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The Power of Sacramentals

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As Jesus entered the town of Bethsaida, some people there brought to Him a man who was born blind and asked Him to heal Him.  Jesus took some spittle and rubbed it in his eyes, but it effected only a partial healing.  The man could only see shapes.  It was not until He laid His hands upon the man that the man was able to see clearly (c.f. Mark 8:22-27).  This event has often plagued Biblical commentators who have struggled to interpret it.  At first glance it appears that Jesus was somehow limited in His power to heal, having to do it in stages.  But those who are familiar with the Catholic practice of using Sacramentals will recognize it for what it is, an institution of sorts of the practice.  The man receives the grace of healing after the man has been properly disposed after coming in contact with a consecrated object. It is with this in mind, that we shall discuss the Church’s use of Sacramentals.

Theology of Sacramentals

Any discussion of Sacramentals must begin with making an important distinction between Sacramentals and Sacraments.  As the Catechism puts it, “Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the Sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it” (CCC 1671).  Sacramentals do not work ex opere operato the way Sacraments do, but instead their efficacy comes from the intercessory power of the Church.  In short they do not bestow sanctifying grace but only aid in disposing the person to receive them.

Because the efficacy rests upon the intercessory power of the Church, unlike Sacraments which were instituted by Christ, Sacramentals are instituted by the Church.  By bestowing a prayer of consecration over the object, it becomes a means by which those who use them become disposed to the infusion of sanctifying grace.  The specific grace of the Sacramental depends upon the prayer itself, a prayer that is said by a Priest but has the entire Church.  The consecrated object is given a power to effect a certain blessing, although it is not infallible as with the Sacraments.  Nevertheless, Sacramentals are a powerful help in the pursuit of sanctity.  This is what makes Sacramentals so powerful.  But they are also made powerful through the intercessory power of the whole Church.  In this way they are different from having someone pray for you.  If, as St. James says, “the prayer of a righteous man is indeed powerful and effective” (James 5:16), then the prayer of the whole Church, the spotless Bride of Christ is much greater.

St. Thomas in his Theology of the Sacraments says that the existence of Sacramentals is fitting because none of the Seven Sacraments “was instituted directly against venial sin. This is taken away by certain sacramentals, for instance, Holy Water and such like” (ST III q.65, art.1, ad.8).  This “supplementary power” placed upon some Sacramentals is a key point to grasp in their use so as to keep us from treating them like good luck charms.  They each contain a certain power that comes from the prayer of consecration by which they were made to be Sacramentals.

Some Examples of Sacramentals

Using St. Thomas’ example, this power to take away venial sins is bestowed upon Holy Water because it was specifically consecrated for that purpose by the prayer of consecration:

Blessed are you, Lord, all-powerful God, who in Christ, the living water of salvation, blessed and transformed us.  Grant that, when we are sprinkled with this water or make use of it, we will be refreshed inwardly by the power of the Holy Spirit and continue to walk in the new life we received at baptism.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.

A blessed crucifix is effective in providing both bodily and spiritual protection, especially “against the cruel darts of the enemy” (1962 Rituale Romanum).  Likewise, sacred images, be they of Our Lord, Our Lady, St. Joseph or any of the saints make available the merits and intercession of those who are depicted when a person pays devout homage to them.  In a very real way they make the person in the image immediately present to the person who seeks to speak with them.

Another important Sacramental, especially relevant to Lent is Palms.  As Dom Prosper Gueranger describes in his book The Liturgical Year, palms are blessed using “prayers that are are eloquent and full of instruction; and, together with the sprinkling with holy water and the incensation, impart a virtue to these branches, which elevates them to the supernatural order, and makes them means for the sanctification of our souls and the protection of our persons and dwellings.”   The palms act to give protection to houses and the people in them when they are kept there.  This is a reason why if palms are being offered, even if you can’t get to Mass, that you should seek them out.

Obviously then the efficacy of Sacramentals depends upon the blessing that has been bestowed upon them by the Priest.  When we ask for an object to be blessed then, we are not just asking to make it somehow holy but to have it set aside for a specific purpose.  We should always ask that the proper blessing be said over the object so that it can be used for the purpose that the Church puts forth.  Similarly, we should listen to the words of blessing so that we can learn exactly what the objects do.

The Tyranny of the Hopeless

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Around the year 251, the Roman Empire began to be ravaged by a plague.  Historians estimate that up to 5000 people died per day in Rome alone.  As Eusebius recounts, the pagans of Rome ran, quite literally, for their lives, shunning “any participation or fellowship with death; which yet, with all their precautions, it was not easy for them to escape” (Book VII, Ch. 22).  It was the Christians that stepped forward and were “unsparing in their exceeding love and brotherly kindness. They held fast to each other and visited the sick fearlessly, and ministered to them continually, serving them in Christ. And they died with them most joyfully, taking the affliction of others, and drawing the sickness from their neighbors to themselves and willingly receiving their pains. And many who cared for the sick and gave strength to others died themselves having transferred to themselves their death…Truly the best of our brethren departed from life in this manner, including some presbyters and deacons and those of the people who had the highest reputation; so that this form of death, through the great piety and strong faith it exhibited, seemed to lack nothing of martyrdom” (ibid).  Despite being viewed as the scourge of the Roman Empire, the Christians were the only ones who stepped forward when Rome was scourged.  This event was no historical accident but instead a blueprint for how Christians should respond in a time of plague.  Throughout history, we find similar responses.  Whether it was Justinian’s Plague of the late 6th Century plague in Rome that Pope St. Gregory expelled with some help from St. Michael and friends or the Black Death in which the mortality rate for priests was 47%, the Church has always viewed plagues as a time to let her light shine before men.

One might be quick to dismiss these historical precedents as irrelevant to our own times.  Society is structured such that plagues and their treatment are very different.  Christians are no longer needed to be de facto First Responders.  The State provides those.  Instead Christians should get out of the way and let the professionals do their job.  It is time to put said light under the bushel basket so that the contagion not spread.  But this would be a misreading of the events and a misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian.

The Christian Response

Playing armchair epidemiologists, we might comment that the Christians probably made the problem worse.  That many of them died along with the sick would naturally support this fact.  And herein lies the problem.  A natural reading of these events reveal them to be failures, but a supernatural reading of them changes everything.  It is precisely in times of calamity that Christians need to become supernatural storytellers, not primarily by their words, but in their actions.

What made the Christians during those catastrophes exemplars was not that they ran to the front lines and tended to the wounded, but that they were beacons of hope.  They were beacons of true hope, not the optimism of only “two more weeks” but the hope that says “death is not the end”.  The light that they shone was Christian hope, a light that enabled everyone in society to realize that dying well is the meaning of life.  They tended to the spiritual wounds, they were really a Field Hospital and they remained open. 

They didn’t just talk about Christian hope, but they showed it by their actions.  The difference between true Christians and those who are not comes down to one thing—fear of death.  It is the fear of death that keeps people trapped within the clutches of the devil.  But it is Christ Who “freed those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life” (Hebrews 2:15).  Each one of the cornerstones upon which the Church has been built did not fear death and each stone that is added to the edifice is free from the same fear.  The Apostles had seen their Teacher and Lord die, but then He was alive.  Freed from death, He promised them the same power.  That was the basis of their hope and it was the source of their freedom to live for the Glory of God and the salvation of souls even if it cost them their lives.

The Cost of Hope

Like the Apostles and Martyrs, sometimes witnessing to hope cost the Christians living in the times of plague their lives.  That too was necessary because it testifies to the fact that the world can offer no fountain of youth, no immortality.  Still its inhabitants remain locked in fear of death.  Only the Christian is truly free from the fear of death and it is this that sets them apart.  But it wasn’t that they “visited the sick fearlessly, and ministered to them continually,” but also that they “held fast to each other.” 

In short, hope was made manifest by the fact that they continued to meet with each other.  They showed no fear of death because spiritual death is far worse.  The danger of spiritual death is ever-present, plague or not.  They met because they needed to constantly feed the hope that was in them.  Only a hopeless lot would give up the Sacraments or treat that only as a life insurance policy. 

You might think they were naïve, but they were far wiser than we; they knew that if Christians were going to rebuild society after the plague, they would need to build up the spiritual strength now.  They knew they would only build as reservoirs of grace, filling up society with the overflow of divine life they received from the Church and her Sacraments.  With greater knowledge they may have taken more precautions, but they would have ultimately thrown caution to the wind because of the value of a single soul. 

Living as we now do under, what Bishop Schneider has dubbed, the “dictatorship of the sanitary” the Church needs to shine forth as a beacon of hope.  What this might look like once prudent precautions are taken isn’t entirely clear, but it has been made abundantly clear both by history and the present moment what it wouldn’t look like.  When the Church responds exactly the same way the world does to a crisis then something is wrong.  The tyranny of the hopeless shuts down everything, the liberality of hope opens wide the doors.  Christians must be witnesses to hope, especially in ages such as we are living.

God’s Authority and the Modern State

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Pope St. Pius X once said that all errors in the practical and social realm were founded upon theological errors.  The Saintly Pontiff’s maxim seems almost common-sensical, so much so that, we can easily overlook it.  Ideas have consequences and bad ideas, especially bad ideas about Who God is and who man is, have bad consequences.  As a corollary then we might say that it is impossible to fix the bad consequences without rectifying the bad thinking.  One such bad idea, namely that all authority in the political realm comes from the people, has had the devastating consequence of erecting a “wall of separation between Church and State” leading to the loss of many souls.

The Source of Secular Authority

The properly Christian understanding about the source of secular authority is that it comes from God Himself.  This is made clear by Our Lord during His trial in which He tells Pilate that “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above” (John 19:11).   In his usually blunt manner, St. Paul echoes the same principle when he reminds the Christians in Rome to “Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1).  God as Creator and Sustainer of all Creation is also its supreme authority.  All authority is exercised in His name and flows from Him.  Kings, emperors and presidents all derive their power to rule from Him and it is only for that reason that they also have the power to bind consciences for just laws. 

Summarizing the Church’s understanding of secular authority, Pope Leo XIII instructs the faithful that “all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. ‘There is no power but from God’” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 3).

This view of authority flies in the face of countries such as the United States.  Rather than authority from above, it is based on authority from below.  Known as popular sovereignty, this founding principle is first articulated in the Declaration of Independence where Jefferson told the King that legitimate governments are those ‘‘deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.’’ 

