Tag Archives: St. Paul

Why Suffer?

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As discussed in the last post, suffering is a tragic part of the human experience. It is a reality that we all must face. It is uniquely human. All animals can feel pain, but only we can suffer. As John Paul II points out in Salvifici Doloris,

“Nevertheless what we express by the word “suffering” seems to be particularly essential to the nature of man. It is as deep as man himself, precisely because it manifests in its own way that depth which is proper to man, and in its own way surpasses it. Suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense “destined” to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way.”

Suffering is not merely the experience of pain. It is an awareness of a deficiency. The man who suffers does not suffer merely because of the pain, but because that pain is a reminder of what is lacking in himself and in the world. Suffering arises from the experience we all have of looking at ourselves and the world, and thinking “it should not be this way”.

So, what are we to do with the fact of suffering? Many have tried to run from it in the pleasures and comforts of the world only to find that these things are vanities. Ultimately, we are left with two options to deal with suffering. There is the Way of Mephistopheles, or the Way of the Cross. A middle ground does not exist. Everyone suffers, there is no choice in the matter. However, each person can choose how they will respond to it.

Suffering and Resentment

The Way of Mephistopheles, is named after the demon in Faust, and his line: “for all that comes to be / deserves to perish wretchedly”. This response is characterized by its bitter resentment. This resentment fills a person with rage, and is a quick path to misery. And, as they say, misery loves company. Those who suffer may become envious of those they perceive as suffering less. This envy, prodded by their resentment and misery, forms the basis of the justification to inflict suffering on others. Not so that they may suffer less, but so that all will suffer as they do and “perish wretchedly”. While this is certainly a grim outlook, we would be foolish to deny that our own hearts do not have the capacity for this kind of resentment. We have all seen it in small forms, like losing our cool with a family member because we are having a bad day, or maybe even in larger forms like celebrating murder. This approach to suffering ruins lives and relationships. Despite what our culture says about the compassion behind abortion and euthanasia, it is this view of suffering that drives these things. Abortion pits a mother against her child, and justifies the evil done to the child in light of the suffering or potential suffering of the mother. And with respect to euthanasia, in Canada for example, it did not take long before assisted suicide was offered to those who are suffering and did not ask for it. The contempt for suffering can drive us towards moral abominations. Indeed, in the final analysis, there may be no real difference between resentment towards suffering and resentment towards those who are suffering.

The Death of Suffering

Now that we have seen the bitterness of the Way of Mephistopheles, let’s take a look at the Way of the Cross. The path is characterized by the acceptance of suffering. Rather paradoxically, this is the only path out of suffering. Any athlete or musician knows this. In order to be excellent at something, one must suffer through long and grueling hours of practice. However, once a sort of excellence is achieved, the suffering decreases even if the practice is just as long and grueling. The symbol of the cross itself shows us the truth of this paradox. The cross has gone from a symbol of suffering so severe that it struck fear into the heart of every Roman to a symbol of hope for untold numbers of people throughout history, and all because of Jesus’ willingness to accept suffering. In the end, the problem of suffering cannot be solved without Jesus. Yes, as is laid out in this article, there is good reason to take the Way of the Cross without an explicit appeal to religion, but suffering itself cannot die unless we are willing to unite ourselves with Christ and accept the will of God the way He did in Gethsemane. As St. Paul explains in Philippians 3, by sharing in the sufferings of Christ, we can also share in his resurrection. When we learn to fully accept God’s will, suffering becomes a gift. There is no longer a reason to say, “it should not be this way”. Suffering takes on a whole new character. It becomes redemptive. Perhaps the truth of suffering is that it is destined to become either the means of our salvation or of our eternal ruin.

Scriptural Bingo

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In Book VIII of his Confessions, St. Augustine details his conversion.  After begging the Lord to finally free him from enslavement to sin, he began to weep with bitter sorrow because he felt powerless to overcome it.  He suddenly hears the voice of a child, almost in a sing-song voice, say “Take and read, take and read.”  He reasoned that the voice had a divine source and immediately opened a book of the Epistles of St. Paul.  Happening upon Romans 13:13-14, “let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires”, the saint was immediately converted to Christ with “all the darkness of uncertainty vanishing away” (VIII, 29).

Augustine had learned this approach from St. Antony of the Desert whom he had read about.  Antony entered a church and upon hearing the words of Christ to the Rich Young Man to sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me” (Mt 19:21) did exactly as he was told.  We might be tempted to think the men superstitious, playing a form of Scriptural Bingo.  Except, that is, for the fact that we are talking about two saints.  Let us then examine exactly what is going on there.

Faith in Sacred Scripture

In his Encyclical on Sacred Scripture, Providentissimus Deus, warned that “a thirst for novelty and unrestrained freedom” in Scriptural interpretation represented a great threat the belief in Sacred Scripture as the true Word of God.  Scripture itself became victim to the cult of the expert and Scripture Scholars, rather than the Church, became authentic interpreters.  The average Catholic comes to think Scripture above his paygrade so that, confused by the experts, he sets it aside.  Faith in Sacred Scripture as the authentic Word of God, addressed not just to experts but to every man, was toppled.

The saints, including Antony and Augustine, believed in the public revelation contained in Sacred Scripture.  But because it is God Who speaks, they also believed that Scripture was a vehicle of private revelation as well.  This does not make them closet Protestants but fully Catholic.  They believed that God also revealed Himself and His will to them personally through Sacred Scripture.  To grasp this fully, we have to do some theology.  “Doing” theology means that we take something we believe and work out the implications of it so that it becomes a real principle in our lives.  We move from just believing it to real-izing it.

