Category Archives: Church

A Porch to Christianity?

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Although it is not clear who first pointed this out, it is most certainly true that there is a certain law of undulation at play in every time and every culture related to the quality of the men: “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”  We are, by almost any accounting, living in hard times, plagued by weak men.  Historically speaking it is hard to say how long the hard times must go on before the strong men emerge, but there is a growing awareness among many men in our culture that something is amiss with manhood.  This awareness helps to explain the growing popularity of Stoicism, especially among young Catholic men.  Because of Stoicism’s emphasis on virtue, most assume that Stoicism and Catholicism are compatible.  It is worthwhile then to examine whether this is true.

Sitting on the Porch

Stoicism has a long history that extends back to ancient Greece and the lectures that Zeno of Citium gave to his students on his porch or stoa.  It lay mostly dormant until around the 1st Century AD when it was revived by Epictetus and Seneca, followed by the first philosopher king, Marcus Aurelius.  It is marketed as a practical philosophy (i.e. ethics) based on the pursuit of virtue.  According to Epictetus this pursuit is governed by two principles.  First, “In life our first job is this, to divide and distinguish things into two categories: externals I cannot control, but the choices I make with regard to them I do control. Where will I find good and bad? In me, in my choice.”  This dichotomy of control is supplemented by a second principle aimed at our response. “What hurts this man is not the occurrence itself…but the view he chooses to take of it.”   Essentially this means that there is nothing good or bad in itself, only our attitude towards it gives it an ethical color.  We have the opportunity to see everything that happens as a means grow virtue.  Although it is often described as such, Stoicism is also not an emotionless ethic.  Because of its emphasis on virtue, it is about bringing our emotions under the control of reason.

It is ultimately this pathway to an inner freedom that comes about by focusing only on those things that we can control that makes it appealing to modern men.  The hard times make the battlefield seem so large and many men struggle to pick their battles and end up in a holding pattern.  But there is more to Stoicism than just this.  Stoicism ultimately is a pantheistic religion.  The reason why the Stoic can practice the necessary detachment is because he believes that everything that happens is necessary and good serving the Good of the whole.  There are no physical evils and the only moral evil is personal vice and folly. 

Ideas Have Consequences

That I labeled Stoicism as a pantheistic religion anticipates the fact that it is not wholly compatible with Catholicism.  But in truth, the two cannot be reconciled at all.  Its insistence that it is only our reaction to what happens that makes something good or evil leads to a subtle form of moral subjectivism.  There are many evils in the world that we cannot control and yet we must offer resistance or even fight against.  Detachment to things we cannot control is great until we are confronted with the suffering of another person.  Their suffering is only because they are thinking about it wrongly and thus empathy and compassion are folly.  Epictetus unashamedly counsels a fake compassion when he says,

“When you see a person weeping in sorrow, either when a child goes abroad, or when he is dead, or when the man has lost his property, take care that the appearance do not hurry you away with it as if he were suffering in external things. But straightway make a distinction in your mind, and be in readiness to say, it is not that which has happened that afflicts this man, for it does not afflict another, but it is the opinion about this thing which afflicts the man. So far as words, then, do not be unwilling to show him sympathy, and even if it happens so, to lament with him. But take care that you do not lament internally also.”

This fits with my experience with many men who practice Stoicism, Christian or not—they are usually the most judgmental and disinterested especially towards those who they deem not as strong-willed as themselves.

This brings up a necessary, although slightly tangential point.  The reason the Church maintained the Index of Forbidden Books for so long was not just to protect the Faithful from heresies.  There is a very real way in which false teachers of religion and philosophy can put an enchantment on the reader.  They have a tendency to draw the reader in and make him question reality, even when he is only curious or trying to adopt certain aspects of that philosophy/religion.  In this regard Stoicism is no different.  Read enough of it with an open mind, even while trying to filter it through a Catholic sieve, and it will “magically” cause you to see the Faith differently.  It seems that there is a fine line between reading a prayer and saying a prayer—a line that may be safe when it comes to the Faith but when encountering false belief systems becomes perilous.  This is why Augustine ultimately rejects Stoicism in his City of God (Book XIX, CH.4); because Cato came under its spell and committed suicide out of pride.

Stepping Off the Porch

In truth it does not actually help the person grow in virtue either.  First, it has a false view of human nature that borders on dualism.  It sees an evil that is done to body as not being done to the person.  The only evil is what is done to the soul.  Furthermore, because everything that happens is good, it rejects any negative emotions.  The 2nd Century Stoic Aulus Gellius tells the story of a Stoic philosopher who is at sea when a terrible storm breaks out.  Because he cannot control the storm, it is wrong for him to fear.  Likewise, it is wrong to be angry or sadness.  The emotions are good and especially important in hard times as they serve to propel the battle against evil.  

Because it denies the negative emotions, it ultimately pins our problems, like Buddhism, on our desires.  Epictetus tells the stoic, “Therefore altogether restrain desire…Demand not that events should happen as you wish but wish them to happen as they do happen.”  The last thing men of hard times need is to become men without chests.  That is exactly what happens when you stamp out desire and create a whole group of men who are aloof. 

Ultimately then the Cross and the Porch are incompatible.  Stoicism’s emphasis on virtue may seem like a good thing, but it is wholly unnecessary for those who accept the counsel of Christ to “take up your cross and follow Me.”

Fulfillment of the Law

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As Moses departed from the people of Israel, he promised that God would send another prophet just like him (Dt 18:15).  This prophet would not only lead them into the True Promised Land, but would give them a new law.  So the Jews were constantly on the lookout for this “new Moses” and the early Church repeatedly preached Jesus as the Mosaic prophet they were looking for (c.f. Acts 3:22, 7:37).  It is no surprise then that Our Lord, just after beginning His public ministry in Matthew’s gospel (addressed to the Jews), climbs a mountain and delivers the Sermon on the Mount.  For just like Moses who had to climb Mount Sinai to bring the law from God down to the people, the new Moses, God Himself, speaks directly from the mountain about the Law.

Chronologically and culturally removed from the Sermon on the Mount, it is often confusing for us when the Bible speaks of “the Law”.  What exactly does that mean and, more specifically, what does it mean when Our Lord tells those gathered that “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17)?

The Old Law

In his treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas enumerates three kinds of precepts of the Old Law: moral, ceremonial, and judicial.  By placing all of the Old Law within these three broad categories, we are able to better understand both our relationship to the law and the manner in which Christ can say that He did not abolish it but came to fulfill.

When most people think of the “Old Law” the Ten Commandments immediately come to mind.  It serves as the foundation for all the moral precepts contained within the Old Law.  The Decalogue is in a certain sense superimposed upon the Natural Law, making the precepts of the Natural Law specific.  Some of the precepts are easily discernible based on the natural law—“thou shall not kill…thou shall not bear false witness”.  Other precepts require wisdom and reflection such as “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”  Still others, especially those of the first tablet require Divine instruction.  Nevertheless, they do all relate to what can be known from the natural law.

Second, there are the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law.  These pertain to Divine Worship.  This would include things like sacrifices, sacred things such as the tabernacle, Old Testament “sacraments” such as Seder Meals and circumcision, and observances that distinguished them as worshippers of the True God (not eating pork, etc.).

Finally, there is judicial law.  Judicial law is similar to civil law in that it determines the way that a People is governed.  It maintains the sovereignty of the People, it governs relations within the People, and governs how citizens interact with non-citizens.  Much of the book of Leviticus lays out in detail how Israel is to govern itself in these areas.  Israel was to be a “light to the Gentiles” but must remain a distinct People because “salvation comes from the Jews.” 

Fulfillment of the Law

With three types or precepts of the Old Law, there are also three ways in which Christ fulfilled them.  When we speak of “fulfillment” we must first grasp intention.  The moral precepts, reflected in the Ten Commandments, are the direct intention of God with respect to how we are to relate to Him (1st-3rd Commandment) and to each other (4th-10th Commandment).  As St. Thomas says, there can only be dispensation of the law when the letter of the law frustrates the intention of the Lawgiver.  Therefore, there is no abrogation of the moral precepts of the Old Law.

Christ, nevertheless, fulfills the moral precepts in Himself.  He perfectly follows the moral law.  In so doing, He wins graces for His followers such that they are empowered to do the same thing.  It is as if He gives us the power to “re-read” the Decalogue not in terms of rules but as a prophecy.  “in Christ you shall not make false idols…in Christ you shall not covet your neighbor’s goods” etc.   

Christ likewise fulfilled all the ceremonial precepts.  The purpose of the ceremonial precepts was to prefigure and act as a foreshadowing of the mystery of Christ.  All of the sacrifices find their meaning and fulfillment in His sacrifice on the Cross.  He is the true tabernacle.  Baptism becomes the “new” circumcision.  All dietary laws are abrogated because the Bread of Life has become man’s true food.