Luther’s Error and Its Modern Consequences

So ingrained in the modern mind, we might not even realize that it is opposed to the correct understanding of the source of secular authority.  It would be easy to blame this on the Enlightenment, but the error pre-dates even the Enlightenment and Social Contract Theory.  Instead the error is rooted in Luther’s revolution in which he rejected the authority of the Church.  Leo XIII points this out in his encyclical Diuturnum  by drawing a line from the so-called Reformation to Communism and nihilism: “…sudden uprisings and the boldest rebellions immediately followed in Germany the so-called Reformation, the authors and leaders of which, by their new doctrines, attacked at the very foundation religious and civil authority; and this with so fearful an outburst of civil war and with such slaughter that there was scarcely any place free from tumult and bloodshed. From this heresy there arose in the last century a false philosophy – a new right as it is called, and a popular authority, together with an unbridled license which many regard as the only true liberty. Hence we have reached the limit of horrors, to wit, communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin” (Leo XIII, Diuturnum, 23).

If we follow the logic we will see why this is a necessary consequence.  Animated by a Protestant mentality, each person treats directly with God without any intermediary.  Each person becomes an authority in himself and therefore any authority that is to found in a social body is by his consent.  In essence then it eliminates the Kingship of Christ in the temporal realm and completely privatizes religion. 

This helps to explain why most Protestants see no problem in the current belief in a “Wall of Separation” between Church and State. It was Luther himself that was the intellectual predecessor: “[B]etween the Christian and the ruler, a profound separation must be made. Assuredly, a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian but a prince. The man is a Christian, but his function does not concern his religion. Though they are found in the same man, the two states or functions are perfectly marked off one from the other, and really opposed.”  Both the Christian Prince and the Christian citizen were to live their lives in two separate realms and, ironically enough, not submitting to God in either since they also rejected His Kingship in the Catholic Church.  Once the divorce is complete, all types of political errors begin to take hold.  Luther’s insistence on individual and private judgement leads directly to Locke, Rousseau, and Marx.  One theological error leads to many political errors. 

The Church then will always find conflict with the modern state until this error is corrected.  The modern State hates the Catholic Church because it is an existential threat because it seeks, or at least ought to seek, to acknowledge God’s authority in the temporal realm.  It is also the reason that Catholics ought to make the best citizens.  They see no conflict between Church and State because both have their authority rooted in God Himself and to obey either is to obey God.

Devotion to the Mother of the Eucharist

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When St. Luke wrote his account of the human origins of Our Lord, he wanted to make an important connection to Our Lady as the Ark of the New Covenant.  Likewise, St. John saw the need to make this connection more explicit in the Book of Revelation when he describes seeing the Ark of the Covenant in heaven and then describing it in terms that could only apply to Our Lady (c.f. Rev 11:19-12:5).  It was during Our Lady’s fiat at the Annunciation that she embraced her vocation as the true Ark of Covenant.  The Bread of Life, the True Bread Come Down from Heaven, was baked within her womb.  Her womb then became the first tabernacle as she embraced her title as Mother of the Eucharist.

Our Lady is Mother of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, who took His body and blood from her, created a soul for Himself and united it to His divinity in her womb.  In this way, the title is not surprising.  For that same Divine Person in an analogous way repeats the act on the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Each time Christ takes flesh on the altar, an echo of Our Lady’s fiat is heard as the Church gives birth to Our Lord in His Eucharistic presence. 

Mary, Model of the Communicant

Mary’s Annunciation then is the model for all of us in receiving the Eucharist.  With her Amen, Our Lord took flesh in her womb.  In so doing, she received an abundance of sanctifying grace.  Because she was perfectly disposed she received not just a spiritual but a physical participation in the divine life of the Trinity.  The difference is not just one of degree however.  According to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, Christ gives Himself so that we might live by Him, but in Mary He not only did this but also deemed to live by her and receive life from her. 

We ought to imitate her disposition as Christ seeks to unite His flesh with ours.  We ought to conceive in our hearts the “Son of God the most high” (Lk 1:32).  The Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) is the template of after Communion  thanksgivings.

Mary, the Perfect Communicant

Our Lady is more than just a model Communicant through the Annunciation.  She is the perfect communicant because she received Our Lord most perfectly in the Eucharist.  We can often abstract Mary’s life so much that we forget that she lived as a Christian just as we did.  After the Ascension, she lived with a priest and would have received the Eucharist regularly from the hands of St. John.  It is her reception of the Eucharist, first prepared for by her fiat at the Annunciation, that was perfected in Ephesus with St. John.  It is this we must study and seek the grace to imitate.

Not all receptions of the Eucharist are the same.  The Eucharist contains ex opere operato sanctifying grace.  In fact, because it contains the source of all grace, Christ Himself, it contains enough grace through a single reception to perfectly sanctify the communicant.  What stops this from happening is the personal disposition of the recipient.  The more fervently one hungers for the Eucharist, the greater the infusion of Divine life through sanctifying grace. 

Having actually participated in the sacrifice on Calvary, she knew more than anyone what was being offered, even if in an unbloody manner, on the Altar.  Having made the oblation with Christ, she could continually make that same oblation in a spirit of adoration, thanksgiving, reparation and thanksgiving (the 4 principal purposes of the Mass according to Pope St. Pius X).  Furthermore, as Venerable Mary Agreda tells it in Mystical City of God, after being told by Our Lord about His enduring presence in the Eucharist,

“she burned with the desire of seeing this Sacrament instituted, and if She had not been sustained by the power of the Almighty, the force of her affection would have bereft Her of natural life…Even from that time on She wished to prepare Herself for its reception, and asked Her Son to be allowed to receive Him in the holy Sacrament as soon as it should be instituted. She said to Him: ‘Supreme Lord and life of my soul, shall I, who am such an insignificant worm and the most despicable among men, be allowed to receive Thee? Shall I be so fortunate as to bear Thee once more within my body and soul? Shall my heart be thy dwelling and tabernacle, where Thou shalt take thy rest and shall I thus delight in thy close embrace and Thou, my Beloved, in mine?’  The divine Master answered: ‘My beloved Mother, many times shalt thou receive Me in the holy Sacrament, and after my Death and Ascension into heaven that shall be thy consolation; for I shall choose thy most sincere and loving heart as my most delightful and pleasant resting place.’”

In short, the Eucharistic Presence of Our Lord would have been one of those things “she held in her heart”, especially because she knew what a great consolation it would be.  You can imagine how difficult it would be for Our Lady having spent every day save three with Our Lord for 30 years, having seen Him often during His three years of public ministry, to no longer have Him present with her.  With that in mind her hunger to receive Him the Eucharist must have exceeded all the saints throughout history combined. 

Likewise when Our Lord “earnestly desired” to give the Church the Eucharistic sacrifice, He was expressing a great desire to unite Himself to each one of us individually, but none so much as His Mother.  He knew that the Eucharist would not only sustain her, but would unite Him to her in a deeper and deeper way with each fervent reception.

This is why Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange says that “Each of Mary’s Communions surpassed the preceding one in fervor and, producing in her a great increase of charity, disposed her to receive her next Communion with still greater fruit. Mary’s soul moved ever more swiftly Godwards the nearer she approached to God; that was her law of spiritual gravitation. She was, as it were, a mirror which reflected back on Jesus the light and warmth which she received from Him; concentrated them also, so as to direct them towards souls” (Mother of the Savior and the Interior Life).  It is this same habit, the habit of receiving Our Lord with greater love and devotion at each Mass, that we must strive after.  Let us sit at the foot of Our Mother Mary and ask that she obtain for each one of us this most important grace.  As Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange put it, “In everything she was the perfect model of Eucharistic devotion. If we turn to her she will teach us how to adore and to make reparation; she will teach us what should be our desire of the Blessed Eucharist. From here we can learn how to pray at Holy Mass for the great intentions of the Church. and how to thank God for the graces without number He has bestowed on us and on mankind.”

Suffering and Reparation

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In his 1928 Encyclical, Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI exhorted Catholics to consider their obligation to offer reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the many sins of mankind and to practice it fastidiously.  By in large his call was ignored then and has long since been forgotten.  With the Protestantization that has occurred within the Church in the last half century the notion that a Christian is obligated to offer reparation seems quite foreign, even bordering on blasphemous.  Our Proto-Catholic reasons that if Christ’s once for all sacrifice has been accepted, then there is no reason why a Christian would need to perform acts of reparation.  Nevertheless, the obligation remains so that now is the time to make this a regular practice for all Christians.

Any discussion of reparation will necessarily need to begin by conquering the already-mentioned objection, namely that Christ already offered all that was needed for sin.  The problem with this view is that it contains only a half-truth in that misunderstands what it means to say that Christ has redeemed us.  Most simply view Redemption as simply “getting to go to heaven”, but that is way to general.  Redemption truthfully means that Christ, through the infinite merits of His Divine Personality, came to repair His work that sin has ruined.  In short, Christ came to make reparation.  This work could have been done alone, but He instead willed to have accomplices in His work of reparation. 

Becoming Accomplices of Christ

Those accomplices are not just His Mother or the Apostles, but every Christian.  Every Christian is grafted onto Christ, not as individuals but as members of His Mystical Body, the same Body of which He is the Head.  What happens to the Head then likewise happens to the body.  If the Head performed acts of reparation, so too then must the body, for They are the Whole Christ.  This intimate union of Head and Body means that the members continue His acts of reparation.

This helps us to understand what is often viewed as a confusing statement by St. Paul, namely that he is “adding to what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24).  The lack is not in Christ as Head, but in His Mystical Body.  The Body must too be afflicted by participating in the acts of reparation of the Head.  Only then can the Head and Body be truly one.

We see then that reparation is obligatory because it creates a unity between Christ and Christians.  This obligation extends not just to Reparation itself, but also to the way it is made—by suffering.  It is the will of God that Reparation occur through suffering because Christ chose that as the proper means.  A true Christian, while he may fear suffering, must see it for what it truly is, Divine currency.  Christ’s suffering is the gold standard that gives value to the currency of suffering, but we must nevertheless spend it, or more accurately be spent by it, ourselves.  He has raised Christians to such an immense dignity that they become other Christ’s, not by being nice to other people, but by suffering with Him.  If we suffer with Him, then we shall reign with Him (2 Tim 2:12).  Suffering is the glue that holds the Mystical Body together.

What happens when this obligation is ignored or forgotten?  The answer is much unnecessary suffering, or, to put it more accurately, useless suffering.  Because suffering is the currency by which the obligation of Reparation is purchased, it is an inevitability.  But not just any suffering will do.  It is only suffering that is willingly accepted can buy Reparation.  This is why living in the unique time that we find ourselves, we must put all of this suffering to good use, namely Reparation.

