IANS Amongst The Hahn-verts
And it came to pass that IANS was among the adoring crowds anxious to hear the good news from the fifth evangelist before whom all of Tradition must genuflect.
He was amongst tens of hundreds of adoring acolytes crowded into Saint Therese de Lisieux Catholic Church in Wellington, Florida on August 31, as the chosen one
addressed the multitudes from 9:00 am until 2:12 pm.
And he had paid his $26.00 with the solitary goal of publicly challenging the chosen one over his claims about Holy Maundy Thursday, the Last Supper/First Mass, and the putative “Fourth Cup,” which, according to the authoritative CPA (Convert from Protestantism Apologist), is the key to understanding the Bible and its Eucharist Institution accounts.
Dr. Hahn is as wrong about that novel claim as he is popular and deemed authoritative by his uncountable Hahn-Verts – especially those Bishops and Priests
who have been converted to his radical exegetical evangelical claims which appear to have some connection to his Presbyterian Seminary (Gordon-Conwell) training in Theonomy (An ideology advocating the application of Mosaic Laws to the society the Christian finds his own self living in).
Those Bishops and Priests have stood in his presence, apparently in full agreement, as the great communicator casts his eisegetical spell over his adoring acolytes and
presents a new Gospel based upon, wait'll until ya get a load of this later on, a first century Seder Meal.
But, IANS first has to note just how effective a speaker Dr. Hahn is; from his bearing to his enthusiasm to his materials to his entire presentation which mixes intelligence, learning, humor, and even pathos, he had his acolytes eating out of the palms of his hands and nodding their heads in agreement to all of his statements in such fervent unison that they reminded IANS of the flocks of pigeons in Piazza San Marco in
Venice racing after popcorn pitched by tourists.
There can be no doubt that had Dr. Hahn proclaimed - Sam the Sham was the last in a long line of great Egyptian Pharoahs that the painting of The Stations of the Cross would have vibrated due to the force of the sound generated by AMENS !!
However, Dr. Hahn made some excellent points, among them the valuable reminder that the words, “New Testament” are the only such words in the new testament and those are said by Jesus which reminds us all that the New Testamnet is not so much
about a book or collection of books but about the action of Christ, the Mass (my paraphrase).
He also made a neat summary of the New Evangelisation by describing it as your story about your Catholic Faith shared with others (paraphrase) after crediting Pope Blessed John Paul II with having had the keen, and right, insight that it was the Baptised who need evangelising – an undeniable truth.
He was also charmingly self-effacive at points - I'm not much but I am all that I think about - and he told genuinely interesting personal vingnetttes that did not cast him in the best of lights and he was, frankly, simply brilliant at presenting the scriptural basis
for Confession and illustrating the necessity for it by linking New Testament citations with Genesis and the Creation of Adam and Original Sin and dying the death as referring to the loss of Sanctifying Grace and from his own life he supplied the matter that grounded his theological points in here-and-now reality.
Well done, sir; very well done!!!
But – at this is a but bigger than Oprah's – it was his presentation of “The Fourth Cup.” (the putative Ritualistic Map discovered by Dr. Hahn that helped him to escape the querulous quandary in which he then spiritually existed) that constituted both the
major part of his anti-Traditional eisegesis and the dangerous error that he has been successfully spreading with as much success as did Johnny Appleseed accomplish his self-appointed task.
It is worth noting that the presentation I was at contained not a single word of caution from Dr. Hahn that this was merely his own opinion and an opinion not shared my others – you know, such as Doctors of The Catholic Church and The Early Church Fathers and can not be found in any reliable Catholic Commentary (A Lapide, Catena Aurea, Haydock's Commentary, and even Dom Orchard's 1952 Commentary is in
opposition to Hahn) , nor is it even hinted at in such sources as Denzinger, Ott, Premm, Spirago-Clarke, Radio Replies, Catholic Evidence Training Outlines (yes, Dr. Hahn wrote the Forward to the 1992 reprint) Liturgical Year etc etc etc
Dr. Hahn's Ritualistic Map that is supposed to lead the believer from naivete and/or theological confusion to the heart of the mattter of The Institution of the Holy Eucharist is a First Century Seder that Jesus supposedly faithfully followed.
No, I am not kidding.
This is the very center – the hearth and heart – of his captious claim (for me, not the Hahn-Verts) that at the Last Supper/First Mass, Jesus and His Apostles celebrated a Seder.
Bullshit.
The Seder (Order) Meal was developed by Rabbinical Judiasm after Titus had destroyed the City of Deicide as this Jewish author confesses:
Almost everyone doing serious work on the early history of Passover traditions, including Joseph Tabory, Israel Yuval, Lawrence Hoffman, and the father-son team
of Shmuel and Ze’ev Safrai, has rejected Finkelstein’s claims for the great antiquity of the bulk of the Passover Haggadah. What is particularly significant about this
consensus is that these scholars are not radical skeptics. These scholars believe that, generally speaking, we can extract historically reliable information from rabbinic
sources. But as demonstrated by the late Baruch Bokser in his book The Origins of the Seder, practically everything preserved in the early rabbinic traditionsconcerning the Passover Seder brings us back to the time immediately following the
Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E.12 It’s not that rabbinic literature cannot be trusted to tell us about history in the first century of the Common Era. It’s that rabbinic literature—in the case of the Seder—does not even claim to be telling us how the Seder was performed before the destruction of the Temple.