Real-izing Our Belief in Sacred Scripture

Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit is the true author of Sacred Scripture.  To real-ize this we must first set aside the question of how inspiration works.  It is not that this is an unimportant question, but that there is a tendency to over-play the hand that man plays in it.  However it worked, we have to know that the Holy Spirit inspired the Sacred Author to say exactly what He wanted to say and how it was to be said.  In other words, the Holy Spirit is the One Who is speaking, even if He is using a human mouthpiece.  From this we can draw a couple of principles

  • Every single word is both inspired—“all Scripture is inspired by God”  (2Tim 3:16) and true—“He cannot deny Himself”(2Tim 2:13)
  • Because it is God Who is doing the speaking Scripture is “living and active” (Heb 4:13)

This second principle likewise bears some explanation.  Because it is God Who was speaking through St. Paul, He had foreknowledge of the fact that St. Augustine would read Romans 13 on the fateful day.  The words contained within their meaning exactly what Augustine needed to hear to move his heart, opening it up to receive the grace of conversion.  It is as if God Himself in that very moment spoke directly to St. Augustine telling him what to do.

The words therefore are more than a dead letter, they are also active.  This means that like all of God’s words they are performative.  They effect what they command.  Augustine was not just reading something directed to him personally, the words themselves contained the power for him to “make no provision for the flesh.”  It is the words themselves that move Augustine to convert.  Whenever God commands, He also equips. 

Augustine as Everyman

What happened to Augustine is really not unique in that regard.  It is the same thing that is supposed to happen to each one of us every time we open our Bibles.  Each time Christ told the Apostles “have no fear”, He wasn’t just telling them to calm down, but He was also taking away their fear.  But not just their fear, but everyone who ever laid the eyes of faith upon Mark 6:45-52 while in a state of anxiety.

The Apostles knew Christ’s words had power because He had commanded a storm to cease with a single rebuke.  We too must come to believe that same power flows from the same Word found in Sacred Scripture.  This is what I mean by faith in Sacred Scripture.  Once you real-ize that it truly is living—directed to you personally from the seat of Eternity—you can expect it to be active by causing something to change in you. 

The problem is that there are forces at work trying to undermine this by turning Scripture into an academic subject and subjecting it to literary criticism without having faith in it living power.  Ultimately this undermines faith by echoing Satan’s “did God really say?”.  God really is speaking through Sacred Scripture, not just to mankind but to me here and now.  Pray for the grace of an increase in faith in Sacred Scripture!    

The Eucharistic Marriage

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Although the idea is no longer in vogue, the notion of the “marital debt” remains an important Biblical principle within Christian Marriage.  Within his teaching on Marriage in 1Cor 7, St. Paul exhorts married couples to never forget this principle that follows from the vows that seal the Covenant of Marriage.  Because the spouses pledge to give themselves personally, and therefor bodily to their spouse, they give their spouse rights over their body.  This is especially true when it comes to the marital embrace.  It is important not because spouses necessarily have to engage in the marital embrace anytime one of them feels like it, but because it is a sign that reveals something very important about the relationship between the Divine Bridegroom and His Bride. 

The preferred image of Sacred Scripture for the relationship between God and mankind is that of Bridegroom and Bride.  The Bible has numerous examples, most prominently that of the end of time when Christ will take His Bride into His home (Rev 19:7).  The actual wedding took place when a Virgin said Yes and became a mother, offering her body so that He could take human nature to Himself.  The Incarnation is the one flesh union of God and Man—what God has brought together, no man can ever draw asunder.  It is consummated when Bridegroom gives up His Body for His spouse with a love that is stronger than death.

If we were to stop there, we would be leaving things on a rather generic term.  Christ did not intend to consummate His marriage to mankind in general, but each man specifically; not just the Church, but each of her members.  And this is where the Marital understanding of the Incarnation meets the Eucharist.

At each and every Mass, Christ states His desire to enter into a one-flesh Communion which each of the believers present.  “This is My Body, given up for you” is meant to be taken quite literally as Christ giving Himself bodily to each of us.  We must likewise specify our consent to enter into this communion with our Amen.  To receive the Eucharist is to literally enter into a one-flesh Communion with Him, a Divine/Human marital embrace if you will.  This is one of the reasons why God, when He designed marriage, and the marital embrace specifically, attached such great desire and pleasure to it.  It was meant to point to the desire and joy that we experience in the heavenly consummation first and foremost.  But it is also meant to be a sign of the desire and joy of the earthly consummation in the Eucharist. 

The Marriage Debt and the Eucharist

All that being said, what does this have to do with the marriage debt?  Through the true one-flesh union that is effected in the Eucharist, the individual believer gains the rights over Christ’s Body.  These “rights” mean that they can offer Him to the Father as if the offering was their own and that there is a moral unity so that His acts become ours.  The Marriage Debt ultimately allows us to fulfill the debt that each of us has to God of offering a worthy sacrifice.  The Natural Law demands that we offer sacrifice to God.  But no sacrifice that man offers on his own could ever fulfill this obligation.  So Christ now makes such a sacrifice possible and in such a way that it is man that offers it.  This is no mere substitution but an offering in spirit and truth of the made possible only through the one flesh union that occurs in the Eucharist. 

The comparison then that St. Paul makes in Ephesians 5 is not just about marriage but about the Eucharist as well.  It also eliminates any understanding of the Eucharist as a mere symbol.  A symbol could not bring about a true Communion—only Christ truly present in the Eucharist will do.