The judicial precepts had as their purpose setting apart the Jews for the sake of the Messiah.  In Christ there is no distinction between Gentile and Jew so that the judicial precepts are no longer binding (Heb 7:12).  The catholicity of the New Israel means that the theodicy of the Old Israel has ended and the principles of the New Covenant can guide men in civil life, regardless of the form of government they take.  Church and State work together, each within its respective sphere, to bring men to salvation, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s” (Mk 12:17).

 We see then how Christ came not to abolish but to fulfill the Law.  He fulfills the moral, ceremonial, and judicial precepts of the Law, but each in a unique way.  The moral by empowering men to live according to God’s law.  The ceremonial by giving us Himself on the Cross and through the Sacraments.  And the judicial precepts through the Church.    

The Worst Sin

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What is the worst sin that afflicts the world today?  Our immediate inclination might be to respond, Abortion.  And we would not be wrong in identifying the sheer magnitude, done with impunity and under the legal protecting of the State, of the deliberate murder of the most innocent members of society.  We most certainly cannot turn a blind eye nor remain silent in the face of such a grave evil.  The murder of the innocent cries out to Heaven for vengeance prompting us to clothe ourselves in “sackcloth and ashes”—doing public penance for so public a sin—but, as evil as it is, it is not the worst sin. 

Admittedly, all sin is evil because it is an offense against God first and foremost.  Sins such as murder, abortion, adultery, and theft are direct offenses against love of neighbor.  Other sins such as sacrilege, idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy, heresy, final impenitence, and the like are offenses directly against the love of God.  The latter set always represent, objectively speaking, graver offenses for that reason.  So as evil as abortion is, it is not the greatest evil.  Instead, the greatest evil in the modern world, both in magnitude and frequency, is sacrilege against the Eucharist.

Sacrilege

Sacrilege is, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, “irreverence for sacred things.”  A thing is sacred because it is been set aside for Divine worship.  “Now just as a thing acquires an aspect of good through being deputed to a good end, so does a thing assume a divine character through being deputed to the divine worship, and thus a certain reverence is due to it, which reverence is referred to God…and is an injury to God” (ST II-II q.99, art.1).  The worst acts of sacrilege St. Thomas says are committed against “the sacraments whereby man is sanctified: chief of which is the sacrament of the Eucharist, for it contains Christ Himself. Wherefore the sacrilege that is committed against this sacrament is the gravest of all” (ibid, art.3).

Considering the magnitude alone should give us great pause in both the manner and intention by which we approach the Eucharist.  But in our time, it is the frequency by which this sin is committed that makes it the worst sin.

First of all, at least objectively speaking, Protestant services by which “Communion” is “blessed” and given represents an act of sacrilege against the Eucharist.  This does not, to be clear, consider the subjective guilt of those who participate which may be relatively light.  Still, simulation of a Sacrament, even when done by professing Christians who have no intent of offending God, still can be an act of sacrilege.  I bring it up, not as an attack on Ecumenism, but for Catholics to be conscious of this fact when they are considering participating in such services, even if they choose not to actually partake of the communion wafers and grape juice.  Regardless, it is still objectively an act of sacrilege and calls for those who do love Jesus in the Eucharist to do penance and acts of reparation.  Perhaps the Ecumenical Movement would gain more steam if Catholics did not commit what St. John Paul II referred to as Eucharistic “duplicity” (c.f. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 38) by ignoring the fact that Communion will never be achieved while these sacrileges are glossed over.

Then there are the sins of those who are professed members of the Catholic Church.  By far these are most grave and frequent because “he who handed me over is guilty of the greater sin” (John 19:11).  For a Catholic to commit any sacrilege of the Eucharist is akin to betraying the Son of Man with a kiss.  The Eucharist is Christ’s gift of Himself to His friends.  To betray a friend, especially when that friend is Christ Himself, is a diabolical deed.  These sacrileges tend to happen in one of three ways.

Sacrilege in the Church

First, there are those who “eateth and drinketh unworthily” (1 Cor 11:28) by receiving when in a state of mortal sin.  These sinners, according to St. John Vianney, crucify Jesus in their hearts:

He submits Him to a death more ignominious and humiliating than that of the Cross. On the Cross, indeed, Jesus Christ died voluntarily and for our redemption; but here it is no longer so: He dies in spite of Himself, and His death, far from being to our advantage, as it was the first time, turns to our woe by bringing upon us all kinds of chastisements both in this world and the next. The death of Jesus Christ on Calvary was violent and painful, but at least all nature seemed to bear witness to His pain. The least sensible of creatures appeared to be affected by it, and thus wishful to share the Savior’s sufferings. Here there is nothing of this: Jesus is insulted, outraged by a vile nothingness, and all keeps silence; everything appears insensible to His humiliations. May not this God of goodness justly complain, as on the tree of the Cross, that He is forsaken? My God, how can a Christian have the heart to go to the holy table with sin in his soul, there to put Jesus Christ to death?

Sermon on Unworthy Communion, Book IV, Sermons of St. John Vianney

When members of the Hierarchy either promote such sacrilege by encouraging those who are living in an objective state of sin to receive the Sacrament or by those who look the other way when a public sinner presents themselves for Communion, then they become complicit in the guilt.  At least Judas kept his betrayal to himself and did not try to corrupt other members of the Apostolic College or the rest of Our Lord’s disciples.

Likewise, sacrilege can also occur when a sacred thing is treated as profane.  This is, to use St. Paul’s terminology, a failure to properly “discern the Body of the Lord.”  Faith is vitally important to receiving Our Lord in the Eucharist because it is our part in the exchange that occurs in Communion. Our Lord gives Himself completely while we give Him our faith that the Eucharist is.  It is only by first believing that the Victim for our sins is truly and really present that we can identify with Him as Victim and join Him in offering ourselves to the Holy Trinity.  This exchange cannot happen unless we first receive in Faith. 

This profanation of the Eucharist can occur in the manner in which Our Lord is handled.  I will not belabor the point that was made previously about how the unnecessary use of Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, Communion in the Hand, and all of the sanitary abuses related to the pandemic have only served to increase the number of offenses against Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  Still, I would like to point out that when there is mass sacrilege going on, we must have the zeal to receive Our Lord in the most reverent way possible.  This means making acts of faith, hope and charity and self-offering (Suscipe) before receiving Our Lord on the tongue.  It also means approaching Him after making a sincere act of contrition and an act of thanksgiving afterwards.

It also calls for acts of reparation and penance to repair the harm done to the Church by abusers of the Blessed Sacrament.  This starts by committing to watching for one hour with Our Lord in Adoration in reparation specifically for sins against the Eucharist.  But it continues by joining Bishop Schneider’s Crusade of Reparation to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus.  He has a prayer (at the bottom of this link) that should be said at the end of every Mass and each of the acts contained within the prayer offers a concrete way in which we might offer Reparation.

In many ways, the sin of sacrilege against the Eucharist and abortion are simply parallels in the same failure of love of God and love of neighbor.  Just as we fail to love the God Who hid Himself in the Eucharist we also fail to love our neighbor hidden in the womb of his mother.  Out of sight, out of mind as the expression goes.  But until we treat Our Lord in the manner worthy of us great gift, we likewise will not see an end to the mass killing of the hidden children in the womb.

The Visible Church

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Sacred Tradition is, and always has been, a great obstacle for Protestants to overcome.  There is an utter incongruity between the Christianity of history and Protestantism that requires much mental gymnastics to avoid.  St. John Henry Newman put it another way: “if ever there were a safe truth, it is this…To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant.”  The early Protestants, because they were drawn from the ranks of Catholics, knew this so that their theological acrobatics required them to discredit, or at least mitigate the role of the Catholic Church during the first fifteen centuries of Christianity, while still maintaining the revealed truth that the Church could not totally fail.  From this they developed the idea of the “Invisible Church” as the true Church.  This “spiritual” society was to be comprised of all the just men and women.  It would only be made visible to the extent that the various religious communities more or less perfectly realize the ideal proposed by Christ.  All of this leads to the notion that one Church is as good as another and only the “heart” of the individual believer really determines whether they are a part of the true, invisible Church.

We must admit at the outset that this ecclesiastical sleight of hand by the original Protestant revolutionaries was deliberate.  But for Protestants today, it is simply an unquestioned maxim upon which the entire façade of Protestantism rests.  This is why Newman thought, especially from his own personal experience, that studying the Church Fathers would lead one to the conclusion that the Protestant Fathers invented a new Christianity that was, at least in theory, based on the Bible alone.  But prior to this study it is often necessary to raze the foundation upon which the entire building of Protestantism rests—the invisible Church.

That Christ intended to form a single Church is clearly testified to in Sacred Scripture.  The one mustard seed, the one field, the one Bride of Christ and telling it to the Church all put this unity on display.  He prayed to the Father before making His sacrifice that all believers would be one.  Of these facts both Catholics and Protestants can agree.  But in order for this unity to real, there must be certain characteristics among the body of believers.