When Christians fail to offer Reparation then things like the Coronavirus happen.  God never will give up on uniting us with His Son so that we can share in His glory.  He will even allow things like plagues to grip the world so that Christians might recapture their roles as Reparators.  That is why all of us should be focused on making acts of Reparation right now.  Everyone is going to be called on to make sacrifices in the coming weeks, but only those who submit to the Provident designs of God will make Reparation.  It does not require us to understand the whole plan, only to say “Thy will be done” each time we are called upon to suffer.  No one knows how long this will all last, but we can say that it will be shorter when Christians embrace the obligation of Reparation.

The Second Greatest Saint

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Over the course of 13-plus centuries, the Roman Canon (what we call Eucharistic Prayer I) remained virtually unchanged and is practically the same prayer that was written during the time of Pope Gregory I with one notable exception—the addition of the name of St. Joseph.  On November 13, 1962, Pope John XXIII inserted his name into the prayer, an act that was carried forward into the other three Eucharist Prayers of the Mass of Paul VI and officially completed by Pope Francis in 2013.  The recurrence of the number 13 conjures up October 13, 1917, the date of the last apparition at Fatima and the Miracle of the Sun.  Just prior to the sun hurling towards the earth, the children, according to Lucia, “beheld St. Joseph with the Child Jesus and Our Lady robed in white with a blue mantle, beside the sun. St. Joseph and the Child Jesus appeared to bless the world, for they traced the Sign of the Cross with their hands.” The message is obvious—Jesus wants to bless the world through St. Joseph—and confirmed when he was added as a direct liturgical intercession.  We are entering period of great emphasis on reliance upon the great saint and human father of Jesus. 

Next to Our Lady, he is the greatest and most powerful saint in heaven.  The time is ripe for this great power to be unleashed upon the Church.  To receive all of the blessings that God wants to bestow upon us through the hands of St. Joseph we must first grasp his greatness.  This starts with a proper theology of St. Joseph, a Josephology if you will, that puts forth the reasons for his greatness.

There are good reasons for his pre-eminence, reasons that will be easy to grasp once we make clear an important principle.  St Thomas said that “an exceptional divine mission calls for a proportional degree of grace.”  This principle is most clearly affirmed with Our Lady.  All of her greatness, her fullness of grace, her immaculate conception, her glorious assumption and queenship, is because of her predestination to Divine Maternity.  She is great because God made her so and He made her so because she was eternally predestined to be linked to the Incarnation of the Son.   When God determined to become Incarnate, He also determined who His Mother would be.  She is most perfect then because it was God Who is infinitely wise that appointed her and equipped her for her indispensable role in the Incarnation.  Jesus could have appointed other Apostles, He could have chosen a different precursor than John the Baptist, but He could not have chosen another mother.  She is not alone among men in being tied directly to the Incarnation such that it quite literally was determined to depend upon her.  This is where St. Joseph comes in.

St. Joseph was predestined to serve as the earthly father of Jesus Christ.  Many theologians hesitate to call him “foster father” precisely because a man becomes a foster father of a child because of some accident, but St. Joseph was eternally predestined and therefore given a father’s heart despite, as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange says, nature never making him a father.  It was, according to Bossuet, the same hand that gave “Joseph the heart of a father and Jesus the heart of a son.”

The Mission of St. Joseph

Joseph’s mission then is twofold.  The first is the one that has most often been attributed to him as being in support of Mary’s maternity.  It is this regard that he is often given an “also run” status as though he were merely a figurehead or just tagging along.  Probing a little deeper however we are forced to conclude that there is more than initially meets the eye.  He is, first and foremost, the protector of Mary and not just in the physical sense.  He is also the guardian of both her chastity and perpetual virginity.  St. Joseph as validly married to Our Lady had conjugal rights over her.  Nevertheless through grace he was able to not only refrain was marital relations, but to be her “most chaste spouse.”  Likewise, as head of the Holy Family, he had authority over a sinless wife.  In order to exercise that authority God would have given him the grace proper to such a high calling.

The second aspect of his mission is likewise revelatory in that he was also, not only responsible for protecting Our Lord, but also to contribute to His human formation.  This mission would have carried with it a proportional amount of grace.  He was also in a very real sense the savior of the Savior by protecting Him from harm, especially when Herod sought His life.  Like with Our Lady, St. Joseph would have exercised authority over Our Lord requiring that he be not only infallible in his commands, but impeccable in his example. 

The Privileges of St. Joseph

Given this exceptional role in the Incarnation, St. Joseph would have been given a relative fullness of grace that enabled him to carry out his mission.  This is why many saints and theologians throughout history have posited that he was completely sanctified.  When this happened however we can only speculate.  We know that it was not at his conception as Pius IX said the Immaculate Conception was a “singular grace” and utterly unique to Our Lady.  Some have said it was during the nuptials that he exchanged with Our Lady mostly because that is the last moment at which such a redemptive act on God’s part would have occurred.

In a homily given for the Feast of the Ascension, the aforementioned “Pope of St. Joseph”, John XIII, claimed that that it may be piously believed that St. Joseph was bodily assumed into heaven at the time of our Lord’s ascension.  This belief finds it foundation in Matthew’s assertion that at the resurrection of Jesus many saints came forth from their tombs and entered the holy city (c.f. Mt 27:51-53).  Reasoning that he being the highest of the saints and thus worthy of a first-fruits share in the Resurrection and Ascension saints such as Bernadine of Siena and St. Francis de Sales have claimed that Joseph indeed lives in heaven with both body and soul united.  The latter even went so far as to say that “We can never for a moment doubt that the glorious saint has great influence in heaven with Him Who raised him there in body and soul—a fact which is the more probable because we have no relic of that body left to us here below!  Indeed it seems to me that no one can doubt this as a truth, for how could He Who had been so obedient to St. Joseph, all through His life, refuse him this grace?” (quoted in Fr. Donald Calloway, Consecration to St. Joseph).

Building on the logic of St. Francis de Sales of Jesus’ obedience to St. Joseph, we can begin to see why St. Joseph is such a powerful intercessor.  That obedience did not cease but remains because Jesus remains forever his son.  This power has lain dormant for many centuries, but now is the time for the silent witness of Christ to finally be heard.

Catching Zeal

Apologetics, Evangelization, God's Love, God's Will, Grace, The Life of Jesus, Virtue, , , , , ,

In summarizing His mission to the Apostles, Our Lord tells them plain and simply that He “came to cast fire upon the earth; and would that it were already kindled” (Luke 12:49).  He came to set the world ablaze with divine charity and, so ardently does He desire the conflagration that He would offer Himself as tinder.  To set the world aflame with a single kindle would take a highly combustible fuel, a fuel mixed with equal parts of the glory of God and the salvation of souls.  In fact, we could say that everything Jesus said and did was for those two ends.  It drove Him to clean the Temple and it drove Him up the hill of Calvary.  When it was bottled up, it erupted out of the tomb and propelled Our Lord to ascend into Heaven.  It is this fuel that drove Himself in the Eucharist (c.f. Lk 22:15) and it is this fuel that shines forth from all the monstrances on the earth. 

This fire can never be extinguished.  When asked by St. Catherine of Siena what His greatest pain was, Our Lord said it was the pain of desire:

“My child, there can be no comparison between something finite and something infinite. Consider that the pain of My body was limited, while My desire for the salvation of souls was infinite. This burning thirst, this cross of desire, I felt all My life. It was more painful for Me than all the pains that I bore in My body. Nevertheless, My soul was moved with joy seeing the final moment approach, especially at the supper of Holy Thursday when I said, ‘ I have desired ardently to eat this Pasch with you, ‘ that is, sacrifice My body to My Father. I had a great joy, a great consolation, because I saw the time arrive when this cross of desire would cease for Me; and the closer I felt Myself to the flagellation and the other torments of My body, the more I felt the pain in Me diminish. The pain of the body made that of desire disappear, because I saw completed what I had desired. With death on the Cross the pain of the holy desire ended, but not the desire and the hunger I have for your salvation. If this love that I have for you were extinguished, you would no longer exist, since it is only this love that maintains you in life.” 

This habitual desire, this “predominant virtue” of Our Lord as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange describes it, is zeal.  Our Lord was not only meek and humble, but also zealous.  And it is this zeal that sets the world ablaze.  But we must be absolutely clear on how the fire of Christ’s zeal is spread. 

Christ’s Zeal

We might initially think that it is spread via imitation of Christ.  We would, of course be correct, but only in a secondary way.  Christ’s virtues are not primarily taught to us, but caught by us.  His Messianic mission was not simply to shed His blood on the Cross, but to have that blood touch every aspect of human life.  Messiah was not just a mission, but an identity and His act of redemption is continuous.  He came not just to show us how to live, but to empower us to live that way.  He does not give us an example, but a share in all of His virtues so that if Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange is right, then He wants us to predominantly share in His zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.

We have spoken previously on what zeal is and isn’t  so rather than revisiting that, we should examine how by true zeal we already are.  The Church has long taught that one of the distinctive marks of Catholics is the practice of the Works of Mercy.  But there is always a danger in examining ourselves against these because they can easily be animated by a humanitarian spirit.  When this is the case, they become merely signs of activism rather than evangelism.  Therefore we must examine the spirit in which we perform these acts.  To be truly acts of mercy, they must be zealously done for the glory of God and the salvation of souls.  When we feed the hungry we must do so for the glory of God and the salvation of the hungry man’s soul.  Any other reason is superfluous and draws us towards humanitarianism.  This remains a serious temptation because activism often masquerades as zeal. 

Fr. Jean-Baptiste Chautard in his book The Soul of the Apostolate calls this the “heresy of good works” and describes “activistic heretics” as those who, “for their part, imagine that they are giving greater glory to God in aiming above all at external results. This state of mind is the explanation why, in our day, in spite of the appreciation still shown for schools, dispensaries, missions, and hospitals, devotion to God in its interior form, by penance and prayer, is less and less understood. No longer able to believe in the value of immolation that nobody sees, your activist will not be content merely to treat as slackers and visionaries those who give themselves, in the cloister, to prayer and penance with an ardor for souls equal to that of the most tireless missionary; but he will also roar with laughter at those active workers who consider it indispensable to snatch a few minutes from even the most useful occupations, in order to go and purify and rekindle their energy.”

Catching Zeal

If it is not in external works that we catch Christ’s zeal, then how do we catch it?  Fr. Chautard tells us that we become infected in prayer.  All of our exterior works are simply overflow from our interior lives.  The more time we spend in prayer, close to the Heart of Jesus, the greater will be our love for Him.  The greater our love, the more we will desire what He desires—the glory of God and the salvation of souls.  An apostle without an interior life is no apostle at all but simply a social worker.  We must first be committed to a deep prayer life before we should set out into the world to save souls.  Only in slaking our thirst for Jesus can we quench His thirst for souls.