With the one flesh union between Christ and the individual believer that occurs in the Eucharist, each person is able to give glory to God and achieve the salvation of their soul.  The one-flesh union is not just a union of bodies, but a union of Persons so that the fourfold intention of Christ in the Eucharist, becomes the fourfold intention of His Bride.

Furthering the Communion

This makes the short time in which this physical union takes place, namely the time right after receiving Communion, an important time.  It is the time where we further solidify our communion with Christ.  We join Christ in His fourfold intention and make His acts ours.  First, the Eucharist is offered as an act of adoration.  Adoration is the acknowledgement of our utter dependence upon God as our Creator Who alone is worthy of supreme honor and dominion.  Because it is Christ, true God and true Man, Who offers it the Eucharist is the most pleasing act of adoration to God.  Likewise, the Eucharist is offered as an act of Thanksgiving for all the benefits that God has bestowed upon us.  Each Eucharist can be offered for specific benefits.  Third, the Eucharist is a sin offering by which are sins are forgiven.  Finally, it is offered as an act of impetration asking for the necessary graces for salvation.  These same graces were won by Christ and are distributed through the Eucharist.

It is in and through the Eucharist that Christ fulfills the marital debt by offering His Body to His Bride for her use.  The Holy Eucharist is a nuptial Sacrament that is the greatest expression of married love.

What is Actual Grace?

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Our Lord told the Apostles that they were given the power to understand the mysteries of God’s Kingdom.  For the rest of the people, He relied on the power of parables to teach them about these same mysteries.  To explain one of the most central mysteries of our Faith, grace, Our Lord repeatedly relied on the image of a seed.  Just as there is a hidden cooperation between soil and seed, there is a mysterious cooperation between human freedom and Divine power. 

While this action remains in the realm of theological mystery, this does not mean that we need to remain fully ignorant or passive to how grace works on and in us.  If that was true, then Our Lord would not have bothered using natural things to describe these supernatural realities.  Understanding the “mechanics” of grace turns out to be vital (in the truest sense of the word) to our sanctification and personal redemption. 

Shedding Light on the Mystery

The problem is that most of us labor under a vague understanding of grace as a concept.  As the Latin term gratis implies it involves a gift given freely.  But we must take the term also in the sense of being pleasing to someone—as in “I am in his good graces.”  Fully understood then grace is a free gift that makes us truly pleasing to God.  This bestowing of “pleasing-ness” happens in two ways that have been traditionally categorized as Actual Grace and Sanctifying Grace. 

Just as in the natural life, God must both bestow existence and continue to sustain that existence, it is also in the supernatural life.  God bestows supernatural life through Sanctifying Grace and continues that life through the power of Actual Grace.  This distinction is clearly laid out in Chapter 3 of the Book of Revelation when Our Lord says: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20).  Our Lord’s knocking and our opening is the action of Actual Grace while the dining together that is the sign of a shared life is Sanctifying Grace.  In order to be brief, we will limit our discussion to Actual Grace here and will cover Sanctifying Grace another time. 

“Without Me You Can Do Nothing”

Men and women, even in their fallen state, are still capable of morally good actions naturally.  What they are not capable of are supernaturally good (i.e. meritorious) actions.  For this, they must both have supernatural life (Sanctifying Grace) and the sustained supernatural power that we call Actual Grace.  When Our Lord says “without Me you can do nothing” He is primarily referring to the supernaturally good actions we are moved to do by actual grace.

As an aside, some of the Doctors of Prayer in the Church say that at a certain point actual graces are no longer needed in the person in the Unitive Way because the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are fully operative.  This makes sense, but because all of us must journey through the Purgative and Illuminative Way first, we can assume that every supernatural act that we perform must first be motivated by actual grace.

By “nothing” then Our Lord means “nothing that will last for eternity”.  This includes not just our supernaturally good actions, but conversion itself.  This leads to a further distinction between two kinds of Actual Grace: operative and cooperative. 

Operative Grace

The sinner finds himself in a literal “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.  Under his own power, he can never turn or return to God.  Justification and sanctification requires Divine intervention.  This intervention however must be done in such a way that it is still an act of the person’s will to repent.  Put in more theological terms, actual grace must prompt the sinner to return to God.  This “knocking at the door” is what is called operative grace.  Operative grace, according to the Council of Trent’s Decree on Justification, is the grace that moves that touches the person and movies them towards a desire to conversion.  More specifically it tackles the catch-22 so “that in adults the beginning of that justification must proceed from the predisposing grace of God …whereby, without any merits on their part, they are called; that they who by sin had been cut off from God, may be disposed through His quickening and helping grace to convert themselves to their own justification by freely assenting to and cooperating with that grace.” 

The whole purpose of this operating grace is to pave the way for the second “type” of actual grace, cooperating grace.  Once that operative grace is consented to, once the person decides that “yes, I desire conversion” they must still move to “open the door.”  This movement towards conversion is the work of cooperating grace.  This grace too, requires the consent of free will and can be rejected. 

Two Saintly Examples

Two famous conversion stories will help to shed light on how these two graces work.  The first is St. Paul’s Road to Damascus encounter with Our Lord.  The story is well known, but we can couch it in terms of actual grace to make the distinction between the two kinds clearer.  The powerful operative grace comes specifically when Our Lord invades Saul’s life saying, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”  St. Paul acknowledges a desire for conversion by asking, “Who are you, sir?”  Now Our Lord offers St. Paul a cooperating grace: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do.”  St. Paul consents and the actual grace moves him to go to Damascus.