For any society to exist there must be a true union of minds and wills between members.  This unity in intellect means that the same doctrines are known and professed by each of the members.  Likewise, the union of wills means, not just that they do the same things, but that there is submission to a common authority.  Because man is not just a mind and will however, there must also be a third characteristic.  This third characteristic is a set of external signs that symbolizes this internal unity. 

Unity in Visible Government

In merely human societies, this unity is usually realized imperfectly.  Nevertheless, there are some core set of beliefs, recognition of authority and visible signs that mark members of a society as belonging to that society.  In the supernatural society that is the Church, these are necessarily realized perfectly.  No mere core set of beliefs will do because of the Divine promise of being given “all truth” (Jn 16:13).  There are no “core beliefs” in Christianity because the Truth is one.  This unity of doctrine likewise means a unity of acceptance and a unity of government. 

The Truth must be guarded and protected so as to avoid corruption.  Protestantism bears this aspect out.  Because there is no unity of belief, there can be no unity in government and thus we have thousands of “denominations.”  Protestantism, rather than leading to the unity willed by Christ, has led in the opposite direction.  This government must not only be one, but it must be visible.  The Government of the Church, because of the nature of man and the nature by which men are cooperators, must be something visible and external. 

As Leo XIII said in Satis Cognitum:

The Apostles received a mission to teach by visible and audible signs, and they discharged their mission only by words and acts which certainly appealed to the senses. So that their voices falling upon the ears of those who heard them begot faith in souls-“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the words of Christ” (Rom. x., 17). And faith itself – that is assent given to the first and supreme truth – though residing essentially in the intellect, must be manifested by outward profession-“For with the heart we believe unto justice, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Rom. x., 10). In the same way in man, nothing is more internal than heavenly grace which begets sanctity, but the ordinary and chief means of obtaining grace are external: that is to say, the sacraments which are administered by men specially chosen for that purpose, by means of certain ordinances.

SG, 3

Unity in Visible Worship

But this visibility in government is not the only aspect by which the Church must be visible.  Since it is a religious society, there must be a unity in worship.  It is this unity of worship that signals to the world that the Church is one. 

Man, on his own, is incapable of worshipping God in a fitting manner.  For that, God must reveal the form of worship that is pleasing to Him. Throughout salvation history, God always makes a covenant with Israel that includes regulation of a concrete form of worship that God seeks.  The New Covenant is no different in that regard.  The worship that God seeks, the only worship that is pleasing to Him is the Mass.  This is exactly the point that St. Paul makes to the Corinthians.  First, he reminds them that the liturgy is their source of unity: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?   Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1Cor 10:16-17).  Then he tells them that the form of the liturgy, including the manner in which they participate, is regulated by Christ Himself: “In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes” (1Cor 11:25-26).

Practically speaking then there can be no true Christian Unity without unity of Faith, government and worship.  True Ecumenism then must always have as its purpose conversion because until we have unity in the True Faith, governed by the True Church and worshipping with the True Sacrifice, we remain a divided society.

Guest Post: Against the Institution of Female Acolytes and Lectors

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Recently, the Holy Father promulgated a ruling which allows for laywomen to be formally accepted into the to roles of lector and acolyte, roles which for sometime they have already been filling in practice. Up to this point, however, the formal acceptance was restricted to men. The move, while having very little visible effect on the current state of the liturgy, formalizes growing problems that will now be explored.

Why is Reading a Big Deal?

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, the priest reads from Sacred Scripture from the altar while facing away from the people. This liturgical choice preserves two important ideas: 1) the sacredness of the Word of God and 2) the offering of the Word to God. The first idea, the sacredness of the Word of God, is shown by the fact that only a person that has been in some way consecrated to God is able to the proclaim the word of God in the Church’s public worship. In the past, a distinction has existed between those possessing sacramental ordinations (deacons, priests, and bishops) and those that had received non-sacramental ordinations (lectors, porters, acolytes, exorcists, and subdeacons). Those receiving non-sacramental ordinations (also called minor orders) were understood to be acting as an extension of the ministry of the deacon, who possessed a sacramental ordination.

It is also important to note that, keeping in mind the principle that liturgical actions often have both a practical and symbolic purpose, the restriction of the ability to read publicly to those who will have a clear reading voice and will be knowledgable enough to correctly pronounce the more difficult words in Scripture will stop the proclamation of the divinely revealed Word of God from becoming an event the faithful laugh about on the car ride home.

Why do you hate Altar-girls?

With regards to the second idea, it must be kept in mind that the priest is offering the entire Mass as a sacrifice to God. This reality is reinforced by the priest facing towards the tabernacle while he is proclaiming the Word. The addition of women to the role of lector, in addition to the problems created by reading while facing the people, destroys this because God has always indicated that He desires the priestly ministry of offering sacrifice to be reserved to males.

In the liturgical tradition of the Church, only men are allowed to approach the altar, be it as bishops, priests, deacons, or even humble altar servers. Why is this? Is it because the Church fell to the spirit of past ages and has reinforced in its liturgy sexist ideas? The answer is a clear ‘No.’ To see why this is, one only needs to open a Bible and observe the patterns of worship that have been in place since the beginning and have been shown to please the Lord. (Exo. 28-29, Num. 3) They all contain male-only clergy because they are types of Christ Who will be both Priest and Minister in the New Testament. Those who participate in that liturgy act as sacramental signs of Christ, Who is male. This practice continues into the New Testament when Jesus and His Apostles continued the practice of male-only clergy even though they could have changed it. This change would not have even been perceived as strange outside the Jewish community as female clergy already existed in other religions in other parts of the Roman Empire, e.g., the vestals.

While the change only allowed for female acolytes, the formalization of an altar server, the principle on display is one that would eventually advocate for the female diaconate, priesthood, and episcopacy. This principle is rooted in the denial of the different roles of men and women in the Church, roles that have been clearly established in Scripture and vindicated by two millennia of tradition.

What about the Priesthood of the Baptized?

Forgetting the problems introduced by these changes discussed above, let us ask ourselves the question, ‘To what end are these changes made?’  Some would advance that it is desire to teach the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized. In response to this, it must be realized that this method will never achieve that goal because it obscures that reality more than it reveals it.

The sacrifice of the Mass is the perfect prayer of the Church and it is the meeting of Heaven and earth. All the faithful ought to hear Mass and offer this most perfect offering to God. An authentic teaching of the doctrine of the priesthood of all the baptized would teach the faithful how to more perfectly offer this sacrifice, because offering sacrifice is exactly what priests do. However, the priesthood within the liturgy is not the same as the priesthood outside the liturgy.

The ordained priest has been given the honor of offering the Mass and the faithful participate in the Mass to the degree that they spiritually unite themselves with him in his offering. This, however, is precisely the opposite of what is shown by allowing more and more faithful on the altar. Does the man or woman that reads at Mass participate more fully than one that doesn’t? If so, does that mean that we need to multiply roles until everyone attending the Mass is able to more ‘fully’ participate? This, again, is exactly the mindset forwarded by the increase of the roles of the laity in the Church’s liturgy.  From this, confusion emerges and we are left with a faithful that has traded true spiritual participation for a visible and ‘active’ participation and reduced the ability of others to spiritually participate in the liturgy by needlessly multiplying distractions.

Stripping down the Priesthood

What these changes leave us with, in addition to a liturgy less able to lead the faithful to union with God in prayer, is a sacramental priest stripped down and lacking identity. The priest has a sacred duty to offer sacrifice to God, namely the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. At the center of his spirituality must be this sacrifice and his entire life must be conformed to this sacrifice such that his entire life becomes a sacrifice. Just as a married man must lay down his life daily for his wife (who is the altar upon which he offers himself to God) and they are so conformed together that they become one flesh, so to must the priest become so conformed to the sacrifice of the Mass that he becomes a Victim-Priest just as Christ was. These changes, however, lead him more towards the roles of presider and orchestrator. One by one, his sacred duties are ‘contracted out’ to the laity and therefore lose their priestly character and change the character of the priest. The retractions are even more impactful to the diaconate, who has the duty to preform the exact ministerial actions that are being given to the laity.

The clergyman (be him a deacon, priest, or bishop) is a man chosen by God and consecrated such that he is given God-like powers, e.g., forgiving sins, calling down Christ from heaven, and strengthening a soul to endure death. Why are we stripping him of his duties and making him seem like an ordinary man? The evidence of this transformation is clear from priests being uncomfortable with saying, “I absolve you”, and replacing the ‘I’ with ‘Jesus’ or something similar. How can a man unconvinced of the massive amount of supernatural grace given to him and unwilling to proudly proclaim, with St. Paul that, “by the grace of God, I am what I am,” (1 Cor. 15:10) going to be able to fill the souls entrusted to his care with supernatural grace. We, the faithful, must support our clergy in living out their vocation by insisting that they keep the clerical duties for themselves.