As Fr. Chautard puts it, “I must seriously fear that I do not have the degree of interior life that Jesus demands of me:   If I cease to increase my thirst to live in Jesus,  that thirst which gives me both the desire to please God in all things, and the fear of displeasing Him in any way whatever. But I necessarily cease to increase this thirst if I no longer make use of the means for doing so: morning mental-prayer, Mass, Sacraments, and Office, general and particular examinations of conscience, and spiritual reading; or if, while not altogether abandoning them, I draw no profit from them, through my own fault.”   

It is this principle in action that has left the Church with a co-Patroness of missionaries that never left the convent.  St. Therese of Lisieux is, along with the great missionary St. Francis Xavier, the co-Patroness of Missionaries.  Her great zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls was formed and then poured out in prayer.  In fact, it was revealed to St. Therese that through her prayer she had converted as many souls as St. Francis Xavier, the great missionary to the East.  The point is that zeal must always be formed first in prayer and then exercised in the manner in which God chooses.

On Divine Judgement and the Coronavirus

Culture of Life, Suffering, , , , , ,

As punishment for their idolatrous worship of the Golden Calf, God sent a plague among the Israelites (c.f. Ex 32:30-35).  Serving as a bookend to this event, St. John tells us that the fourth rider of the Apocalypse brings with him plague “by means of the beasts of the earth” to punish mankind.  And between these two instances, Scripture is replete with many cases in which mankind suffers a plague in punishment for sin.  The point is that it is a common means that God uses in order to punish wayward mankind and, we ought not be surprised that in our age of decadence that we are once again witnessing the rise of a new plague.

At the outset it must be admitted that the notion that anything that happens is associated with Divine retribution is hardly ever discussed.  It is usually embarrassingly glossed over so that only those “fire and brimstone preachers” animated with a punitive view of God that speak of it.  Nevertheless true Christians must see it and call it what it is. 

Calling it what it is

It is helpful first to examine why we are so hesitant to call something like the Coronavirus a tool of Divine punishment.  This reticence is rooted in a grave misunderstanding of punishment in general and God’s punishment in particular.  For us, punishment is always viewed as an evil, a lack of some good that becomes a penal act inflicted on us when someone in authority is fed up.  For God punishment is only a relative evil deprivation of some good. 

For men, good comes in three forms—external goods, the good of the body and the good of the soul—that form a hierarchy in which a lesser good may be sacrificed for a higher good.  The evil of punishment then is always relative because it contains a medicinal value.  A man may give up his money (external good) in order to feed his body (a good of the body).  That same man may later fast and deprive himself of food so as to grow in virtue (a good of the soul).  Whenever God punishes then he will allow the deprivation of some lower good for the good of the soul.

Here again we bump into a profound conflict with the spirit of the world.  All of this only makes sense if you believe in the hierarchy of the manifold goods of man such that every punishment has a specific meaning.  It is never inflicted haphazardly or indiscriminately but always with some good in mind.  Justice and mercy are never separated.  The good includes not only a repayment of the debt to justice, but also contributes, when willingly accepted, to the healing of the person. 

For each sin not only offends God, but also warps our souls in some way by turning us away from what we were made to be.  Each time we sin, we do so by abusing some good, by taking pleasure in something the wrong way.  To fix the damage that is done, we have to submit to the deprivation of some pleasure that would result from the correct use of some good.  By accepting punishment as a means of repaying that stolen pleasure, it actually heals us as well.

In short if we do not call it what it is, then the only other option is to conclude that it is completely meaningless.  If plagues like the Coronavirus are not punishment then they are just accidental occurrences without any real meaning.  This ultimately makes life itself meaningless and thus suffering becomes an absolute, rather than a relative, evil.  By not calling it a punishment we are depriving the world of its meaning and it becomes in a very real sense useless suffering.

Admittedly we are also reluctant to call it a punishment because it feels like we are being judgmental.  And this is the unforgivable sin of our age.  But again it is Christ who judges the living and the dead that is being judgmental.  And His judgment is not definitive but instead a call to repentance and healing, a call to peace and joy.  His judgment is that “you are going to wrong way, turn around now because you are headed into an abyss.”  Or, using His own words, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28).  If no one echoes that call, then many souls will be lost, including those whom He has called to speak His truth.

What It Means

We should be slow to say how the punishment applies to each individual man, but quick to point out how it applies to mankind as a whole.  It seems that the meaning of the Coronavirus as a punishment for all of mankind is relatively clear.  For Rome, the Coronavirus appears to be a Divine Judgment upon the sin of the idolatrous attachment to Pachamama.  They must receive their deprivation of the Eucharist and offer it in reparation for the sin of idolatry.  Setting that unique situation aside, the Coronavirus also offers an opportunity of reparation for our treatment of the most vulnerable among us.

The full effect of the virus is still unknown, but what is clear is that it is particularly deadly for the most vulnerable among us.  In this way, the Coronavirus is not much different than the sins of abortion and euthanasia which attack those same people.  It is because of the most vulnerable that all of the rest of us must now suffer.  This suffering may be as simple as remaining in isolation for a fortnight or as devastating as losing a fortune.  The point is that we are being made to make sacrifices in order to keep those same people we want to throw away safe.  All of us can accept those sufferings and offer them in reparation for those grave sins.

In a Twitter post a couple of days ago, Conservative pundit Ann Coulter said that Americans were being manipulated by stories of the deaths in Italy.  She made a point to say that the average age of the victims was 81.  In essence she was saying “you shouldn’t be scared because it is just a bunch of old people dying.”  Now most people wouldn’t so callously say that, but many people are thinking along the same lines.  We shouldn’t fear because it only attacks the vulnerable.  This survival of the fittest mentality is exactly why we need to Coronavirus right now—as an opportunity to make reparation for so savagely treating the very ones we should be protecting as mere useless beings.  Fear not the one who gives you the Coronavirus, but instead fear the one who can destroy both body and soul.

What Happens to Aborted Children?

Abortion, Martyrdom, , , , , , ,

At the heart of the Pro-Life movement is the overwhelming concern not just for the temporal well-being of members of society, but for their eternal salvation.  Christians are, by definition, Pro-Life because they desire that society at its core be built upon conditions that are conducive to the salvation of souls.  That is what makes abortion and particularly pernicious offense against life—it puts not only the soul of the mother and those who cooperate with her in jeopardy, but the eternal destiny of the child in danger as well.  Many Catholics are quick to declare these children martyrs and assume that they are in heaven because of it.  However, this belief is by no means definitive and there are good reasons to think that this might not be the case.  Once our gaze is turned towards these innocent victims and the question of their eternal destination, we find that our zeal for souls drives us to eliminate abortion all the more.

To grapple with this issue, we must start with what we can say with assurance.  Despite not being healed from Original Sin and its wounds, these children are not necessarily destined for hell.  Original Sin is not a condition of guilt but one of deprivation.  Mankind is deprived of the gift of sanctifying grace, a necessity for entrance into the Beatific Vision, at their conception.  This does not make the child guilty, only unequipped.  Hell is a punishment for actual sin, and with no actual sins committed, the child does not merit hell.  This is why Pope St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that mothers can entrust their aborted children “with sure hope [to] the Father and His mercy” (EV, 99, Acta Apostolicae Sedis version).

In the Summa, St. Thomas draws a very important distinction in this regard that is worth discussing.  He says that often “children are punished in temporal matters together with their parents, both because they are a possession of their parents, so that their parents are punished also in their person, and because this is for their good lest, should they be spared, they might imitate the sins of their parents, and thus deserve to be punished still more severely” (ST II-II, q.108, art.4 ad.3).  The “good” that St. Thomas is referring to presumptively would refer to not just towards their temporal welfare but their eternal as well.  But this could refer not only to the good of reward but also the good of receiving less of a punishment than a person might otherwise.

So we can say that the child is not destined to hell per se, but this does not mean that they are destined for heaven either.  There is still the open question of Limbo as an option.   Assuming that John Paul II’s comment about a “sure hope” means hope in the theological sense then the eternal salvation of the child is at least a possibility.  In other words we can now turn to the question about how it is that a child might be equipped for Heaven through the infusion of sanctifying grace.

How then might their salvation be possible?  The first would be through a special miracle akin to the sanctification that is presented in Scripture.  Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, and the prophet Jeremiah whom St. Thomas said were sanctified “outside of the common law as though miraculously in their mother’s wombs” (Commentary on the Sentences, dist.6, q.1).  Although this means it is theologically possible, the acts of sanctification were extraordinary and a result of the mission of the three children.

Deprived of the ordinary means of salvation through baptism, it is also possible to posit that they received a Baptism in Blood.  In short, the children would be classified as martyrs.  Scripture once again offers us an example in the Holy Innocents.  In adults martyrdom occurs when a person dies for some supernatural reason such as in defense of some Christian virtue or as testimony of faith.  Despite being deprived of the use of reason, the Holy Innocents have long been considered to be martyrs because they died in defense of Christ.  This consideration is based upon both Divine Revelation and the Church’s binding and loosing authority.  The Church may have the authority to declare martyrdom, but it cannot be without reason.    It is not clear that the children are being put to death for a supernatural reason as in the case of the Holy Innocents.  Either way though the Church would need to officially declare them as martyrs in order for us to consider them to actually be martyrs.

There is a third option.  Because “God wills that all men be saved” we might assume that prior to death each child is given an opportunity to be saved.  This would include infants in the womb.  We can posit then that they are each tested in some way and given a chance to accept the gift of sanctifying grace.  The problem with this view is that it would require cooperation with actual grace and the ability to use their reason.

Given the inherent difficulties which each of these the solutions, we can begin to see why Limbo remains as a theological possibility not only for unbaptized children, but children in the womb.  What is clear however is that we need to treat the issue of abortion as a real threat to the eternal salvation of the child in the womb and continue to fight for its elimination in our society.   

Celibacy and the Priesthood

Holy Orders, , , , , ,

Throughout the history of the Church, one of the distinguishing marks of heretical movements has been the relaxing or abolishment of the requirements of clerical celibacy.  Whether it was the Arians, the Lutherans, or the Anglicans, the abandonment of this “hard teaching” has been a common thread.  One might even say that it is a tell-tale sign that it is the spirit of man at work rather than the Spirit of God.  And in this regard the current Germazonians who are lobbying for the Church to abandon the requirement for a celibate priesthood are no different.