From that moment forward, cooperating grace becomes the motivating force for all the supernaturally good actions in St. Paul’s life.  It sustains the supernatural movement in his life always with his free will consent.  So powerful is this force that it prompts him to tell the Corinthians “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective. Indeed, I have toiled harder than all of them; not I, however, but the grace of God [that is] with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

A second famous example shows how operative grace might be accepted but how we can run from cooperative grace.  St. Augustine in his Confessions tells how he “had prayed, ‘Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ For I was afraid lest thou shouldst hear me too soon, and too soon cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished” (Book 9, Ch. 7).  Consent to the operative grace occurs (he prays), but there is no will to accept the cooperative grace.  This is instructive because it shows how operating grace does not come just once, but many times.  In Augustine’s case the frequency of the invitation was greatly increased because of the prayer of his saintly mother, Monica.  This ought to prompt us to ask God very specifically and repeatedly to send operative graces to those whom we know personally to convert.

To summarize, we can once again turn to Augustine.  Like St. Paul, St. Augustine understood the operations of actual grace from experience earning him the title Doctor of Grace.  There is no better summary of the action of actual grace then his:

“For He who first works in us the power to will is the same who cooperates in bringing this work to perfection in those who will it. Accordingly, the Apostle says: ‘I am convinced of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to perfection until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Phil 1:6). God, then, works in us, without our cooperation, the power to will, but once we begin to will, and do so in a way that brings us to act, then it is that He cooperates with us. But if He does not work in us the power to will or does not cooperate in our act of willing, we are powerless to perform good works of a salutary nature.”

Free Will and Grace, 17.33

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.

Cardinal Cupich’s Two-Way Street

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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.

Jumpstarting Reform

Devils, Eucharist, Fasting, Spiritual Life, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , ,

In the opening chapter of his short book, Letter to a Suffering Church, Bishop Robert Barron calls the scandal within the Church “a diabolical masterpiece”.  The Bishop’s point is that everything that has happened within the Church over the last half century has been clearly and methodically planned out such that the sulfuric stench cannot be overlooked.  Bishop Barron only mentions this insight in passing as he attempts to instill hope in those who have suffered greatly as a result of the latest scandal. It is befitting, however, if we are to fully come up with a plan of reform, that we linger just a while longer on this fact.

First, we must admit that as ghastly as the abuse crisis has been, from within the satanic strategy, it is but a means to the devil’s overall plan to destroy the Church.  What this means is that if we focus only on the abuse crisis then we will be putting a band-aid on a bullet wound.  This is not to say that we do nothing about it or that we do not address it directly—band aids are necessary treating wounds, but only after the source of the wound is treated.  And the source of this wound in the Church is exacerbated by the fact that we deny that someone is actively working to destroy the Church.  It is the steady refusal over the last half century to admit of the Church’s militancy.  The Church is not a field hospital, but an army.  It may have field hospitals, but it is not the Red Cross.  It is an army because it is at war and its battleground is dominion of human souls.

Breeding Soft Soldiers

This repeated refusal to admit of the Church’s militancy has not changed the fact that she is Militia Christi, but it has made the soldiers soft.  The Church may be feminine, but she is not effeminate.  There is no more visible sign of effeminacy than sexual vice, especially of the kind that many clerics are accused.  But this softness affects not just the clergy but the laity as well.  We are the “soft generation” that is doomed to be the “lost generation” if we do not tighten up formation.

Notice that I did not say the softest generation, for there are far too many generations in the Church who have fallen prey to softness.  Church historian Roberto De Mattei describes the story of the Sack of Rome in 1527 as a “merciful chastisement” because reform in the Church had stalled and it served to jumpstart it. “The pleasure-seeking Rome of the Renaissance turned into the austere and penitent Rome of the Counter-Reformation.”  His point, although only implicitly made, is that chastening, either divinely or self-inflicted, is always a necessary pre-cursor to reform.  Softness must be rooted out one way or the other.

Like any army, once the enemy is clearly identified, a battle plan must be drawn up.  Since this is first and foremost a spiritual battle, we must use spiritual weapons.  Every renewal in the Church has come on the heels of a small remnant that committed to using these weapons and specifically aiming them at the enemies of the Church.  When the Church becomes soft, it is these three weapons, prayer, penance and mortification that are eschewed.  So, if we are to re-enter the fray, we must grasp the hilt of these three swords and wield them against our enemies.

Prayer

The mention of prayer is not meant to insinuate that people are not praying.  It is to direct our prayers towards a very specific intention—to strengthen and protect the Church from her enemies.  This intention is best fulfilled by praying with the Church in her two “official” prayers—the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

I have written many other times about the necessity of regularly, that is daily and not just weekly, participating in Mass so I won’t belabor the point yet again but lead with a simple question: what sacrifice in your life do you need to make so that you can become a part of Christ’s saving mission begun at Calvary and continuing at the altar of your local parish?  The Eucharist is an infinite source of grace that Christ is just waiting to pour out upon those who offer it with Him.

The second form of prayer is one that I have not discussed much in the past and that is the Divine Office.  Commonly called the Liturgy of the Hours, it is the prayer of the Church that is offered seven times a day.  Seven is no arbitrary number, but the Church’s answer to the fact that “though the just man falls seven times a day, he will get up” (Proverbs 24:16).  This getting up and returning whole-heartedly to God by singing to Him His songs of praise in the Psalms and Canticles and recalling His saving acts throughout history.  The Liturgy of the Hours are by their very nature penitential and thus perfectly suited to our times.