About the Author

Connor Szurgot is currently a senior study for his BS. He has given multiple talks to the Catholic Campus Ministry at his university on topics such as Eucharistic reverence and mental prayer. He is a member of the Thomistic Institute and is a regular participant in their intellectual formation. He enjoys discussing the practical and philosophical aspects of politics as well as religion, particularly systematic theology.

The Religion of the Antichrist

Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , , , ,

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.  The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event.  But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story.  Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country.  These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism.  Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration.  Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all.  Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion.  It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church.  But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion.  Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed.  Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this.  Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections.  Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents.  Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion.  In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature.  In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture.  It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it.  Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm.  No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property.  Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State.  Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”). 

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class.  Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive.  It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed.  There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going.  Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted. 

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil.  Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice.  The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice.  Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion.  It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit.  You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism.  The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart.  Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist.  This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations.  The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists.  We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists.  We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion.  We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

On Contrition

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If you are a “chalice is half-full” kind of person, you might be able to find a silver lining in the Sacramental suppression that the Church has to endure thanks to, what one Prelate has called, the “dictatorship of the sanitary”.  With ready access to the Sacraments, there is always the danger of them becoming mere formalities.  It is, after all, hard to do things well when we do them regularly.  The optimist sees this as a way to overcome this temptation. 

Regular Confession is a good example of this.  There are many of us who go to Confession regularly, yet rarely see the kind of growth that we would expect from these regular encounters with Our Lord.  When access becomes limited, we are forced to examine both our desire and our real motives.  In the case of Confession that desire and motivation are one and the same thing—Contrition.

When the Confessionals were sealed, the faithful were instructed to make an act of perfect contrition and go to Confession when they could.  Thanks to bad Sacramental Theology and poor catechesis over the past half century, hardly anyone knows what that means, let alone how to do it.  That is why it behooves us to examine the topic of Contrition more closely in hopes that this great gift will grow in our hearts.

What is Contrition?

Contrition is the grief of soul brought about by the hatred of sins committed and marked by the resolution to avoid them in the future.  This “grief” is primarily effective, that is, it is an act of the will to leave our sins behind and run into the embrace of the Father.  It need not be affective to be true contrition, although often we will feel sorrow or even have tears.  This internal grief may express itself in words through prayers like the Act of Contrition, but no mere lip service will do.  Furthermore, true contrition is always a supernatural gift because it is based on a supernatural motive, namely a love of God.  Because it is based on this motive, it must also be universal in that it covers not just a sin, but all our sins.

The supernatural motive of love of God occurs in degrees.  We may love God for what He can give us or help us avoid.  This mercenary love is still love, even if it is imperfect.  Out of this love comes imperfect contrition or attrition.  This is a sorrow for sin based on the loss of heaven or the fear of hell.  What makes this imperfect is that it is still tinged with self-love.  When our love is completely focused on God and we experience sorrow for our sin then it will always be based the fact that we have offended God, independent of any benefits He might bestow upon us.  This is perfect contrition.  Although we might not be aware of it, we make this distinction every time we pray the tradition Act of Contrition when we “detest our sins because of Your just punishments [attrition] but most of all because You are all Good and deserving of all my love [perfect contrition].” 

We might be tempted to think that an act of Perfect Contrition is impossible.  But God does not command the impossible.  Instead He makes it possible through the gift of grace.  Perfect contrition, while outside of our natural grasp, may be bestowed upon us if we ask.  St. Charles Borromeo, no stranger to Sacramental crises brought on by pandemics, offered us what he called the “Three Visits” in order to prepare our souls for the gift of perfect contrition.  The first two visits, one to Heaven and one to Hell, are meant to stir up imperfect contrition.  We should meditate both on what we risk losing and what we are gaining so as to be sorry for our sins.  The third visit is to the foot of the Cross to look upon the sufferings of Jesus all brought about by your sins.  He says to stay there until you are sorry for the pain you have caused Our Lord.  In so doing you have made an act of Perfect Contrition.

“Perfect” contrition then might be a somewhat of a misnomer in that it makes it seem like you have to love God perfectly, rather than loving the God Who is perfect.  The Scholastics avoid the terms perfect and imperfect contrition and instead use contrition for the former and attrition for the latter.  This distinction helps us to grasp that contrition may occur in degrees, degrees that are proportional to our charity.  We need not be St. Mary Magdalene, whose sins were forgiven because “she loved much” and wiped Our Lord’s feet with her tears, but there can be no contrition without some degree of charity.  We need not be anxious if we struggle to make such acts, but only ask God to bestow upon us that great gift.

Contrition and Confession

If an act of contrition then forgives sins, even mortal sins, then what is the connection with Confession?  Contrition may have the same effect as Confession, but its effects are not independent of the Sacrament.  Contrition may be sorrow expressed, but Confession is sorrow received.  Even if we may an act of perfect contrition in response to mortal sin, we must still go to Confession before we can receive the Eucharist.  Perfect contrition then is an extraordinary means of forgiveness provided that we avail ourselves of the ordinary means, Sacramental Confession. 

The advice to “make an act of perfect contrition until you can get to Confession” that has been given during the pandemic is very dangerous without all of the proper qualifications.  A person, no matter how hard they try, cannot make a perfect act of contrition without the necessary grace.  To act as if God always grants it immediately when it is asked for is to be guilty of presumption.  God may withhold such a gift for reasons only His loving Providence could explain.  This is why Canon Law protects the Faithful from Prelates who would withhold the Sacrament.  The Sacrament does not require that we have contrition; only attrition is needed to be valid.  As Fr. Alfred Wilson reminds us in his classic book Pardon and Peace, when we go to Confession, Christ has already confessed those sins.  He has sorrowed for them.  Your task is to supplement His perfect confession and contrition the best you can.

This connection with Christ’s confession and sorrow brings us to the whole point of contrition.  Perfect contrition comes from Christ Himself and thus is best understood as a participation in His sorrow.  This understanding is important because it takes any of the focus off us and our faults. leaves us standing squarely on the solid ground of His Mercy.  Genuine contrition is a habit then that grows out of this.

St. Therese on her death bed offers us the best example of this.  The sisters had gathered around her and were singing her praises.  She requested that they stop and instead to list her faults, not because she was worried about her humility, but because she wanted to have more reasons to praise God in His mercy.  She was quite literally filled with Contrition because she loved God.  Let us beg her intercession that during this time we might likewise receive and develop such a precious gift.

Why We Need Churches

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As we endure continued lockdowns, masks and church closings, a new consensus has arisen—“we don’t need a building to be a Church.  We don’t need a structure to be Catholic.”  I say new, but in truth it is old, half a millennium old.  It is simply the Protestant spirit rearing its ugly head once again.  Protestants don’t need a building because they aren’t, at least properly speaking, a Church.  Catholics on the other hand do need a building to be a Church and the fact that we don’t immediately recognize this truth shows how deeply infused the Church has become with this Protestant spirit.

All true religion requires the offering of a sacrifice to God.  St. Thomas even goes so far as to say that sacrifice is a precept of the natural law.  A true sacrifice begins with an inward act in which a man “should tender submission and honor…to that which is above man.”  But because man’s person is both interior and exterior, spirit and matter, his mode of offering inward acts of sacrifice must also include an outward expression.  “Hence it is a dictate of natural reason that man should use certain sensibles, by offering them to God in sign of the subjection and honor due to Him, like those who make certain offerings to their lord in recognition of his authority” (ST II-II, q.85, a.1).

This helps to explain the near universal phenomenon within ancient religions of every ritual act of worship including as a constitutive element sacrifice.  It also explains why the religion of the Old Testament portrays a continual groping for the perfect sacrifice that only finds its fulfillment in Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross.  Only in Him do we find a perfect fit between the interior and exterior acts; the perfect victim making the perfect sacrifice.  The New Adam sets the sacrificial standard and becomes mankind’s representative.  Through His representation, it remains for each man to re-present that sacrifice in order to make it his own.

Sacrifices must be offered from within a temple.  A temple is the dwelling place of God and the place where God and man meet.  The believer who is in a state of grace, that is one who has “put on Christ’ is one such meeting place enabling the man to offer a sacrifice to God.  For the Protestant and our Catholic friend who has no need of a church building, this is sufficient.  But for God, this is not yet sufficient.  To be “a Church”, that is the People of God, they must also offer a sacrifice. 

Making the People of God

What exactly makes the People of God a People?  Unlike the Jewish People who were united by blood, the Church is truly catholic, uniting men and women of many different races.  The Church then is a People because it is united by the Blood of Christ, the Blood poured out on Calvary and of which we partake in the Eucharist.  As Saint Paul says, it is “The bread which we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17).  It is the “bread that we break” that creates the communion that is the Church. 

The Eucharist is what makes the Church the Church.  Without it, there would be no Church because there would be nothing that unites us.  St Thomas says that the Eucharist is the cause of “Ecclesiastical unity, in which men are aggregated through this Sacrament; and in this respect it is called ‘Communion’ or Synaxis. For Damascene says that ‘it is called Communion because we communicate with Christ through it, both because we partake of His flesh and Godhead, and because we communicate with and are united to one another through it’” (ST III q.73, a.4). 