Further background
So why does Dr. Hahn insist that Jesus and His Apostles celebrated a Seder and why is he so fixiated on “The Fourth Cup” when those matters have never been a concern for Catholics?
Who knows ? It is prolly just the flowering of some malign theonomic seed planted in him during his seminary days.
What we do know from Catholic Tradition is that Jesus did not just lead His Apostles in the celebration of just a Jewish Meal – Seder or regular meal – but a passover meal FOLLOWED by the Insititution of the Eucharistic Sacrificial Meal (to stay with the meal analogy for the moment).
He did both even though Dr. Hahn is ignorant of this (I don't know how he could be if he read Trent; He does have a personal library of 20,000 or more books) or if that is the case, then he simply prefers his own theological ideology which in the matter of his "Fourth Cup" presentations (delivered 100s to times) is not Traditional Catholic exegesis but Protestant eisegesis.
It is simply preposterous to insist that Jesus faithfuly followed a seder that was not even developed until long after His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.
Here is the gteat commentary of Cornelius a Lapide that explains and settles the matter:
Council of Trent (Sess. 22, c. 1): “After Christ had celebrated the ancient Passover, which the multitude of the sons of Israel sacrificed in memory of their going out of Egypt, He instituted a new Passover, that He Himself should be immolated by the Church (ab ecclesia), by means of (per) the priests, under (sub) visible signs, in memory of His passage from this world to the Father, when He redeemed us by the shedding of His Blood, and delivered us from the power of darkness, and translated us to His Kingdom.”
In the ever new light of Catholic Tradition IANS begins to understand why the scripture expert continually used his own words rather than the words of Jesus when
it came to the putative Fourth Cup for Dr. Hahn does not quote Jesus accurately but rather, repeatedly, claims that in Matt 26:29, Jesus says “He will not drink...until His kingdom is revealed” rather than
And I say to you, I will not drink from henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I shall drink it with you new in the kingdom of my Father
and for Dr. Hahn that kingdom is revealed when Jesus drinks the wine/vinegar on the Cross which is supposed to be The Fourth Cup of the Seder.
Dr. Hahn's presumptively christian exegesis is rather a Judaised eisegesis based upon a Seder Meal developed by Rabbis long after Jesus instituted the Eucharist in the
Upper Room and he has spread these Judaised seeds all over America in presumptively Catholic Churches and I am unaware of any Bishop or Priest who has called him on this and corrected him.
IANS never did get to ask his question because there was no Q & A session but during one break IANS got Dr. Hahn alone for a quick eye-balling during which time he noted he had a question about the presentation and Dr. Hahn walked off saying “I'll be right back.”
He did not return. C'est la vie. Maybe he was alerted to potential problems because I had a Bible and a zippered notecase that might have contained some contrary
information or maybe it was simply the case (more likely) that he was just too busy and forgot to return.
What is undeniable is that Saint Therese de Lesieux may as well be renamed Saint Scott for it has been completely Hahn-verted which is another way of saying
its Catholic Tradition has been subverted and inverted and it has been Baptised into the Presbyterian Theonomic Ideology personified by Dr. Hahn.
I inquired about signing-up for two Bible Study Courses but both courses required that IANS buy his textbooks and Dr. Hahn's text on Exodus alone cost $50.00.
He was also selling his books on Sacramentals, his Catholic Dictionary, his Biblical Exegetical Series, and he was giving away copies of his weekly reflections of the weekly scriptural readings of the Lil' Licit Liturgy.
It is quite clear that today's Catholic need never again consult The Early Church Fathers (Hahn has his own book of specially-culled excerpts from them).
When I told the Bible Study sign-up cleark that I had my own Bibles and Catholic Commentaries she said that made no difference for Saint Therese de Lesieux would exclusively be using Dr. Hahn's material from now on and that I could not take the courses unless I purchased Dr. Hahn's material.
Seems reasonable given that he has supplanted Catholic Tradition.
IANS has to give credit where it is due and Dr. Hahn has to be credited with being a marketing genius if nothing else but IANS also wonders just when some
Priest will publicly stand-up to some of his crazy-ass claims and refute them with Tradition.
Prolly never as AmChurch Clergy are far more like to have been in a Seminary where they have engaged in trust exercises (falling backwards into each others arms)
rather than being exposed to and taught Catholic Tradition.
C'est la vie.
IANS is followed-up by emailing the woman who organised the appearance and she will forward IANS' email to Dr Hahn.
I am most grateful for this post. New to your blog and slightly intimidated by your fierce visage and fearing for my head, I submit my comment withal.
ReplyDeleteDear Gloria Laudes. Your kindness has soothed this savage beast :)
DeleteI have long been in awe of Dr Hahn's marketing genius. Somehow he has made himself *the* pre-imminent Scriptural scholar in the Catholic Church even though everything he writes (like that Lamb's Supper book) seems to be a quest for novel interpretations. When I was at university all the students read Hahn. When I was at Oxford the Oratorians were shocked at his popularity in the States. How could his books, which are longer than any single work of any of the Greek and most Latin Fathers, get so much serious traction? It boggles my poor mind.
ReplyDeleteRe: Last Supper as a Seder meal. What utter nonsense. The only person I have ever heard suggest the Last Supper was a Seder was a secular Jew majoring in Physics.
Dear Rad Trad. Thank you for that observation. All that you wrote about Dr. Hann is true but try telling that to his adoring fans; they consider that he embodies the apotheosis of apologetics.
DeleteI'd pay a substantial sum to see you debate him :)