Those in the clerical state are required to pray the Liturgy of the Hours under the pain of sin.  Many unfaithful priests do not.  The laity can pick up the standard voluntarily and run with it, keeping those unfaithful priests, many of whom are directly responsible for the sad state of the Church, in their intentions.  And because it is a free gift and not required it is most pleasing to God, even if due to our state in life it requires a great sacrifice to pray seven times.  Desperate times call for heroic sacrifice.  If it seems daunting find someone who can pray it with you or teach you, or read one of the recent books written to draw the laity into the Divine Office.

Penance and Mortification

These two terms, penance and mortification, are often used interchangeably.  Grasping the distinction is important only insofar as it relates to our intention.  Penance is reparation for sins committed, mortification is like pre-pentence in that it is aimed at rooting out the weaknesses that cause us to sin and have to do penance.  In practice they should go hand in hand.

Sins of the flesh and the demons who specialize in them are specifically targeted by fleshly penance and mortification.  “These can come out only with prayer and fasting”.  Fasting is the “fleshly” penance par excellence because it trains the Christian soldier to control all of his fleshly appetites.  It is the antidote to the softness that has hamstrung the Church.  It is no wonder that we no longer hear about it from the pulpit or that the Church does not require it more often than twice a year.  We need to be giving more and offer it in reparation for the Church’s soft sins.  The upcoming battle will require tremendous sacrifice and only those who have trained themselves to forego what is necessary in favor of the “one thing that is necessary” that will persevere.

There are many ways to fast and all are good.  The point is to start by making sacrifices at each meal and add from there.  You will find a method that fits with your state in life.  The method that St. Thomas recommends amounts to skipping one meal a day and that principle seems to work well although the combinations are endless.  One that works very well for the laity because it is the least disruptive to family life is from dinner to dinner.  You eat dinner on day 1 and then eat only two tiny meals during the day and then have a full meal at dinner the next evening.  The point is not to kill yourself but to offer something to Jesus.  When this intention is kept in mind, you will find that your desire to be generous with Jesus quells any hunger pains.   

There are other bodily mortifications and penances that are helpful, especially when we think about those practices that make us soft—cold showers, sitting upright in a chair with both feet on the floor, setting AC/heat at a level where you are slightly uncomfortable, rocks in shoes.  The point is to directly attack our need for comfort in a spirit of penance.

St. Paul was perhaps the greatest cultural reformer and a pillar of the Church.  One could argue that his success was attributed to the fact that he had a clear understanding of who he was fighting against and armed himself spiritually for the battle.  “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph 6:12).  If we want to jumpstart the reform of the Church, then we should likewise enter into the spiritual battle.

 

On Circumcision

Bible, Bioethics, Judaism, Theology, , , , , ,

In a previous post, it was discussed how Catholics could not participate in Seder Meals.  The reasoning was that for one to participate in a distinctly religious act like a Seder Meal is a form of external worship.  When external worship does not conform to internal belief, then objectively speaking one has sinned against the Seventh Commandment.  In other words, it is a form of lying.  This applies not just to the Passover meal, according to St. Thomas, but to all of the legal ceremonies of the Old Law.  Each of the ceremonies of the Old Law expressed the expectation of the coming Messiah, those of the New Law reflect His having already come.  Regardless of what one actually believes, to participate in one of these ceremonies is to profess that Christ is yet to come.  Once articulated this way, it seems rather straightforward.  But there is another action associated with the Old Law that is performed with far more frequency today than Seder Meals—Circumcision.  Have all those who have been circumcised, or more accurately their parents who chose to have them circumcised, then sinned gravely?

St. Paul is rather straightforward in his condemnation of those who would choose to be circumcised.  In Galatians 5:2-4, the Apostle to the Gentiles says, “if you have yourselves circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.  Once again, I declare to every man who has himself circumcised that he is bound to observe the entire law.  You are separated from Christ, you who are trying to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.”  St. Paul is reiterating and expounding upon what the Council of Jerusalem declared regarding the practice of Circumcision (c.f. Acts 15).  Baptism became the new circumcision, the means by which both the circumcised and uncircumcised entered the New Covenant (Col 2:11-12).  It was not necessary to first enter the Old in order to enter the New.  So, it seems that, just like the Seder Meal, one should not ever be circumcised.

A Possible Exception?

The problem with this view however is that St. Paul, on the heels of the Church’s declaration, tells the Gentile Timothy to be circumcised in order to be more effective in his ministry to the Jews (c.f. Acts 16:4).  What this “exception” opens up is the possibility that the act of circumcision can be performed for non-religious reasons.  But the fact that St. Paul refuses that Titus be circumcised means that circumcision is OK as long as it is not done for religious reasons (Gal 2:3-5).  And in this way, it is vastly different from the Seder meal in which the religious element cannot be removed.  Whether the only exception is when ministering to the Jews or if there might be others then does not necessarily matter.  What matters is that Circumcision can be viewed as a non-religious action and thus it is not intrinsically wrong for a Catholic to be circumcised.

 During the Middle Ages, the Church spoke authoritatively regarding the practice of circumcision and disallowed it in all cases.  Most prominent among the decrees is that of Pope Eugene IV who, in the Papal Bull Cantate Domino declared that “all who glory in the name of Christian not to practice circumcision either before or after baptism, since whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation.”  It is clear from his language that again, it is not the physical act of circumcision per se that is the problem but that it is impossible to separate it from its religious meaning given the current climate.  Only Jews were circumcised during the Middle Ages clearing the way for either irreligion (for those who professed it did something) or scandal.  What this does not say however is that somehow Jews, because they are circumcised before Baptism are somehow lost.  That would obviously go against the testimony of Scripture (c.f. Romans 11:25-29).  Pope Eugene IV makes it crystal clear when he says “Jews and heretics and schismatics cannot become participants in eternal life, but will depart “into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels” [Matt. 25:41], unless before the end of life the same have been added to the flock.”  Jews, despite being circumcised can still be saved through Baptism and remaining within the “bosom and unity of the Church.”