In commenting on St. Paul’s passage, Pope Benedict XVI says that “the Eucharist is instrumental in the process by which Christ builds Himself a Body and makes us into one single Bread, one single Body…It is the living process through which time and again, the Church’s activity of becoming the Church takes place…The Church is a Eucharistic fellowship.  She is not just a people: out of the many peoples of which she consists there is arising one people, through the one table that the Lord has spread for us all.”  If the Church were to cease making this living process which is the Eucharist manifest, then the Church would cease to be the Church. 

The sacrifice of the Eucharist needs a Temple in which it may be offered.  Therefore, the church is not “just a building”, but the fulfilment of the Jewish Temple and the sacrament of the Temple in Heaven.  It offers a real experience of Heaven, even if it “only” does so sacramentally.  So while the church building itself does not make us the Church, it is a necessary element for the formation of the Church.  In short, without churches in which the Eucharist is offered there would be no Catholic Church.      

Pentecost and the Three Conversions

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The first Christian Pentecost was a feast of fulfillment.  It was, in a very real sense, a graduation ceremony in which twelve simple men from various walks of life became prophets, preachers, priest, prodigies, and polygots.  A feast of fulfillment because they became what they were destined to be.  Removed some 2000 years from Pentecost, it is, for us, a feast of possibility.  The Holy Spirit is ever ready to pour out His power on each and every believer.  The problem though is that the average believer is not ready to receive His power.  Part of the reason for this is that we view Pentecost as an isolated event; a miracle for sure but not magical.  The Apostles were ready to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit and in so doing, left for us a model of preparation that we need to follow.

Protestants would have us to believe that union with the Holy Spirit comes about through faith, that is, by a single moment of conversion.  Sacred Scripture and the Mystical Doctors of the Church teach otherwise.  They teach, each in his or her own way, that three conversions are necessary for union with the Holy Spirit.  One of them, St. Catherine of Siena, shows how the Spiritual life of the Apostles reveals the content of these three conversions which culminate in the fullness of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

As in all activity, our spiritual lives are marked by three levels of maturity—beginners, proficients, and perfected.  These three stages are clearly delineated in the Scriptural account of the lives of the Apostles and therefore serve as a model for each of us.  St. Catherine in her Dialogue traces each of the three conversions of St. Peter and enables us to see some of the qualities of each in order to facilitate our own growth towards union with God.

St. Peter and the Three Conversions

The first conversion happens when St. Peter acknowledges he is “a sinful man” and Our Lord promises to make him a “fisher of men”.  From that point forward, St. Peter set out on what St. John of the Cross calls the Purgative Way.  This is the most active of the stages in that we must, under the instigation of actual grace, remove all the obstacles to true growth.  For St. Peter, this purgative stage lasts almost the entirety of the pre-Passion and Resurrection accounts in the gospels.  It also helps to explain why St. Peter shows such incredible flashes of sanctity while also being called “Satan”.  St. Peter will remain in this stage until he is no longer scandalized by suffering and is willing to mortify himself completely.  Even during the Trial of Jesus, he keeps the suffering Christ at a distance and therefore fails to admit to even knowing Him.  He loves Jesus, but not more than he loves himself. 

It is just after the three-fold denial that St. Peter experiences his second conversion.  When Our Lord gazes upon Him just after his third denial, He receives the grace of deep sorrow for his sin.  St. Peter’s second conversion occurs when he has him “come to Jesus” with Our Lord on the shore of the Sea of Galilea with his three-fold affirmation of his love for Jesus.  In loving Our Lord “more than these” St. Peter is no longer deterred nor scandalized by the fact that he will have to suffer.  Each of his affirmations, according to Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, marks each of the three distinct motives for the second conversion.  We find the juxtaposition of the two Greek words for love—love of friendship (philia) and love of God (agape)—in the dialogue to mark the rooting out of all traces of self-love by a desire for Divine friendship and filial love of God.  Secondly, Peter is aware of the great price of Christ’s Blood.  Third is the love of souls that need to be saved in his desire to “feed my sheep.” 

Furthermore, he must first go through the Night of the Spirit where he no longer is aware of Christ’s continual presence.  He only “feels” His presence on a few occasions and loses it completely when Our Lord ascends into Heaven.  Just as in the transition from the first conversion to the second there must be a purgation of the sense, a purgation of the spirit must be undergone in order to pave the way for the third conversion.  It would seem that the Apostles were on the fast track in that they only had to endure the Night of the Spirit for 50 days, until we put ourselves in their sandals and realize how painful it must have been for them.  They had spent three and a half years, day in and day out, with the constant awareness of God’s physical presence.

All of this leads up to the third conversion on the day of Pentecost.  Our Lord had meticulously been leading St. Peter to this moment when he would be united to God in the fullest sense possible on Earth.  He still was not perfected, but he was closely yoked to God in the Unitive Stage.  What we need to focus on is that Pentecost was not just an isolated event in their spiritual journey but the culmination of it.  He, along with the other Apostles, received the Holy Spirit because they were ready for it. 

All of this talk of the need for a “New Pentecost” is really a call for more saints who have the courage to set out through the Dark Nights and to be so purified as to become completely united to the Holy Spirit.  Without the proper preparation work this “New Pentecost” will never happen.  With the path of the threefold conversion the Apostles have left us along with the instructions of the great Mystical Doctors of the Church, we “shall renew the face of the earth”  and share in the fruits of the same Pentecost that marked the birth of the Church.

Restoring the Kingdom

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Just prior to Our Lord’s Ascension, the disciples ask Him about the coming of the Messianic Kingdom; “Lord, will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?” He responds rather cryptically, saying “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samar′ia and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:7-8).  Many people read this answer as a non-answer, a dismissal of sorts because the Apostles were asking the wrong question.  It is usually followed up by a comment as to just how clueless the Apostles still were even after spending their 40-day bonus round with Our Lord.  But it is not the Apostles that were clueless, but us.

Notice first, that the Apostles were expecting Jesus to restore the kingdom to Israel.  Having had “their minds opened to understand the Scriptures,” (Luke 24:45) the Apostles understood that the Christ would restore the kingdom to Israel.  Their question is not if, but when.  This is no dodge or redirection, but about the most direct answer He can give.  The restoration of the kingdom to Israel will occur when they “receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” that is, on Pentecost.

The Meaning of Pentecost

For us to grasp this, we need to first understand the meaning of the Jewish feast of Pentecost.  Fifty days after the first Passover, the People of Israel “came into the wilderness of Sinai” (Ex 19:1).  It was there that Moses ascended Mt Sinai and brought the Torah to the people.  This giving of the law that governs Israel marks the birth of Israel as a People.  The Feast of Weeks, as it was known, was instituted to mark this event and was one of the three great Jewish feasts, when “all males shall appear in the sight of almighty God” (Ex 34:23).  This feast was also known by its Greek name, Pentecost.  This is what St. Luke was referring to when he mentions that the disciples were all gathered in one place “When the day of Pentecost had come” this is the feast that he is referring to” (Luke 2:1). 

The Feast of Weeks was also the Feast of Reaping (c.f. Deut 16:9-11) to offer to God the first fruits of the Wheat Harvest.  This helps to explain the abundant harvest of the 3000 souls that the Apostles reaped on that day, 50 days after the Divine grain of wheat became standing grain (c.f. Deut 16:9).  The harvest of 3000 souls also ties back to those who, while God was giving Moses the Law, worshipped the Golden Calf and were punished by death (Exodus 32:28). 

Pentecost then is the “time the Father has fixed” for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel.  This restoration occurs when the Jewish Feast of Weeks finds its fulfillment in the Christian Pentecost.  Jesus, the New Moses, ascended to Mount Zion, and God gives the New Law.  This New Law is not written on stone, but on our hearts by the Finger of God’s Right Hand (i.e. the Holy Spirit, c.f. Veni Creator Spiritus).  Just as in the giving of the Law to Moses, it is accompanied by a mighty wind and flashes of fire (c.f. Ex 19:18 and Acts 2:2-3). 

Because the Jews were obligated by Divine precept to travel to Jerusalem for the Feast of Weeks, “there were devout Jews from every nation” (Acts 2:5) to show the universality of the restored Kingdom.  But it also has unity as reflected by the fact that all present heard Peter in their own tongue.  God undoes the disunity that was created at Babel by uniting all mankind under the Tower of Peter, the house built upon the Rock.  This restored Kingdom then bears four marks: Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, and Apostolicity.