To see why it is such a giveaway as to the presence of merely human solutions, we must first admit to the supernatural origin of the priesthood.  It is the “Lord of the harvest that gives the Church her priests” and when He doesn’t respond as expected, it is up to men to pray Him to send more laborers.  It is not up to men to move to harvest from different fields.  Put another way, the celibate priesthood is a sign of the Divine origin of the priesthood.   It was Our Lord Himself who told us that “Not all can accept this word [continence for the priesthood], but only those to whom that is granted” (Mt 19:11).  It is the priest who is an alter Christus, another Christ, who offers His same sacrifice.  As a sign of his authority to do so, the priest is given the supernatural ability to conform his own life to Christ’s celibate gift of Himself.  In short, celibacy is the mark that can’t be faked.  The power to maintain continence is the sign that Christ has put His stamp of approval on the Priest and is the distinguishing mark of the Priesthood of the Order of Melchizedek. 

What About Peter and the Other Apostles?

While Christ Himself was celibate, didn’t he call His future priests, the Apostles, from among married men?  Of this we can at least be sure that St. Peter, Our Lord’s first High Priest, was married.  We hear of Jesus’ healing Peter’s mother-in-law in Mark’s Gospel (c.f. Mk 1:29-34).  In fact St. Paul also mentions that the Bishop should only have been married once (1Tim 3:2).  How do we reconcile this with what was said above?  Perhaps more to the point, doesn’t this simply mean that celibate priesthood is merely a discipline that can be exercised and relaxed according to circumstances?

In order to avoid such a superficial interpretation of the evidence, we must dig a little deeper.  When we do, we find that in the early Church there was actually a two-pronged obligation for the cleric.  He was either not to marry, or if, being married when he was called, he would need to renounce the rights of marriage and live as a celibate.  When Peter is gaging the price of following Christ, He tells Our Lord that the Apostles have “given up our possessions and followed you.”  Our Lord then tells the Apostles that they must also renounce marriage, and if married, the rights of marriage: “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive back an overabundant return in this present age and eternal life in the age to come” (Lk 18:28-30).

The Law of Continence

The law of continence is found to be part and parcel of the priesthood in general.  Even the Levitical Priests during their time of service in the Temple were required to practice temporary continence.  Because the priesthood of the New Covenant essentially offers daily sacrifice their time of service is perpetual.  The Apostles would have known this and practiced it as evidenced by the fact that the Church consistently affirms that the practice has its origin with the Apostles:    

“When at the past council the matter on continence and chastity was considered, those three grades, which by a sort of bond are joined to chastity by their consecration, to wit bishops, presbyters, and deacons, so it seemed that it was becoming that the sacred rulers and priests of God as well as the Levites, or those who served at the divine sacraments, should be continent altogether, by which they would be able with singleness of heart to ask what they sought from the Lord: so that what the apostles taught and antiquity kept, that we might also keep.”

Council of Carthage Canon 3

During these first few centuries, men could only renounce the use of marriage with the consent of their wives.  But abuses of the requirement continued until the Gregorian reforms of the Church in the 11th and 12th Centuries.  It was not until the Council of Trent that the Church ceased calling candidates to the priesthood from married men.  By creating a system of seminaries, most of which began educating the candidates at a young age, the floodgates of celibate men entering the priesthood were opened.

Calling married men to the priesthood then is not unprecedented, even if it has not happened in a long time.  But in no time in history has the celibacy requirement been relaxed because it is believed to be of Apostolic origin.  If married men of the Amazonian region are to be called to the priesthood then they must be willing to renounce the rights of their marriage.  This would likely mean no longer living with their wives, even as “brother” and “sister”.  This aspect of renouncing the rights of marriage was not mention either in the Final Synod document or in Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation.  It would seem that in keeping with Apostolic Tradition that this would be an important detail to discuss.

A More Perfect World?

Atheism, Lent, Passion of Christ, The Life of Jesus, , ,

One of the go-to arguments against the existence of God is the presence of evil in the world.  The atheistic interlocutor looks at the world, sees evil and concludes that there is no God.  Such a conclusion rests upon a primary assumption, namely that he can conceive of a more perfect world, a world without suffering.  Therefore either God is a cold-blooded tyrant or He does not exist.  Given how often such an argument is given, we must be prepared to meet it, but not in the usual way.  Too often theists respond to the conclusions rather than the assumption.  In this essay we will challenge the notion that God could have made a more perfect world.  Can we really conceive of a world in which there is no evil and, if so, then would that world be more perfect than this one? 

To conceive of a world with no evil, at least on the surface seems relatively simple.  But we must be prepared to admit that the world would be vastly different than our own.  Not just in that it lacked evil, but that its physical properties (if it could have any at all) would be vastly different than are own. 

The Argument of the Head

Evil, properly conceived, is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there.  In a physical world of many physical beings the avoidance of at least some physical evils is an impossibility.  This topic is treated more fully in another essay, but the gist of the issue is that material things are by definition limited things and this limitation combined with a desire for self-preservation means that there will always be a lack in some creatures.  There is a single piece of bread and two people.  At least one of them (or possibly both if they split it) will experience the evil of hunger.  It is pointless to argue that the world could have an unlimited amount of bread because that will result in the evil of something else being lacking.  A physical world will always experience some lack and therefore some evil.

In a material world, one being’s good can be another being’s evil.  Not all relationships can be symbiotic.  The man who is hungry will experience the evil of thorn pricks from the bush that grows them in order to protect its berries from being plucked.  The virus that causes the flu will embed itself in a host and replicate for its own good but the host will experience sickness.

Usually the objection to the evil in the world is related to moral evils, that is, the evils we bring upon ourselves and inflict upon others.  The man who overeats will experience the evil of heart disease and the man who, in protecting his family from an intruder, will experience the evil of being stabbed.  These moral evils may results from the free will responses to physical evils (looters who raid stores after a storm for example) or strictly out of malice.  Either way, they are the result of the free will of someone.

A good God may give the power to use free will, which is good.  But the creatures that have the power may come in conflict with each other in how they use it.  God gave the power and is in a certain sense the cause of power in the action, but He is not the cause of the action itself.  A man who sells a gun to another is responsible for the man having the gun, but this does not mean He is responsible for how it is used.

While we cannot imagine a material world with no physical evils, we might imagine one in which there are no moral evils.  But this would result ultimately in the loss of free will.  A world in which all the goods are limited always carries with it the possibility of misapprehending and misusing those goods.  God could intervene each time someone tried to do something evil, but this would make free will conditioned and thus not totally free.

Our interlocutor would now be hard pressed to imagine a physical world that includes beings with free will in it that does not also include the presence of some evil.  Even if he can come up with one, he cannot prove it that it is more perfect than our own because perfect implies some knowledge of purpose.  Just as you cannot speak of a more perfect pair of shoes until you know what shoes are for, so you cannot speak of a world that is more perfect than our own until you know what the world’s purpose is.  In fact when we begin to examine the world’s purpose, we find that it is perfectly fitting that it contains evil

To say that the world has a purpose is really to say that the world is not an end but a means.  A perfect world would be one in which it prepares its inhabitants for the Real World that is to follow.  It must be a world that mirrors the goodness of the Real World just enough to invoke desire in its inhabitants, but not so much that they feel completely at home in it.  The Real World is one of an eternal communion of self-giving love.  This world must be a training ground that makes that self-giving love possible.  The limited nature of the physical world such as it is makes it possible for this self-giving love, but not without a willingness to suffer some lack for the sake of the beloved.   This willingness must mean that there are actual evils present in the world, even if not all love leads to also suffering from those evils.

The Argument of the Heart

What has been offered to this point is an argument of the head.  A mere “theistic” response is not adequate and only a Christian explanation will do.  God desired to make an “argument of the heart” in order to drive this point home.  This “argument of the heart” is the Passion and Death of Our Lord.  To show the path to the Real World, God Himself stepped into ours in order to show us the way.  He experience evil firsthand and used that suffering illuminating a path through this world marked by suffering.  

With the Passion and death of Christ suffering becomes a necessary component of the escape plan into the Real World.  In our suffering, we, in both a metaphorical and real sense, share in Christ’s suffering.  His suffering was entirely voluntary so that when we suffer, even involuntarily, it signals to us the depth of the love He has for us.  Without suffering we would not know what it was like for Him and would never grasp His great love.  Not only that, but He Who is the one in which all times are present, is really suffering with us.  The Passion is not just a past event but a current event for Him so that He (re)lives it in our very suffering.  He is the Lamb in the Real World that still walks about as though slain (c.f. Rev 5:6). 

The only acceptable answer to the problem of Evil for a Christian is Christ.  The impassible and unchanging God in exercising His omnipotence and omnibenevolence came into our world and suffered with and for us.  He spoke not just to our heads but to our hearts telling us the depth of His desire to share His life with His creatures.  This argument of the heart is at the very core of what it means to live Lent intentionally.  It is the time of reflecting on Christ’s Passion and coming to a greater knowledge of the truth of the nature of the Real World.

The Argument from Conscience

Atheism, Creed, , , ,

In his book, Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, St. John Henry Newman gives account of what might be described as a philosophy of faith.  He thought logical proofs for things like the existence of God, even when sound, were unconvincing for many people because they failed to garner the right kind of belief or assent.  In Newman’s thought, assent to a proposition or a set of propositions can be of two types: notional and real.  Notional assent was a simple assent to a proposition or set of propositions as true.  Real assent takes those same propositions and moves them from the head to the heart so that it becomes concrete and personal.  A man patterns his life around a real belief while a notional belief only remains in the back of his mind.  When it comes to questions of facts, notional assent is often sufficient.  But when it comes to important questions, such as the existence of God, an assent “following upon acts of inference, and other purely intellectual exercises” is never a sufficient impetus to conversion.  Instead Newman thinks that only real assent can act as a means of paving the way for the invasion of grace. 

In Newman’s mind, it is very difficult for all but the most erudite of philosophers to give real assent to the logical, deductive, metaphysical proofs of someone like St. Thomas and his Five Ways.  These proofs are not defective in any way, in fact they are quite the contrary, having stood the test of time by offering certain proof of the existence of God.  Instead Newman thinks real assent can only be given when a person’s experience leads them to a real encounter with God.  For Newman this means turning to inductive proofs that leads one to the probable conclusion that God exists.  Newman thinks he found a universal subjective experience that proves the existence of God in moral obligation.

Conscience as a Universal Experience

Newman’s Argument from Conscience as it has most often been called is one of the most effective arguments for the existence of God.  This is because it builds upon a universal experience.  We all judge our own actions according to whether they are right or wrong.  Once this judgement is made, we experience an obligation to do what is right and avoid what is wrong.  We do not always judge correctly, but we cannot avoid judging.  Likewise, the experience of guilt always accompanies when we don’t choose according to our judgement. 

