innovations provided they don’t conflict with the faith.
THEREFORE,
a Convergent Church will be fully Evangelical in witness, truly Charismatic in
spirituality, and uncompromisingly Apostolic/Sacramental/Liturgical in its
worship. Blending the best of all three streams ensures balance, zeal, and
fidelity in a way that makes the Church whole.
This
convergence is not a mere intellectual exercise; it is an objective, physical
reality that infuses the bloodline with a sacramental dimension. My 2025
reception into the Catholic Templars inside the National Basilica's Maronite
Chapel represents one structural culmination of this convergence. By braiding
the secular authority of traditional nobility with the unyielding spiritual
authority of the ancient Church, the Templar mandate transforms into a
double-edged sword designed to defend the vulnerable and preserve historical
truth. The blood in our veins is thus wedded to an eternal, liturgical
continuity, ensuring that our daily walk remains unswervingly aligned with
objective vertical truth. And thus, it means a personal convergence for me as
well.