Therefore, Just as the People of Israel found its birth at Sinai on the 50th day after Passover, the People of the New Israel finds its birth on Pentecost, on the 50th day after the new Passover.  Our Lord restored the Kingdom to Israel on that day, the same day that we celebrate the birth of the Church.  This link created by Our Lord in his response to the Apostles’ question between the Ascension and Pentecost helps to maintain the inseparable link between Israel and the Church.  The new Israel formed from a remnant of the Israel of Old (c.f. Is 10:20-22) will be gathered together by the Messiah.  All such promises made to Israel are taken up and fulfilled in the Church.  This connection also maintains the necessity that the Church be both universal (catholic) and united from within a visible structure.   

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.

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.

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.

Relativism, the Supreme Court and Descartes

Abortion, Apologetics, Church, Culture, Defending the Faith, Politics, Relativism, , , ,

GK Chesterton once said that America was the only country built upon a creed.   He thought the American Founders had united the country around certain self-evident truths.  The founding credo has been replaced by a more modern one that is aptly captured by the Supreme Court in their 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood vs Casey.  Writing for the majority in defense of abortion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”  Freedom to choose trumps even reality itself, and relativism in all its forms was enshrined as dogma.  The only self-evident truth is that there is no objective truth.  Such an exaltation of freedom gives society no foundation upon which men and women may be united.  All that is left to bind the people is force, either through the coercion of political correctness or “the compulsion of the State”.

Quite obviously it is not enough to merely identify the problem.  We must do something about it.  But unless we are going to meet force with force, the only way to correct the problem is to correct the bad ideas that caused it.  Some errors are like weeds. It is not enough to merely pluck the leaves of consequences, but we must attack the roots of the ideas that caused the consequences.  Relativism is the weed that threatens society so that if we are to give society room to flower, then we must tear out its roots.

The Three Words

Three words was all it took to start the avalanche that would overthrow the Christian World Order.  Unwilling to face the Scientistic Zeitgeist head on by restating the higher metaphysical truths of reality, Rene Descartes decided to play the skeptic’s game.  Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am”, set the tenor for modern thought and paved the way for the coronation of Relativism.

Good intentions never cover for bad ideas, even if those ideas are “clear and distinct”.  Descartes sought to defend philosophy against the full frontal attack of empirical science.  When you have physics, why do you need metaphysics?  But rather than fixing the problem, he created a crisis in knowledge.  All this because he rejected Scholastic realism, that is, the epistemological position that all knowledge comes in and through the senses.  We come to form ideas based on the perceptions we receive from our encounter with reality.  Our ideas are true only insofar as they conform to reality.  In short, our ideas are means by which we come to knowledge of the highest and lowest things.

Rather than being measured by reality, Descartes thought man was the measure of reality.  Knowledge of reality is an impossibility.  Instead we can only have knowledge of our own ideas.  And not just any ideas, but only those are clear and distinct, the first of which was that he is thinking.  In his own words, “I think therefore I am…In this first knowledge doubtless, there is nothing that gives me assurance of its truth except the clear and distinct perception of what I affirm…and accordingly it seems to me that I may now take as a general rule, that all that is very clearly and distinctly apprehended (conceived) is true” (Descartes,First Meditation).

The Scholastics thought that existence was self-evident and could not be proven.  Our senses drew data only from those things that existed.  This could not be doubted and this was the starting point for all knowledge.  Descartes, rather than starting with the senses, began with the one thing he could not doubt, namely his own thought.  And this formed the basis for his discovering the truth; having a clear and distinct idea.  But because ideas are subjective, truth is no longer objective.  Truth reveals not the outside world, but the state of the mind of the thinker. 

Connecting the Dots

It may not yet be clear how Descartes connects to Casey until we trace out the consequences of Descartes’ thoughts.  We encounter reality in and through our senses and then form ideas about it.  Those ideas are called true which correspond to reality as it really is. Truth, then, is the correspondence of reality and idea.  For Descartes and his intellectual progeny (Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hume and so on), truth consists only in having clear ideas.  Rather than measuring ideas against reality, they are measured by the mind itself and judged true if they are “clear and distinct”.  True comes to mean “true for me” and “true for you.”  All ideas are equally true, so long as they are sincerely held.  This leads to a contradiction because if every opinion is equally true, then the following opinion is also equally true, namely that not every opinion is equally true.

We have grown accustomed to the cognitive dissonance and navigate it the best we can.  We learn to “tolerate” different opinions about reality.  The problem though is that if each of us is living in a world he has constructed on his own, then there is no means by which a society can be formed.  There may be small pockets of “like-minded” people but no real unity.  The seemingly esoteric philosophical problem becomes the source of a gigantic social problem. 

That is why the solution must also be a social one.  There must be a reintroduction of Medieval Philosophy.  We must go back to just before the train went off the rails and set it back on the tracks.  It starts by properly training the young to think clearly about reality as it really is.  We cannot, like Descartes, pick up the scraps of truth on the hems of the Zeitgeist and expect to build anything solid.  Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences.  We must go back to St. Thomas and learn from him truly how to think.  We must teach our children to go back to St. Thomas.  Catholic schools need to be true houses of intellectual formation and not merely alternatives to the public schools.  St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Why We Shouldn’t Dare to Hope

Apologetics, Church, Church Authority, Church Fathers, Devils, End Times, Last Things, Magisterium, , , , , , , ,

In a previous post, a theological and anthropological defense of the permanence of hell was offered.  A brief mention was made of the need to avoid hell in the right way—not by means of an infernal gymnastics, one that stretches the imagination and explains it away.  But the denial of hell’s everlastingness is only one of its manifestations.  There is another, perhaps more popular, strategy that could be called the “Dare We Hope” approach.  First put forward by Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in the 1980s, Bishop Robert Barron has taken the baton and run with.  According to the Bishop, this approach posits two things:

  1. Given what God has accomplished in Christ through the power of the cross, we may reasonably hope that all people will be saved.
  2. The Church has never claimed to know if any humans are in hell, which leaves open the theoretical possibility of universal salvation.

We will deal with each of the two points and then discuss why, ultimately, to adopt does great harm to the Church’s salvific mission.

Hope or Optimism?

At first glance, there is nothing objectionable to the first point.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t exactly pass the Catholic smell test, especially when it is combined with the second.  That is because it suffers, like most modern theological statements, under the veil of ambiguity.  By using the theologically charged word “hope” it lends itself to being easily misunderstood and therefore misapplied.  Theological hope is something that is virtually certain based upon the merits of Christ and is not conditional in any way upon human response.  In his book, Balthasar says that there are only two responses to the question of whether there will be some men who refuse God’s gift of salvation. 

“To this there are two possible answers: the first says simply ‘Yes.’  It is the answer of the infernalists.  The second says: I do not know, But I think it is permissible to hope (on the basis of the first series of statements from Scripture) that the light of divine love will ultimately be able to penetrate every human darkness and refusal.” 

Dare We Hope, p.178

Notice that the hope that Balthasar is describing is dependent in no way upon human actions, but instead upon the power of God.  Under this viewpoint any soul that is lost is a failure on God’s part and so it must be certain rather than a mere desire for all men to be saved.

To be fair, Bishop Barron does take the time to define how he is using the term hope in the FAQs on his website: “we should recognize hope to mean a deep desire and longing, tied to love, for the salvation of all people, but without knowing all will be saved, thinking all will be saved, or even expecting all will be saved.”  Bishop Barron says he is using the term in the human sense meaning merely as desire.  It is puzzling why, if the Bishop simply means that out of love for God and neighbor he desires that all individual men be saved then why he doesn’t just say that.  It seems that he brings a whole lot of extra baggage into the discussion by uniting it with von Balthasar.  Because Balthasar appears to be using the term in the deep theological sense, Bishop Barron is wedding himself to the Balthasarian position.  He is indissolubility united to Balthasarian hope.  He says as much later on in the FAQs when he says that von Balthasar’s position reflects his own (“he does agree with Balthasar’s main thesis, affirmed by the Catechism, that we can pray and hope hell is empty of people.”). 

Part of the reason why Balthasar muddies the waters of salvation is because he rejects the classic distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will.  He reads 1 Tim 2:4, “God our savior who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” as an absolute statement that does not depend upon a human response.  The Church has long made the distinction between the fact that God wills all men be saved (called His antecedent will) and His consequent will which comes about because He also willed men to have free will that could choose something other than saving grace.  This viewpoint is based upon Scripture (c.f. Sirach 15:14-17, “God in the beginning created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice.  If you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of God.  Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand.  Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them.”) and leads directly to the Church’s belief that, despite the objective power of the Cross to save all men, not all men will receive it.  A summary view was presented by the Council of Trent:

“But, though He died for all, yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated. For as in truth men, if they were not born propagated of the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust,-seeing that, by that propagation, they contract through him, when they are conceived, injustice as their own,-so, if they were not born again in Christ, they never would be justified; seeing that, in that new birth, there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of His passion, the grace whereby they are made just.” 