Stepping outside of ourselves and looking at the universality of this experience we must admit that it is rather strange, especially considering that we appear to be both judge and judged.  We speak of conscience as a voice (or an echo of a voice) that is both imperative and constraining and it is like no other dictate in our experience.  Who, in judging himself, would ever declare guilt unless the voice of conscience somehow connects us to someone beyond ourselves?  When we look in the world, we find no source for this voice (more on this in a moment) and so Newman thinks that “If, as is the case, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear.”  Conscience then, according to Newman, is “a connecting principle between the creature and his Creator.”

Freud would tether us to a this-worldly explanation to keep us from leaping from conscience to God.  He explains guilt as “tension between the ego and the superego.”  The superego is something akin to conscience but it contains only faint echoes of human authorities, especially in our formative years.  This mechanistic explanation of guilt however does not explain the absoluteness with which the dictates of conscience are felt.  Rather than seeming like a transgression of a merely human authority, guilt is experienced as a breaking with the Absolute.  We feel guilty because we know we are guilty.

Why the Argument Works

Recalling to mind the context in which Newman presents the argument, we can see why it might be so convincing.  Conscience as the “aboriginal vicar of Christ” presents God not merely as a Voice out there, but One Who is close to me.  To grasp this though we must move from the notion of conscience as a source of guilt to conscience as spurring us on towards what is truly good.  It is not just the voice of Judge, but of a Father, that desires our well-being in everything.  If we but listen to its voice, conscience no longer acts like a referee keeping us from breaking rules but a coach teaching us to excel in the game of life.  As Newman puts it, “the gift of conscience raises a desire for what it does not itself fully supply. It inspires in them the idea of authoritative guidance, of a divine law; and the desire of possessing it in its fulness, not in mere fragmentary portions or indirect suggestion. It creates in them a thirst, an impatience, for the knowledge of that Unseen Lord, and Governor, and Judge, who as yet speaks to them only secretly, who whispers in their hearts, who tells them something, but not nearly so much as they wish and as they need” (Sermons preached on Various Occasions, Dispositions for Faith).

Presented then in this light, Newman’s Argument from Conscience paves the way not just for notional assent, but real assent.  As the person begins to listen more and more to his conscience, even if poorly formed at first, he develops a taste for the good.  That desire for the Good manifests itself in desiring only what is truly good and the soul begins to look for the moral maps that God provides through the Church.  Judging correctly more and more often, especially as they open themselves up to grace as a gift from the God Who has speaks to them louder and louder through an informed conscience.  The Argument from Conscience truly paves the way for conversion.   

On Inculturation

Anthropology, Church Authority, Culture, Defending the Faith, Devils, Natural Law, Pope Francis, , , , , , , ,

In his new Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis mentioned the process of inculturation as a starting point for the conversion of the region.  The Holy Father most certainly had the Pachamama controversy in mind when he exhorted the Faithful to “not be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices that arise spontaneously from the life of peoples. Rather, we ought to know how to distinguish the wheat growing alongside the tares, for ‘popular piety can enable us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and is constantly passed on.’ It is possible to take up an indigenous symbol in some way, without necessarily considering it as idolatry. A myth charged with spiritual meaning can be used to advantage and not always considered a pagan error. Some religious festivals have a sacred meaning and are occasions for gathering and fraternity, albeit in need of a gradual process of purification or maturation” (QA 78-79).  Setting aside the fact that all false religions are by definition superstitions, the Holy Father’s remarks call for a deeper understanding of what the Church means when she uses the term Inculturation. 

Understanding authentic inculturation begins by grasping what we mean when we use the term culture.  Culture is the soil in which the human person grows.  As the Second Vatican Council put it, “Man comes to a true and full humanity only through culture, that is through the cultivation of the goods and values of nature…. The word ‘culture’ in its general sense indicates everything whereby man develops and perfects his many bodily and spiritual qualities” (GS, 53).

Against Cultural Relativism

When viewed in relation to “goods and values of nature,” it becomes evident that cultures are not ends in themselves, but instead means for human growth.  Likewise because there are objective “goods and values of nature,” we can also evaluate cultures objectively in terms of good and bad.  Good cultures are those that cultivate authentic human flourishing and bad cultures are those that do harm to true human goods.  Authentic culture must always be, according to the International Theological Commission, that which “reveals and strengthens the nature of man.”

In short, there is no such thing as a neutral culture nor can anything like cultural relativism be tolerated.  We must evaluate and judge cultures by the objective criterion of whether true human goods are protected and promoted.  It is the Church’s role to be judgmental towards cultures in three specific ways.  Those values that are true human values, even if expressed in “local” terms are adopted as part of the vernacular of the Church and are the means by which the Gospel takes root.  If they point to true human values, but are deficient in some way then the Church purifies them.  Finally, if they are irreconcilable then the Church condemns them.  This process of promoting, purifying and purging is what the Church calls inculturation.

The point of reference for the Church is not the culture itself, but as in all things, the transmission of the Gospel.  The culture is simply the means by which the message takes root.  This is why it is disingenuous to speak of inculturation as a two-way street.  The Church has the fullness of truth and thus has no new facts to learn from the various cultures.  The culture gives to the Church what is for its own benefit—a language that speaks the truths of salvation.  What she does gain is a fuller manifestation of her catholicity.  It becomes proof positive that the Gospel can be put in terms that are intelligible to men of every age and place and answer the deepest longings of all human hearts.

Because he was the most traveled Pope in the history of the Church, St. John Paul II constantly emphasized the connection between inculturation and evangelization.  In an address to the People of Asia while he was visiting the Philippines he reminded the Church that  “Wherever she is, the Church must sink her roots deeply into the spiritual and cultural soil of the country, assimilate all genuine values, enriching them also with the insights that she has received from Jesus. Given the mission entrusted to it by our Lord, the Church’s priority is always the evangelization of all peoples and therefore of all cultures. Inculturation is a means of evangelization, being at the same time its consequence.”

With all of this laid as a foundation, we can see what role, if any, Pachamama would play in legitimate inculturation.  Those who defended it treated it as something that could simply be taken up (literally) as an authentic human value.  But worship of a false god, however seemingly benign or how “spontaneously” it arises (how do we know if something arises spontaneously or at the prompting of demons?), is not a true human value.  Nor is that something that can be purified but instead must be something that is rejected.  Pachamama may have crossed the Tiber after it was tossed in the Tiber, but it was only because certain churchmen lacked both the faith and charity towards the Amazonian people to give them the saving truth of Jesus Christ.  As St. John Paul II, who was not immune to failures in authentic inculturation, told the people of Cameroon, “the Gospel message does not come simply to consolidate human things, just as they are; it takes on a prophetic and critical role. Everywhere, in Europe as in Africa, it comes to overturn criteria of judgment and modes of life; it is a call to conversion.”  Never once was the call to conversion issued to the worshipper of Pachamama.

The great missionary saints, whether it was St. Paul, St. Patrick, St. Francis Xavier, or St. Isaac Jogues, were all masters of inculturation not because they were clever but because theirs was a call to conversion even if they translated them into colloquialisms.  It was because they were holy men that they were up to the task.  As John Paul II put it, “Only those who truly know Christ, and truly know their own cultural inheritance, can discern how the divine Word may be fittingly presented through the medium of that culture. It follows that there can be no authentic inculturation which does not proceed from contemplating the Word of God and from growing in likeness to him through holiness of life”.

Darwin and Intellectual Racism

Anthropology, Atheism, Creation, Evolution, Faith and Reason, Science, , , ,

When you are in the habit of setting days and months aside to celebrate everything and everyone, you are bound to have some rather odd coincidences.  Today, February 12th, might be one of them.  In the midst of Black History Month, we take a day to “celebrate” Darwin Day.  Chosen to coincide with the birthday of Charles Darwin, the day is set aside to highlight Darwin’s unique contributions to science and to promote science more generally.  A strange coincidence because Charles Darwin single-handedly gave the world a theory that, at its very core, gives intellectual justification for racism.

To be fair, Charles Darwin himself was vehemently opposed to slavery.  He came from a long line of abolitionists.  The problem is that he also came from a long line of atheists so that his hatred of God was greater than his love of slaves.  His justification of slavery and many other genocidal practices was not merely an unintended consequence of his theory but a result of a willed obstinance.  His co-discoverer of the theory of evolution, Alfred Russel Wallace warned him that it was insufficient for explaining man and his friends, including Samuel Wilberforce, the son of the great British abolitionist, warned of the brutality his theory justified.  Darwin, in a moment of brutal honesty once wrote, “I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity produce little permanent effect: real good seems only to follow the slow and silent side attacks.”  In short, he was willing to accept any collateral damage in his “slow and silent attack on Christianity.”

Even Evolutionary Ideas Have Consequences

If we look closely at the theory of evolution itself, we will see why racism necessarily follows.  The Theory of Evolution is based on the relatively straightforward principle of Natural Selection—“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.”  Colloquially known as “Survival of the Fittest”, Darwin’s model is rather intuitive until he posits that it explains everything.  The principle is without limitation and any species, given enough time and interaction with the environment, might evolve into any other species.  It is endless evolution with no room for distinctions between micro- and macro-evolution even though Darwin never uncovered evidence for the latter. 

Had he simply put forward the theory of Natural Selection to explain the origin of non-human species like he did in his first book On the Origin of Species, then it is very likely that the microevolutionary aspects would have been accepted and the macroevolutionary rejected, or at least severely modified.  But Darwin had intrinsically connected his scientific theory to a materialist worldview.  To consummate the wedding, he slipped humans into the theory in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex.

After Evolving into a rock, Charles Darwin hangs out with the author at the Museum of Natural History in DC

Despite making numerous connections between the rudimentary forms of morality and intelligence in animals and human beings, Darwin was plagued by what appears to be an uncrossable chasm—the difference between the highest animal and the highest human.  But if he was to apply Natural Selection to the “descent of man” then he could allow for a slow and steady evolution which posits that there is not just a difference between animals and men, but between gradations of men as well.  As he puts it in The Descent of Man “Some of these, for instance the Negro and European, are so distinct that, if specimens had been brought to a naturalist without any further information, they would undoubtedly have been considered by him as good and true species.”