Therapeutic Circumcision

If we advance four hundred years, arguments are being put forward for therapeutic reasons why circumcision may be advisable.  In other words, there may be non-religious reasons for being circumcised, reasons that once it became more commonplace such that its practice would not link a person intrinsically to the Jewish faith.  It was from within this climate that the Church began to change her tone and now begin to look at the morality of circumcision from within the context .  Pope Pius XII, in a discourse from 1952 even explicitly taught that circumcision was morally permissible “if, in accordance with therapeutic principles, it prevents a disease that cannot be countered in any other way.”  Nontherapeutic reasons have yet to receive an endorsement from the Church and so it should be assumed that, although there may be morally licit nontherapeutic reasons (like Timothy), there needs to be further development and understanding what those reasons might be.

It is instructive to delve deeper into the particularities of the therapeutic viewpoint so as to understand more deeply when it is wrong.  Therapeutic modalities are governed by the principle of totality which is meant to protect bodily integrity.  The principle of totality and integrity says that we may not modify the body of a person except in the case of medical necessity or to restore proper functioning.   Summarizing, the Catechism says about bodily integrity, “[E]xcept when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly intended amputations, mutilations and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against moral law” (CCC 2297).  

Strictly speaking, circumcision as it is commonly performed within Western medicine is not a mutilation or a sterilization.  Both of these are related to bodily function.  Circumcision does not alter the functioning of the penis.  It is however an amputation and is medically defined as such (posthectomy).  Thus we cannot perform a circumcision for nontherapeutic reasons.

Did God then command something that was wrong in commanding the Jews to be circumcised?   The medical circumcision that we perform today is different from that of the Old Covenant Jews in the time of Jesus.  They did not amputate the entire foreskin but instead made a ceremonial (although probably no less painful) cut of a flap of the foreskin called a Brit Milah.  Obviously, this would not be a full amputation like we currently perform today, called a Brit Peri’ah.  This may also mitigate the “Timothy exception” since his circumcision was not an amputation.  This is mentioned as well because we are likely not dealing with the same thing, even though we call them both “circumcision”.   But even if they are then the permissibility then hinges on whether or not there are therapeutic reasons for doing so.    

This is a question for medical science and not for theology and so the Church as remained relatively silent in recent times about the issue (unfortunately).  Most circumcisions today are performed, at least by parents, under the assumption that there are good therapeutic reasons for doing so.  Medical science is starting to come to a different conclusion, although coming to a consensus has been rather slow.

Given all that has been said and if we are to assume that there are not good therapeutic reasons for being circumcised in most cases, it is natural to ask whether one is culpable for being circumcised.  The obvious answer is no for, even though the parents may consent for the children, the sins of the father do not fall upon the children.  Circumcision is done to you, not something you choose to have done and thus you bear no moral responsibility.  But we did speak about the “sins of the father “suggesting there may be some culpability on the part of the parents.  Most parents have no reason to question convention, especially when medical professionals assume the procedure is to be done.  Thus, they are operating under invincible ignorance and any culpability they do bear is for not considering the question more thoughtfully.  But it is also assumed that the parent-to-be reading this essay will take the time to form themselves now that they know it is a debated issue and overcome their ignorance.

In conclusion we can say that as far as we can discern without further instruction from the Church, all non-therapeutic circumcisions are wrong.  There certainly are therapeutic reasons for performing one, although they may be less serious than the culture at large would have us think.  Although this is a medical question, each person should do their homework and exercise cautious prudence when deciding to have their sons circumcised.

Co-Redemptrix?

Mary, Passion of Christ, Suffering, The Life of Jesus, Theology, , , , , , ,

On the Feast of the Annunciation in 1945, a secretary from Amsterdam, Holland named Ida Peerdeman was visited with an apparition from heaven.  The visits from a woman who would identify herself as Our Lady of All Nations would continue for the next fifteen years for a total of 57 times.  It took nearly 50 years, but the apparition was deemed to be “of a supernatural origin” by Bishop Jozef Marianus Punt of Haarlem in 2002.  Although still awaiting official Vatican approval, the apparition of Our Lady of All Nations is remarkable for the content of its messages, one of which had a very specific request.   On July 2, 1951, the visionary was told “Now, look and listen. What I am going to say is an explanation of the new dogma. … From my Lord and Master, the Redeemer received his divinity. In this way the Lady became Co-Redemptrix by the will of the Father. It was necessary to begin with the dogma of the Assumption. Then the last and greatest would follow. … Tell that to your theologians. I do not come to bring any new doctrine. The doctrine already exists. Say this to your theologians: ‘Already, from the beginning, she was Co-Redemptrix.’”  The apparition had requested that the Church declare a fifth Marian dogma, Mary the Co-Redemptrix. 

Whether the apparition receives formal approval or not is still to be seen.  But it cannot be doubted that it remains controversial because of the request for the formal definition of what has become a highly controverted dogma.  At first glance it seems that declaring Mary as the co-Redemptrix takes Marian devotion too far.  There is only one Redeemer and it is Christ Himself.  His Mother may have assisted in this, but to give her such a lofty title verges on heresy.  Admittedly the title, especially in English, does suffer from a linguistical defect.  The prefix “co” in its common usage connotes an equality in the parties.  But it is meant to be a translation of the Latin term cum which means “with”.  So, when we speak of Mary as co-Redemptrix, it is meant to indicate that she is “with the Redeemer” playing an indispensable role in His salvific office.  It should not be viewed as competitive but cooperative.  Jesus Christ is the sole Redeemer of mankind.  If the doctrine of Co-Redemptrix is true, then it must be based on a more nuanced understanding.