Session 6, Ch. III

The Theoretical Possibility of an Empty Hell

This leads naturally to the second proposition, namely that, because the Church has never claimed to know if any humans are in hell, universal salvation remains a theoretical possibility.  The problem is that the Church has consistently believed that there will be at least two human beings in hell.  The first is the Antichrist who is described in Revelation 20:10 as being “tormented day and night forever and ever.”  One could also reasonably assume, given the principle of biblical typology, that all of the Antichrists described by St. John in his first letter as well as those who have been historically considered types of the Antichrist also suffered a similar fate.   

The other example is Judas.  Although the Church is not in the habit of declaring reverse canonizations, the witness of Scripture offers no other interpretation than that Judas ended up in hell.  In Matthew 26:24, Our Lord declares that “would be better for that man[that betrayed Him] if he had never been born.”  In John 6:70 he calls Judas “a devil” and in 17:2 He says that “none of them was lost except the son of destruction.”  None of these could be true if Judas was counted among the Blessed.    

In his FAQs, Bishop Barron says that “The Church has made no authoritative declaration, based on this passage or any other, that any person whatsoever is in hell.”  This statement again is highly misleading.  The Church may never have solemnly declared that Judas is in hell, but solemn declarations are not the only way in which Catholics determine whether something is to be definitively held.  There is a consensus among the Fathers of the Church that Judas is in hell.  In a 5th Century homily, Leo the Great placed the “Son of Perdition” in hell saying,

“The traitor Judas did not attain to this mercy, for the son of perdition (Jn. 17:12), at whose right hand the devil had stood (Ps. 108:6), had before this died in despair; even while Christ was fulfilling the mystery of the general redemption… The godless betrayer, shutting his mind to all these things, turned upon himself, not with a mind to repent, but in the madness of self-destruction: so that this man who had sold the Author of life to the executioners of His death, even in the act of dying sinned unto the increase of his own eternal punishment.” Sermon 62, On the Passion of the Lord

St. Ephrem (4th Century) and St. Augustine (5th Century) say the same thing.  St. Thomas, writing 8 centuries later also sees Judas in hell as well as St. Catherine of Siena.  

As a side note both Balthasar and Barron claim that St. Catherine of Siena share their position.  This is very difficult to reconcile with her Dialogue where the Father tells her that Judas was “punished with the devils, and eternally tortured with them” (Dialogue, 37).  This would call into question the authenticity of her entire Dialogue, something I am not sure they would be willing to do.

Adding to the witness of Scripture and to Tradition is the law of the liturgy, ­lex orandi.  In the liturgy for Good Friday the Church’s Collect traditionally portrayed Judas as receiving eternal punishment.

“O God, from whom Judas received the punishment of his guilt, and the thief the reward of his confession: grant unto us the full fruit of Thy clemency; that even as in His Passion our Lord Jesus Christ gave to each retribution according to his merits, so having cleared away our former guilt, he may bestow on us the grace of His resurrection: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth.” 

Traditional Roman Missal

Why We Must Get this Right

Beliefs, like the ideas underlying them, always have consequences.  Balthasar (and presumably Bishop Barron) was concerned that the traditional view of hell as heavily populated ultimately drove people away from God.  He said that, “One really has to ask oneself how, given an eternally valid bifurcation of mankind like this, simple human love of one’s neighbor, or even love of one’s enemy in Christ’s sense could still be possible.”  This reeks of the false spirit of Vatican II in which a pastoral concern, namely a zeal for souls such that we truly desire that each person we meet be saved, demands a obfuscation of doctrine.  Clarity especially about the Last Things is a vital necessity for true zeal.  The fact that hell remains a real and likely possibility for each and every one of us ought to spur each one of us to work not just for our own salvation but the salvation of everyone we meet.  The Dare We Hope approach destroys zeal for souls by making evangelization seem completely unnecessary.

Praying to the Lord of the Harvest

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On the first Saturday of Advent, the Church chooses as the gospel Matthew’s account of the commissioning of the Apostles.  After taking to heart the lost souls around Him, He demands that His disciples beg God to send more laborers into the fields.  He then empowers the Apostles and commands them to go out into the world to continue His mission of redemption (c.f. Mt 8:35-10:3).  The implications are obvious.  There are many lost souls that can only be saved through the continuing authoritative mission of the Apostles.  But this mission only continues through the prayers of all Christ’s disciples for more Bishops and Priests.

This interpretation is by no means novel.  The Church has always understood what Our Lord was telling us to do.  Nevertheless, in times of vocational crisis, there is a tendency, rather than trusting in God’s way of doing things, to look for human solutions.  Thus, we find ourselves discussing doing away with celibacy or adding women to the ranks of the ordained as human solutions to the problem.  But ultimately the “vocations crisis” is a crisis of faith in that we do not trust in God’s promise to send faithful Bishops and Priests.  We do not have them because we do not ask.

One might immediately object to what I just said.  There are plenty of people who pray for vocations.  While it is true that I have no idea how many people pray for vocations regularly, I do know that the Church has official periods of supplication for Priests that practically go unnoticed.  I am, of course, speaking of Ember Days. Ember Days are the ways in which the Church fulfills Our Lord’s command to pray for more harvesters.

The Ember Days

The Quatuor Tempora or Ember Days, are four periods of prayer and fasting (if you want to know how to fast, read this previous entry) that the Church has set aside for each of the four Ecclesiastical seasons.  Ember Days begin are marked by three days (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) of penance by which the Church, especially through fasting, consecrates to God each of the Seasons of the Year.  The practice sprung out of the habit of Israel to fast in the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth month (c.f. Zech 8:18-19).  The practice, at least according to Pope St. Leo the Great, has been a part of the Church’s year since the times of the Apostles.

The Advent Ember Days, like each of the other three, have as their object gratitude and supplication for the harvest.  According to Leo the Great, the Advent Ember Days, falling in the time of the year where all the fruits of the earth had been collected, would mark a time of “joyful fasting” (Zech 9:19) in thanksgiving for the harvest. 

The connection to the earthly harvest also has a further meaning connected to Our Lord’s mention of the great harvest of souls.  The Church through an act of penance would pray the Lord of the harvest to send worthy Ministers who are holy and true Shepherds during the Ember Days.  The faithful would join the Church in her intention by offering their own acts fasting.  In short then the Ember Days are special days in which the Church as a whole fasts and prays together for vocations. 

The fall into disuse of the Ember Days and the current vocation crisis are hardly coincidental.  The prayer of the Church is always far more pleasing and efficacious than individual prayer.  As the Ember Days of Advent come upon us tomorrow, let us join the Church in this act of gratitude for the faithful Shepherds among us and beg the Lord to send us more.  As Dom Prosper Gueranger exhorts us, the Ember Days are a great way to “keep within ourselves the zeal of our forefathers for this holy season of Advent.  We must never forget, that although the interior preparation is what is absolutely essential for our profiting by the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet this preparation could scarcely be real, unless it manifested itself by exterior practices of religion and penance.”  Individually chastened by our fasts, let us then join the Church in these Ember Days and implore the Lord of the Harvest to send out more laborers.     

Cardinal Cupich’s Two-Way Street

Church, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, Ecumenism, , , , , ,

In a commentary in Chicago Catholic posted last week, Cardinal Cupich weighed in on the Pachamama controversy.  The Cardinal decried the removal and disposal of the statues into the Tiber River of calling it an act of “vandalism”.  He defended the inclusion of the “artwork from the Amazon region depicted a pregnant woman, a symbol of motherhood and the sacredness of life” during the Amazonian Synod as an example of the necessary “two way street of inculturation” in which “both the cultures and the church are enhanced in coming to know God.”  In truth however, the Cardinal is defending idolatrous syncretism, a position that is indefensible for a Catholic.

Artwork or Idol?

In an act of sophistry that would make even Protagoras blush, the Cardinal depicted the statues as “artwork”.  One has to wonder why Aaron didn’t think of that when Moses confronted him over the Golden Calf.  His description defies logic and is a great distortion of the truth.  Pachamama is no mere symbol of motherhood and the sacredness of life, but a benevolent goddess of motherhood and fertility that is still worshipped among the indigenous peoples of the Andes.  The peoples, as evidenced by the opening ceremony in the Vatican Garden, still offer worship to the goddess through the statue. 

Each August, the people of the Peru dedicate the month to making offerings and sacrifices to Pachamama.  It is believed that it is necessary to satisfy her hunger and thirst with food offerings.  These offerings are burnt, carrying the prayers of the people in the smoke.  The Pachamama is no mere symbol, but instead a goddess.  The Cardinal is either lying or a fool or both.

Even Pope Francis admits that it was an idol, although not directly of course.  In his apology for the theft and submersion of the statues, he said that the statues were displayed “without any idolatrous intentions”.  No one would question the idolatrous intentions of someone unless the items in question were, in fact, idols.  The Pope’s comment, rather than exonerating him however actually makes what happened even worse.  Worse, that is, if you believe St. Thomas Aquinas.