For Darwin evolution is an ongoing process.  This means that it continues down to our own day and that various species are continually fighting for survival; humans included.  Governed by the first evolutionary principle of Survival of the Fittest, Natural Selection has favored certain races over others.  Race is pitted against race and tribe against tribe so that the only way we know which is the most fit of them is by their continued survival and destruction of other races and tribes.  So then evolution not only scientifically justifies slavery and racism, but also genocide.  As Darwin himself put it in Decent of Man:

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes [like the gorilla, orangutan, or chimpanzee] . . . will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

An Inherent Contradiction

Modern men are unique in their ability to hold contradictions together in their head, but it is impossible to hold them together in practice.  Either racism, slavery, and genocide are wrong and Evolution is a false explanation for the origin of man or Evolution is true and racism, slavery and genocide are justified.  There can be no intellectual racism without actual racism emerging.  No amount of “sympathy” (to use Darwin’s term) or “woke” condemnation can overcome “scientific fact.”  When science is all you got for truth, then you have to accept the consequences of that.   

We have spoken on any number of occasions previously on why Evolution is both bad philosophy and bad science.  Nevertheless it is accepted as fact because it is the only explanation that eliminates God.  Darwin knew that and his intellectual progeny know it as well.  The problem is that any worldview that eliminates God ultimately ends up justifying the elimination of men.  If Man really came from below, then we might treat him as we see fit.  Might makes right.  But if man came from above then every man is intrinsically valuable regardless of whether he is a savage or civilized.  In fact, as history has borne out, it is Christianity and not some blind process of evolution that raises man from savage to gentleman.  

God’s Salt

Bible, Church, Creation, Grace, Martyrdom, Scripture, Spiritual Life, The Life of Jesus, ,

In his extended commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, St. Augustine says that Our Lord has laid out for us “the perfect standard of the Christian life.”  Prepared from all eternity, it is the most perfect sermon.  We should be hanging on the Word’s every word.  From beginning to end Our Lord has one goal in mind, to give the blueprint for sainthood.  The outline is made in the Beatitudes and the “how-to” follows.  The first words then of the “how-to” section are vital to understanding what it means to be a Christian and therefore merit our close scrutiny.

After defining Christians as those who find their joy in being persecuted, Our Lord tells His disciples they must be salty; “You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its savor, wherewith shall it be salted?  It is good for nothing anymore but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men” (Mt 5:13).  To modern ears the Saline Commandment might strike us as a bit odd, especially because we only think of salt as a seasoning.  But Our Lord had something deeper in mind making this a most perfect metaphor for the Christian mind, something that we can begin to grasp more clearly if we look at salt itself.

The Master of Metaphor

First, we must admit that Our Lord was a master of metaphor and the reasoning for this is simple.  Our Lord did not need to search for a metaphor to describe the Christian, He simply created the metaphor.  Salt may have plenty of practical uses (all of which could be accomplished another way if Our Lord so decreed), but salt is what it is precisely because Our Lord wanted to use it to reveal the truth to His disciples.  In this case the truth of what it means to be a true disciple.  Catholics used to grasp this intuitively because they had a sacramental vision of reality.  Thanks to an unhealthy scientific excess, we have lost that ability and need to regain it.  That begins by resisting the temptation to simply say salt is “nothing but” Sodium Chloride and to probe deeper into its meaning. 

Salt itself is formed by the evaporation of salt water.  The process of evaporation involves two outside elements—sun and air or wind.  Salt cannot escape the sea water without these two things.  Now in sacramental language, the seas water is associated with chaos.  The Sun is Christ and the Wind is the Holy Spirit.  Putting them all together we find that His disciples cannot escape the chaos of the world without Our Lord and the Holy Spirit.  This is to make sure that the “try-hards” recognize that the Beatitudes are absolutely impossible without the infusion of grace.  Salty Christians then are formed.

The Real Saline Solution

We can glean more of Our Lord’s meaning, especially what He means when He calls them “salt of the earth” by examining how salt was commonly used.  Prior to refrigeration, salt was the primary preservative for food.  By reducing the water molecules in the food through osmosis, bacteria had no medium in which to grow.  What little bacteria did land on the food would die because it attacked their DNA.  In short, salt was used to stop decay.

So too it is with the Christian in the world.  Our Lord is saying that once they become salt, the disciples keep the world from decay.  This role of Christians is one that is easily overlooked but one that is worth examining more closely.

When God saw all of the evil that was going on in Sodom and Gomorrah, He told Abraham that He was going to destroy it.  But it wasn’t just as a punishment for the evil that He threatened to destroy it, but because there was no salt to keep it from decaying.  He could find no righteous men to preserve it.  Sodom and Gomorrah were fully decayed and their destruction was inevitable.  Had their been salt, they would have been preserved.

Christians are “salt of the earth” precisely because they preserve it and enhance its flavor.  All around us we see signs of decay, but true Christians can slow that decay by their very presence.  It is saints that change the world, not primarily by their actions, but by their sanctity.  The solution to our cultural crisis is simple—be a saint.  It is saints who have turned every culture around and it is saints that will turn ours around.  Saints are those who are committed to God’s will no matter what and those are the ones that He uses to season the world. 

Because of its dehydrating qualities salt was often used in war as a means of destroying crops.  So too God will use some of His salt to destroy the crops of the Evil One.  As His salt we must, each and every one of us, be prepared to be poured out on the ground.  Martyrdom is never really that far away for the Christian and we must be prepared for it to come.  But even if it doesn’t God’s salt must continue to keep the bacteria from spreading from within their own sphere of influence.  The thing about salt is that we immediately recognize its presence as well as its absence.  We must be salty then.

Before closing, let us take to heart Jesus’ words regarding losing our savor.  For salt cannot actually lose its savor without ceasing to be salt.  Despite the fact that we no longer use this language, it is important for us to do everything we can to stay in a state of grace.  If we lose our savor, it can be restored by becoming salt again, but we are at a great risk for being trampled underfoot.  All the saints prayed for the gift of perseverance so let us join their litany to stay salty.

Keeping Your Hands Off

Church, Church Authority, Church Fathers, Eucharist, Magisterium, Sacraments, , , , , , ,

It has been alleged that in the early years of his revolution, Martin Luther was in the practice of celebrating “Mass” by omitting the words of consecration while still elevating the bread and chalice.  This was done so that those gathered would not realize that Luther was doing something novel.  His act of deceit reveals not only his own lack of faith in Transubstantiation, but the power of the signs that surround the Sacrament.  He knew that if he were to eliminate the sign completely, he would quickly be branded as a heretic and his revolution would be dead on arrival.  But if he could make small, subtle changes, it would be much easier to eliminate faith in the Eucharist.  Applying this law of anti-Sacramental gradualism the Protestant Revolutionaries also introduced the practice of distributing Communion in the hand as a subtle attack not only against the Real Presence but also the ministerial priesthood.  Wise as serpents, they knew that to attack these foundational beliefs head-on was reformational suicide, but if they changed the practice, toppling belief would be easier.

This lesson in ecclesiastical history is instructive because it relates to one of, if not the biggest, crisis facing the Church today—a diminishment in belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Through a certain Protestantization, namely Communion in the hand, a back door into the Tabernacle has cleared a path for the removal of Christ from the Eucharist.  It is only by reintroducing this practice that we can hope to reverse the rising tide of unbelief.

How We Got Here

For at least a millennium and a half, the Eucharist was always and everywhere received on the tongue.  In 650 we find the Synod of Rouen issuing condemning Communion in the hand as an abuse revealing that at the very least it was common practice at the time to receive It on the tongue.  This remained the norm until just after the Second Vatican Council.  After because the Council Fathers never made mention of altering the practice.  Instead the false “Spirit of Vatican II” that grew out of the yeast of ambiguity and loopholes, found permission in Pope Paul VI’s 1969 instruction Memoriale Domini.  Despite the declaration that “This method[Communion on the tongue] of distributing holy communion must be retained, taking the present situation of the Church in the entire world into account, not merely because it has many centuries of-tradition behind it, but especially because it expresses the faithful’s reverence for the Eucharist”, the Pope left a loophole for those who had “special circumstances” to introduce or continue the practice.  Granting a loophole enabled the principle of anti-Sacramental gradualism to infect the entire Church.

What We Can Do About It

Unlike the great need to change the orientation of the Priest during Mass through the re-introduction of ad Orientem masses, the laity can do something about this directly by receiving only on the tongue.  By receiving on the tongue, rather than in the hand, the faithful witness directly to the Real Presence of Christ.  How this is so we will discuss presently.

When a family sits down for a meal, platters are set out and each person is served food on their plate.  From their plate they then feed themselves.  A similar thing happens in Mass when the “minister” serves the Host to each person and they then feed themselves.  This is all fine and good if the Host were simple food.  But if the Host is not ordinary food, then how we eat Him ought to reveal this.  By receiving the Host in a manner that is wholly unique to anything else that is eaten, namely on the tongue, the believer is testifying to the truth that it is no ordinary food, but instead Jesus Christ Himself.  In fact we would be killing two birds with one stone by also obscuring the “family meal” interpretation of the Eucharist that has persisted over the last half century.

The use of scare quotes around the word minister above anticipates another important aspect of the practice.  Just as the Protestant Reformers used Communion in the hand to diminish belief in the ministerial priesthood, a similar fascination with the priesthood of all believers has allowed this practice to thrive.  By receiving the Host directly from the hands of a Priest, the same Priest whose hands were consecrated so that he could touch the Eucharist, testimony is given to the sacredness of the Host.  Just as Mary Magdalene was chastised for touching the Body of Christ after His Resurrection, while the Ordained Apostle Thomas was not, the laity should avoid touching the Eucharist.  This, again, would not only have the positive effect of reducing the number of (Extra?)Ordinary Ministers of the Eucharist, but will also help to avoid even the smalles particle of the Eucharist (of which Jesus is truly present) from being dropped or desecrated.  One way to insure that doesn’t happen is to limit the number of touches.

Older is Better?

It is worth dealing with what amounts to the most common objection, namely that it was the ancient practice of the Church to receive Communion in the hand. 

There are a number of theologians which have addressed this question and it is not entirely clear that there was a universality in the reception of Communion.  To dive into this question historically however misses the point.  Because the Church is a historical reality governed by the Holy Spirit, we should have no desire to “go back” because doctrine, being living and active, develops.  As the understanding of the Deposit of Faith deepens, practice, especially liturgical practice, adapts to reflect that.  For example, the understanding of Confession, especially its power to remove sin, was not something that the Early Church had a firm grasp on.  That it forgave sins was never in question, but how and when was not understood.  Could this be done only once or many times?  If only once then you would want to save it, or even better save Baptism until there was an emergency or until you were about to die.  If many times, then how could you prevent its abuse?  From within this setting, Public Confession was widely practiced. 