Scripture and Co-Redemption

From the outset we must admit that in a certain sense that there are other “co-redeemers” found in Sacred Scripture.  God Himself speaks of Abraham as a co-Redeemer when, through his obedient “yes”, God promises to “bless all the nations of the earth” (Gn 22:17-18, c.f. Romans 4:16-25 where the promise is guaranteed to all who share the faith of Abraham).  Likewise, St. Paul speaks of laboring so that he might “save some by any means” (1 Cor 9:22).  We could cite other examples, but the point is that Scripture is replete with examples of men and women who freely cooperate with God in being instruments of redemption.  This cooperation is always a participation in God’s act of redemption.  It does not diminish the power of God’s redemptive work, but instead magnifies it.  It is one thing to do an activity by your own power, it is quite another, and more praiseworthy, to elevate others to work with you.

Turning to Mary herself, we see her serving as a co-Redemptrix to John the Baptist.  It is the presence of the embryonic Christ child, coupled with the sound of His Mother’s voice that sanctifies St. John the Baptist (c.f. Lk 1:39-45) within his mother’s womb.   This might lead one to think that she is just like Abraham and St. Paul, except for the promise of Genesis 3:15.  When God promises a Redeemer to Adam and Eve, He also promises the “woman” who would be instrumental in crushing the head of the Serpent.  The Woman and her seed would be linked in a single mission.  The seed would be the New Adam, Christ, and the Woman, would be the New Eve, “a helpmate fitting for Him”, Mary.  Summarizing, Pius IX in his Apostolic Constitution declaring the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, said that “God, by one and the same decree, had established the origin of Mary and the Incarnation of Divine Wisdom.”  Mary is, as the Second Vatican Council said, “inseparably linked to her Son’s saving work.”

If Abraham and St. Paul are co-redeemers through participation, then likewise is Mary.  But with Mary her participation is not just a difference in degree, but in kind.  She did not just co-operate with the Redeemer but cooperated in a necessary way.  She does not participate in the work of redemption in some remote way, but directly.  When God set in motion His plan of redemption He made it so that it depended upon her.  She is the only “necessary” co-operator because the body He was to offer, was given to Him by her.  Not only at the Annunciation and the Visitation, but throughout the whole course of His redemptive work, He made it depend upon her.  It was she who offered Him to the Father in the Presentation where His suffering was linked to hers, but also on Calvary.  As Pius XII put it in Mystici Coroporis Christi, “[I]t was she, the second Eve, who, free from all sin, original or personal, and always more intimately united with her Son, offered Him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father for all the children of Adam, sin-stained by his unhappy fall, and her mother’s rights and her mother’s love were included in the holocaust.”

To summarize we would say that the title Mary, co-Redemptrix, is meant to acknowledge that it is through Mary’s continual “yes” that Christ redeemed the world.  She did not redeem the world, but participated in an entirely unique and essential manner in Christ redeeming the world.  That being said, why does it matter whether we define a fifth Marian dogma or not? 

Why it Matters

First, it is a matter of justice, specifically justice towards God in the virtue of religion that we offer fitting honor and praise for the works of God.  If God really did elevate a creature to share in such an intimate way in His redemptive work, then we owe it to Him to acknowledge and glorify Him in this work.  So too with Our Lady.  If she really did play an indispensable role in each of our salvation then the debt of gratitude can be repaid by invoking her under that title.

There is a second, more practical reason as well.  This has been pointed out by many others, including theologian Josef Seifert, but it bears repeating here as well.  The weeds of Protestantism often creep into the Garden of the Church.  Specifically, the Protestant belief in salvation by grace is often professed by many Catholics.  We are saved by grace, but not without our cooperation and the cooperation of other members of the Mystical Body.  “God will not save us, without us” as Augustine said.  We are not saved by our own actions, but those actions initiated in us by grace.  We must still cooperate with them.  This free cooperation in salvation has as its greatest example in Mary, co-Redemptrix.  To define this as dogma would serve to reassert was has become a forgotten belief within the Church.

Before closing, there is one other aspect that merits mention.  Some object for ecumenical reasons thinking that the term co-Redemptrix is just too strong and confusing a term.  Perhaps they have a point and we need to be wedded specifically to that term (although the apparition did use that term specifically).  Provided the term reflects the entirely unique role Mary played and plays in redemption then there might be a more ecumenically sensitive term that could be used.  But this is a double-edged sword.  In Christian-Jewish relations this term would have some traction because it shows the Jews themselves, through both the Patriarchs and the Jewish girl Mary, as co-Redeemers.

Purloining the Pagans?

Anthropology, Apologetics, Church, Defending the Faith, Devils, Paganism, , ,

History, some will have us believe, is riddled with myths of dying gods who in their rising, restore life.  The renewed popularity of these myths is but a thinly veiled attempt to debunk the truth of the Resurrection of Our Lord.  The implication is that Jesus is just one more in a long line of these myths and therefore most certainly false.  So common are these attacks, especially among adherents to the cult of the New Atheists, that it is important for us to have a ready defense.