As an offense against the First Commandment, he thought that idolatry, next to heresy is the gravest sin.  It is an offense directly against God Himself.  Aquinas thought that not all idolatry was equal.  He said that the worst kind of idolatry is, using the Pope’s words, idolatry “without any idolatrous intentions.”  The Angelic Doctor said “since outward worship is a sign of the inward worship, just as it is a wicked lie to affirm the contrary of what one holds inwardly of the true faith so too is it a wicked falsehood to pay outward worship to anything counter to the sentiments of one’s heart” (ST II-II q.94, a.2).  To set up idols without any idolatrous intentions is not only to commit idolatry but to lie as well.  Citing St. Augustine’s condemnation of Seneca for setting up idols that he did not believe in, Aquinas condemned the Pope’s position.

St. Thomas makes another interesting connection in his treatment of idolatry.  Citing St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, he mentions how God turns men over to sins against nature as punishment for idolatry. He says that it is a fitting punishment of the sin of idolatry which abuses the order of divine honor that man would sin against nature as a way of suffering from the confusion from abuse of his own nature.  Might it be that the refusal of the Church to stand against all of the idolatrous elements of New Age spirituality has been met by gross sins of nature, especially among the clergy?  In other words, perhaps the homosexuality that plagues the Church is an effect of idolatry that won’t be rooted out until its cause is also rooted out.

Inculturation?

The Cardinal mentions that this event is simply an attempt at inculturation.  He errs however is describing inculturation as a two-way street.  The Church needs no outside help as She has been given the fullness of truth.  Instead she brings the truth to those who have yet to accept it and explains the truth on terms that are readily understood by her audience.  When evangelizing new cultures she may find elements that can be baptized such that they will make the Gospel intelligible.  She brings nothing back to the Church except the souls she is saving.  Our Lady’s approach (detailed here) to St. Juan Diego and the people of Mexico is a prime example of this.  She borrowed elements that were familiar to them, modified them, and used them to point to the true God in her womb.  The Church learned nothing from the Aztecs.

A two-way street approach to inculturation is just another word for syncretism.  Often masquerading as “ecumenism”, this practice ultimately is about finding creative ways to blend the Church’s doctrines with those of other religions.  It thrives on ambiguity and teeters on heresy.  The problem is that you end up far away from the truth in a way similar to what Chesterton described when he described syncretism as analogous to a man who says that the world is a rhomboid because some people believe that the world is flat and others round. 

It signals a loss of faith, thinking we must compromise to get people to come over to our side.  But the truth has a power all its own such that when it is spoken, especially with charity, it is immediately compelling.  It is also a loss in faith in anything supernatural.  The fact that idols have demons behind them is totally foreign to those of Cardinal Cupich’s ilk.

This is why they find it so incomprehensible that someone would go to the lengths the “vandal” did in attempting to destroy the idol.  It is an act of zeal; zeal for God and hatred of demons.  As St. John Henry Newman puts it, “zeal consists in a strict attention to His commands—a scrupulousness, vigilance, heartiness, and punctuality, which bears with no reasoning or questioning about them—an intense thirst for the advancement of His glory—a shrinking from the pollution of sin and sinners—an indignation, nay impatience, at witnessing His honor insulted—a quickness of feeling when His name is mentioned, and a jealousy how it is mentioned—a fulness of purpose, an heroic determination to yield Him service at whatever sacrifice of personal feeling—an energetic resolve to push through all difficulties, were they as mountains, when His eye or hand but gives the sign—a carelessness of obloquy, or reproach, or persecution, a forgetfulness of friend and relative, nay, a hatred (so to say) of all that is naturally dear to us, when He says, ‘Follow me.’”  It is zeal that destroys idols without destroying the idolaters.  It is zeal that seeks to set the idolaters free.

Why Are There Seven Sacraments?

Apologetics, Church, Defending the Faith, Faith and Reason, Sacraments, , , , , ,

Within a generation or two of the first Protestant revolutionaries, the Sacraments became one of the shovels that were used to widen the chasm between Christians.  The debate began mostly over the number of Sacraments with Luther, Calvin and friends reducing the number to two or three.  Eventually, the Protestant Sacraments became unrecognizable, more because of a flawed philosophy than flawed theology.  They became mere signs, given power by the faith of the believer, rather than signs empowered by Christ to bring about the thing signified.  Because the reduction of the number of Sacraments was at the heart of their error, it is worth examining why there must be seven Sacraments so that, by removing one, you necessarily set yourself down a path of rejecting all.

To grasp the reasoning for seven Sacraments, it is first necessary to take a theological diversion into the use of analogy.  Analogy, in the theological sense, takes what would otherwise remain a mystery in the spiritual life and examines it “in the mirror of sensible realities”.  God is the author of both the natural and supernatural and He made them both for the same reason; to reveal Himself to mankind.  If they share the same purpose, then we can take the principles behind the things we can see and apply them to the things we can’t see.  This follows directly from a principle articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans that “His invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things He has made” (Romans 1:20).   

How Analogy Fits into Theology

This parallelism comes with a caveat however.  Creation could never exhaust all that God has to say about Himself, falling short in fully revealing Him.  To supplement the “Book of Nature” God gave man Divine Revelation.  There are things that we can discover about God on our own, but if we are to know Him, rather than just about Him, He must reveal Himself to us.  This means that while we can use the principles in nature and extrapolate them to Supernature, we cannot do so indiscriminately or univocally.  There is a similarity, but there is also a difference at the same time. The analogical concept of existence is powerful in theology because it allows us to say things about God we would not otherwise be able to say.

Knowledge of this principle is important because when God reveals Himself as say Father, neophyte will tend to equate the visible fatherhood with the invisible Fatherhood.  “If God is Father then how could a father watch one of his children die without doing anything?”  But God as Father is an analogical concept.  God is like an earthly father, but also unlike an earthly father.  In fact He is the only true Father, while all fatherhood on earth is a mere reflection (c.f. Familiaris Consortio, 32). 

Analogy then become a necessary tool to understand Revelation.  God reveals Himself as a Tri-unity of Persons.  Human reason is hardwired to never be satisfied with mere facts, even of Revelation, but instead seeks understanding.  Now we could never reason to the Trinity, but the analogy of marriage that undergirds St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body helps us to better understand it.  Likewise, we could never use reason to prove our supernatural destiny, but by examining our natural life, we can better understand it because both have the same purpose.

St. Thomas Aquinas and the Use of Analogy

St. Thomas Aquinas took advantage of the power of analogy better than any theologian in the history of the Church.  He includes these types of arguments throughout the Summa, our topic at hand being one such example.  He articulates the principle saying  that the “spiritual life has a certain conformity with the life of the body: just as other corporeal things have a certain likeness to things spiritual ” (ST III, q.65, art. 1).  Drawing on this analogy, he then goes on to explain why there are seven Sacraments.  Keep in mind that this is not proof that there are seven Sacraments, but explains why there are seven, and how ultimately, to remove one leaves the Christian wayfarer at a loss.

Always profound in his common sense, St. Thomas says that there are two ways in which a person reaches perfection in his bodily life; personally and as a social animal, as part of a community.  Personally, the man reaches perfection in the life of the body directly by being generated (i.e. birth), through growth and through nourishment.  But because he also encounters hindrances and is prone to disease he needs both medicine and those things that will strengthen him against the diseases.

The corporal needs are signs of spiritual needs.  A man is generated bodily by birth and spiritually by Baptism.  He grows to perfect size and strength which corresponds to Confirmation where the indelible mark of Christian growth is given.  This bodily life and strength is preserved through regular nourishment just as in the spiritual life there is the Eucharist.  Finally, to restore health to the spirit after sin, Confession becomes the medicine of the soul.  To strengthen the soul against the wages of sin, Anointing of the Sick is performed, “which removes the remainder of sin, and prepares man for final glory. Wherefore it is written (James 5:15): ‘And if he be in sins they shall be forgiven him.’” (ibid).

Man is a social animal and so he is perfected in relation to others.  “First, by receiving power to rule the community and to exercise public acts: and corresponding to this in the spiritual life there is the sacrament of order, according to the saying of Hebrews 7:27, that priests offer sacrifices not for themselves only, but also for the people. Secondly in regard to natural propagation. This is accomplished by Matrimony both in the corporal and in the spiritual life: since it is not only a sacrament but also a function of nature.” (ST III, q.65, art.1).

It becomes obvious then why a rejection of one Sacrament ultimately leads to the rejection of all.  They are a complete package meant to meet all of our spiritual needs.  A deficiency in one area always leads to a poverty in another.  That is why Jesus left the Sacraments to the Church in order to provide for all the spiritual needs of the members of His Mystical Body.  At each stage of life, Christ bestows supernatural aid to facilitate the growth of each person into a saint.  To remove one of them means that a need is left unmet and spiritual growth is stunted.  The Sacraments protect Christianity from becoming a “works-based” religion because they reflect our radical need upon God to save us, not just once, but throughout our earthly pilgrimage.  There are seven because God made us to need them.