The point is that as doctrine developed public Confession went away.  To have any desire to go back to public Confession would be to try to erase all of that development.  So unless the “older is better” crowd are willing to go back to that practice, then they should not desire to do something similar with the Eucharist. All that we now know about the Real Presence of the Eucharist can’t be put back in the storehouse of the Deposit of Faith.  The practice reflects this understanding as we have shown above.  Orthopraxy goes hand in hand, or perhaps hand to tongue, with orthodoxy. 

In short, antiquarianism is really innovation and ultimately degradation.  This is a point that St. John Henry Newman made in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.  Using a false analogy, the antiquarians reason that just as a spring is clearest at its font, so too divine Revelation.  But Newman gone to great lengths to show that development admits of growth in clarity as it moves from the source.  As Pope Pius XII cautioned, we should not favor something just because it has “the flavor of antiquity. More recent liturgical rites are also worthy of reverence and respect, because they too have been introduced under the guidance of the Holy Ghost, who is with the Church in all ages even to the consummation of the world . . .the desire to restore everything indiscriminately to its ancient condition is neither wise nor praiseworthy.”((Pius XII Mediator Dei).  Communion in the hand ultimately then is a corruption and needs to be stopped immediately.

On the Necessity of Government

American Founding, Angels, Anthropology, Church and State, Culture, Moralilty, Natural Law, , , , ,

Our country was founded upon a rather strange amalgamation of principles.  A perusal of the writings of the Founders will uncover both references to Catholic Natural Law and principles of the Enlightenments. One can imagine that there are some pretty stark contradictions.  One such contradiction is found in the question of why we need government at all.  In the midst of defending the need for a government that includes checks and balances in  Federalist Paper no. 51, James Madison makes what seems like at first to be a very Catholic statement saying that government is “the greatest of all reflections on human nature.”  Rather than remaining on that train of thought, Madison diverts to another track claiming that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  Understanding both of his statements will help us go a long way in understanding why our country seems to be plagued by moral decay.

If Men Were Angels…

Obviously one of the important questions that the Founders sought to address was how authority was to be exercised by the State.  Trying to emerge from the shadow of Divine Right Theory, the Founders thought authority came from the individual.  Men would form a society like the State by bartering freedom for security.  The individuals would bestow authority upon a Governor in order to ensure that his rights would be secured against encroachments from other men who had all entered the society via a social contract.

When Madison says that government is the “greatest reflection upon human nature”, he has this view of human nature in mind—man as the individual who enters society via the social contract.  This principle of the Enlightenment treats government then as a necessary evil that must be tolerated because man is fallen.  In his own words, “anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger.”  If men were not fallen, like the angels, then government would not be necessary.  So commonplace is this idea today, that hardly anyone questions whether Madison has greatly misunderstood human nature.

Madison’s anthropological error comes into relief if we challenge his theological assertion that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.”  Angels do, in fact, live within a hierarchy, a hierarchical structure that includes authority.  Scripture provides us with an example in Chapter 10 of the Book of Daniel.  Daniel calls upon the help of Gabriel, but the angel does not immediately respond because the Guardian Angel of the Kingdom of Persia would not allow him to act.  After Michael intervenes, the lower angel is allowed to help Daniel (Dn 10:11-21).  What this reveals is that angels, even unfallen ones, do have a government, one that is based upon a clear authoritative structure.

The Greatest of All Reflections on Human Nature

So, if men were angels then government might be necessary rather than being a necessary evil.  Contra Locke, Rousseau and their intellectual progeny, including the Founders, man is not a solitary being, but is naturally a social creature.  In order to fulfill his nature, man has need of other men.  This is not just a matter of convenience but part of his natural instinct.  There are two natural societies in which man’s needs are supplied, the Family and the State.

Because men naturally form these two societies, they must have an authoritative structure.  As Pope Leo XIII put it, “no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every body politic must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature, and has, consequently, God for its Author. Hence, it follows that all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. ‘There is no power but from God.’” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 3).

St. Thomas says that the act of authority would be applied in four ways.  First, the ruler must direct the members of society towards what they should do to contribute to and achieve the common good.  Second, the ruler should supply for difficulties such as protection against an enemy.  Third, the ruler should correct morals via punishment and (four) he should coerce the members to virtuous acts.

Now it becomes obvious that the first two would apply whether or not men were fallen or not.  Virtuous men might agree about some common good, but because it is possible to achieve a good in multiple ways, they disagree as to means.  Without a ruler, that is one without authority, there would be no one to make the final decision.  Because men, even in a state of innocence would not be equal with respect to virtue, it is the most virtuous who would govern.

St. Thomas describes this virtuous ruler in the Summa:

“But a man is the master of a free subject, by directing him either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good. Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man, for two reasons.  First, because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life. Now a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such, seek many things, whereas one attends only to one…Secondly, if one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others…Wherefore Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 14): ‘Just men command not by the love of domineering, but by the service of counsel”: and (De Civ. Dei xix, 15): ‘The natural order of things requires this; and thus did God make man.’”

(ST I q.96, a.4)

Madison, because he thinks government a necessary evil, would have us tolerate evil in our rulers.  But when we see the State as something natural, we begin to identify its purpose of making men better.  It is necessary for men to fulfill their nature by becoming more virtuous.  The virtuous ruler will create virtuous subjects.  St. Thomas thinks we can, and must, do better.  The transition may be rocky, but if our society is to turn around and become morally sound, we must not settle for moral degenerates in our leaders.  With Primary Season upon us, especially with a total lack of emphasis on the character of our leaders, this is an important message. 

Reason, Faith and the Angelic Doctor

Defending the Faith, Faith and Reason, , , , ,

In his anti-theistic tome, The God Delusion, the champion of the New Atheists Richard Dawkins sets out to expose St. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways as “vacuous”.  Unable to grasp any of the subtlety or even the gist of what St. Thomas was trying to argue, He instead reveals that he is out of his element.  What is particularly noteworthy however is that he launches his attack only after admitting his own hesitance to attack such an “eminent” thinker of St. Thomas.  This is one example among many atheists who stop to recognize the towering intellect of the Dumb Ox and are wont to point out that he is one of the greatest thinkers to have ever lived.  He is the pre-eminent Christian philosopher whose unique philosophy makes the Faith intelligible to Christians and non-Christians alike.  The Church has long recognized the value of his thought, even if the members have been guilty of forgetting it at times.  It was, according to Pope Leo XIII, “the chief and special glory of Thomas, one which he has shared with none of the Catholic Doctors, is that the Fathers of Trent [1545-1563] made it part of the order of conclave to lay upon the altar, together with sacred Scripture and the decrees of the supreme Pontiffs, the Summa of Thomas Aquinas, whence to seek counsel, reason, and inspiration (Aeterni Patris, 22).  As the Church marks his feast day, it is a good time to revisit why it is important for us to study not just St. Thomas’ theology, but his philosophy as well.

We must first admit that the project of the Enlightenment, judging solely by its fruits, is a complete failure.  It is, at its core, a rejection of St. Thomas and his systematic integration of faith and reason, the foundation upon which medieval society was built.  Enlightenment thought is varied but at its core it takes what is ultimately an exaggerated view of human reason in which reason alone is the source of truth.  This viewpoint, dubbed as rationalism, exalts human reason to the point of setting faith aside. Faith no longer is a source of knowledge and science becomes the only means of certitude.  Errors always come in pairs.  The rejection of a whole field of knowledge in divine revelation leads to an error in over-correction called fideism.  This viewpoint denigrates human reason to the extent that divine revelation becomes the only source of knowledge.  

St. Thomas and the Pursuit of Wisdom

Although not the only Christian philosopher in the history of the Church, St. Thomas was the most successful precisely because of his love for wisdom.  In this way he was the true philosophe.  Wisdom consists of the right ordering of things in relation to man’s end and St. Thomas knew that the path to wisdom comes from both above and below.  Philosophy starts with what is visible and ascends to what is invisible.  Theology, or “faith seeking understanding” starts from above by using divine revelation and puts ordering to all things according to the divinely revealed End, God Himself.  Even if faith is the higher and more certain of the two, resting as it does on the authority of God Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, faith and reason end up in the same place.  One ascends and the other descends, but there can never be any conflict between the two.

What St. Thomas offers us is the most complete school of thought that enables this meeting of the minds to occur.  This school, from which we draw the term Scholasticism, successfully “unites the forces of revelation and reason” and remains “the invincible bulwark of the faith” prompting Pope Leo XIII to command that “carefully selected teachers endeavor to implant the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas in the minds of students, and set forth clearly his solidity and excellence over others” (AP, 29, 31). 

The reason why this connection between Scholasticism and Catholicism must remain intact becomes readily apparent when we examine the role that philosophy plays in theology.  A quick survey of the Church’s battles against the great heresies reveals that there is always a philosophical error attached to each of them.  The Arian heresy was defeated using a metaphysical and anthropological solution that distinguished between nature and person.  The Protestant heresy’s disdain for Scholasticism led to its ready adoption of nominalism and the ultimate rejection of the Sacraments, Sanctifying Grace and the gift of Faith.  What this shows is that while philosophy cannot prove revelation, it can defend it.  But not just philosophy in general, but Scholasticism in particular.  Scholasticism may not be the only means of doing so, but it is the most thorough explanation of the reasonableness of the Church’s teaching.  As St. John Paul II put it, “[A]lthough he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness” (Fides et Ratio, 43).

Nothing but Straw?

Before closing, there is one further point that St. Thomas teaches us.  By all accounts, near the end of his life, St. Thomas had a mystical encounter with Christ that left him completely unmotivated to continue his prolific writing.  When asked by one of his fellow Dominicans why he was no longer writing, he told him “all that I have written is straw.”  Some interpret this to mean that he thought all of his theological and philosophical writings were useless.  But this should not be interpreted as a judgment upon his work, but upon the science of theology as a whole.  Neither philosophy nor theology can ever bring us to the direct vision of God, they are but straw compared to that.  But that doesn’t make them useless, but invaluable when we see “dimly, as in a mirror” (1 Cor 13:12).  Think of a man who lives only in the darkness of night and sees only by the moon.  The moon is but a reflection of the sun, telling the man of the sun, but once day appears the moon is but straw compared to the luminosity of the sun itself.  So too the work of St. Thomas is a bright enough light that draws us to the Sun of Justice.

In closing we must make one last point.  Right thinking always leads to right action.  It was the clarity of thought that made St. Thomas Aquinas act like a saint.  He knew the Truth and it set him free.  Please God, that through his intercession and a thorough study of his teachings, we might likewise follow.