Category Archives: Guest Post

Guest Post: On Trinitarian Symbolism in the Family

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By Connor Szurgot

When speaking of the Blessed Trinity, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself.” (CCC 234) Beyond even that epic and truly awe-some reality is the reality that, since every cause is in some way in its effect, all of created reality is in some way Trinitarian. One of the clearest examples of this Trinitarian symbolism in created reality is the family. As such, the devil seeks to attack the Blessed Trinity through His image: the family.

A Community of Persons, United by Love

Through the mystery of the Trinity is not able to be fully comprehended by man, certain facts about the mystery can be understood. Some of those facts are: 1) There is one Divine nature, 2) there are three distinct Divine Persons in the Godhead, 3) each of these Divine Persons is co-equal, co-eternal, and fully God, 4) each of the Divine Persons is only differentiated from the others by their relations to the other Persons. These relations are as follows: 1) the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, eternally begets the Son, the second Person of the Trinity and 2) the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. Without delving too deep into this mystery, it is important to understand that all three Persons are united in love. The Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father and this eternal perfect love between the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit.

With that understanding established, it is not hard to see how the family images this. A man and women love each other so much as to give themselves to each other in the life-long bond of matrimony and the fruit of their married love is a child. What unites them in the child on a material level are their shared genes. (Indeed, the father and the mother are in a way now more completely united since the child is the product of both of them.) Yet, beyond the material level, the are united in mutual love, one for another. Also, each member is distinct in their role within the family. They are a community of persons, united in love, that images the community of Persons, united in eternal love.

The First Attack: Gender Theory

Progressive gender theory advances the idea that men and women are the same. This positions leads to two conclusions: 1) to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ has no actual meaning and 2) that one can switch between being a man or a woman at will because what you are is defined only by what you think you are. In addition to the obvious absurdity of this claim, a problem with this is shown by a passage from Genesis, “So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both, he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) Notice two things: 1) that God clearly created two distinct sexes and 2) that He created them in the image of God. Clearly, the complementarity of man and woman are supposed to reveal, in a subtle way, something about the Trinity.

The complementary of man and woman is supposed to model the relationship of the Father and the Son. The Father (the man) eternally loves and gives Himself to the Son (the woman) Who receives Him and gives Himself back in return. The man is the giver in the relationship while the woman receives him and gives herself back in return. The natural inclinations in man and woman show this to be true and to attempt to defy this is not only to make oneself miserable, but to destroy this image of the Trinity in man.

The Second Attack: Divorce

Divorce is the first of these three attacks that has found its way into mainstream acceptance among Protestant Christian circles. This is strange since Christ is very clear that, “[husband and wife] are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Matt. 19:6) This practice attacks the Trinity by destroying the Love that binds the Father and the Son together, the Holy Spirit. When a man and woman give themselves to each other in marriage, something new is created even before they step away from the altar. The objective reality of their marriage comes into being and exists in a way that is separate, but dependent on the two people in the marriage. This dependency is not upon the will of the two people joined, but upon their lives. Their marriage will objectively exist until death do they part.

When a couple divorces, they tear apart and divide what God has created to be the symbol of His Unity in the Trinity: the family. The painful effects of such a rupture are often far reaching. It can be particularly damaging to the children of their marriage, who have lost what was supposed to be their image of complete and unconditional love—their image of God on earth.

The Third Attack: Contraception

The second attack of the three that has broken through the walls of the broader Christian kingdom and proceeded to pillage and destroy the interior of that kingdom is contraception. At the beginning of Creation, God gave all animals the blessing of the ability to produce another being like itself. Only in man, however, can we call this blessing procreation instead of reproduction. Only man has been given the privilege of assisting God in the creation of new souls. It is a privilege so important and sacred that it has always been entrusted to two people and marked with a degree of pleasure befitting the goodness of such an act. Moreover, it is a power which makes man truly God-like in the love which motivates it. To will to bring into existence a creature that you will care for and sacrifice for and who has done nothing for you, is indeed incapable of doing anything for you at the beginning, is an act imaging the love that drove God in the act of creation.

The act of contraception, however, opposes the image of the Trinity by removing from a man and woman the natural end of their love and the damage caused by this removal is proportional to the good it damages. While a single contraceptive act, even between a man and wife, is gravely sinful as it opposes the end set forth by the natural law, the effects of a contraceptive mindset are even more terrifying. Through the adoption of a contraceptive mindset, our culture has separated marital love and the creation of children into two separate camps. The fruits of such a separation are bountiful in our culture: pre- and extra-martial relations, masturbation, pornography, abortion, fatherless children, the acceptance of homosexuality and numerous other sexual disorders. It paves the way for marital love, which is supposed to express perfect self-giving to another, to corrupt into selfishness and mutual use. The Trinity shows that love is fruitful by its very nature. The love between the Father and the Son spirates out from them and is another Person. To act contrary to the natural end of love is to act contrary to love itself.

The family is the building block of society and God has will that it be the building block of the supernatural society of the Church as well. He has also made it the natural image for His very Nature, the greatest mystery of the Catholic faith. We must defend this great gift from God which has been entrusted to us by living and proclaiming the truth.

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.