We need not go into specific examples, but it is worth mentioning that whether it is Osiris (who became king of the underworld and didn’t actually come back to life) or Dionysius, the Christian concept of Resurrection is something that is totally foreign to Pagan mythology.  Witness the response to St. Paul’s preaching of the Resurrection in the Areopagus (Acts 17:16-34).  The wise men of Athens have never heard of the Resurrection and thought it another god that should be added to their pantheon.  So nonplused are they by the mention of it that they blow St. Paul off to hear of it another time.  Christ’s resurrection is not a resuscitation in the manner of some of the Pagan myths, a mere return to life, but an introduction of a profoundly new way of life.  This way of life was not just for Christ, but something that could be communicated to all mankind.

There is also a gap in the logic of the argument as well.  Just because there are other things that are similar to a given thing does not mean that the new thing is simply derived from those other things.  This is especially true when there are important distinctions that render the two things very different  such as afore mentioned concept of Resurrection.  But it may suggest some deeper connection than mere plagiarism.

The Flip Side

It is this flip side cannot be easily dismissed.  If Jesus Christ truly is God incarnate and by His resurrection, He offers to all mankind salvation and life everlasting, then why should we be surprised that there are hints of it found throughout all times and places?  A message that is meant for all mankind from an omnipotent God would be expected to be delivered to all mankind, even if the method of delivery is different.  In other words, this is exactly what we should expect.  If God’s offer really is for everyone in every age, then He would leave traces of it in nature and in human reason so that men would come to know the saving truth. 

In fact, this is not only what would be expected, but is what Divine Revelation tells us to expect.  As the sun was setting on Adam and Eve’s Edenic abode, God made clear to them what the consequences of their actions were.  These consequences and knowledge of them would be passed down from one generation to the next.  No doubt they would be distorted at times, but they would never be wholly forgotten.  This includes both the bad news of division within and without as well as the Good News. The last thing that God tells our first parents before shutting the gates of their earthly paradise is that He will redeem them.  In other words, mankind would never live under a regime devoid of hope.  And just as the bad news is in “our genes” the Good News would be as well.  They are a package deal because God has ordained them as such to suit His purpose of drawing all men to Himself.  If sin cannot change His plans, then neither can something as accidental as time and place.

Of course without continuous revelation to remind them of the meaning of the “hope that is in them“ along with the continued presence of the Serpent, the tree of hope can become twisted and gnarled.  Man, in speaking from the depths of his hope will make up myths to fit the true story as he comes to understand it.  Believers are accused of wishful thinking, but that merely glosses over the question as to why the wish is there to begin with.  The wishful thinking is the residue of the hope that is simply a consequence of God’s promise.

Therefore this plan of attacking the truth of Christ is ultimately false.  There are no myths that precede the “myth become fact” as CS Lewis once called it. For this true myth is found throughout salvation history.  It is a “tale as old as time” because it was “in the beginning.”  The Chosen People simply kept the facts straight, but they lived with the same hope as the pagans.  It is no mere story, but history.  God promised it over and over and then delivered “in the fullness of time”.  The power of prophecy, this calling of His shot long before the actual event, is ultimately what sets Christ aside and renders all the other resurrection myths as weak prophets at best.  It is time we finally bury the myth of the resurrection myth to hopefully never arise again!

Faith in Christ

Bible, Church, Defending the Faith, God's Love, God's Will, Heaven, , , , ,

One of the more controversial teachings of the Second Vatican Council deals with the salvation of non-Christians.  Summarizing the teachings of the Council Fathers, the Catechism says “’Since Christ died for all, and since all men are in fact called to one and the same destiny, which is divine, we must hold that the Holy Spirit offers to all the possibility of being made partakers, in a way known to God, of the Paschal mystery.’ [GS 22] Every man who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church, but seeks the truth and does the will of God in accordance with his understanding of it, can be saved” (CCC 1260).  The controversy arises not so much in the letter, but in the spirit that followed.  It was interpreted as a softening of the Church’s traditional stance that salvation comes only through faith in Christ.  Once softened, the way became clear for a belief in universal salvation.  While this clearly goes beyond the text, nevertheless the evangelical aftershocks have left the Church’s missionary zeal in the rubble.  In an age where exceptions, rather than proving the rule, become the rule, a certain amount of clarity surrounding this issue will help to reignite the evangelical fires of the Church.

It must be admitted at the outset that like many of the statements of the Council, the teachings surrounding this issue suffer from a certain ambiguity.  That the ignorant can be saved does not mean that they will be saved nor does it even make it probable.  It simply opens a door, something that only the most hard-hearted fundamentalist would refuse to admit.  For nothing is impossible for God.  It is not salvation, at least according to St. Thomas Aquinas, that is improbable but ignorance.

What is Faith?

A few preliminary points are in order at the outset.  First when we speak of faith, we must make the distinction between the object of faith and the act of faith.  The object of faith is a statement about reality and the act of faith is an assent to the reality that has been opened by the statement.  Belief requires an object of belief—no one just believes, he must believe something.  When we speak of having “faith in Jesus” we can only mean that we believe that “there is no other name under heaven and earth by which man can be saved” (Acts 4:12).  So when St. Paul declares we are justified by faith (c.f. Romans 3:23-25), he means that we believe the reality that was opened to us by the Incarnation of the Son and by our assent conform our lives to it.

The saving power of faith illuminates a second necessary point.  The author of the Letter to the Hebrews says that “without faith it is impossible to please Him for anyone who approaches God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).  St. Thomas is pointing out what he sees as the content for a “minimum” of faith.  He calls these two fundamental dogmas, that God exists and that He rewards those who seek Him, the credibilia because they contain, at least implicitly, all that God has made explicit through revelation and the Church.

Once he has drawn attention to it, he combines it with the belief that God wishes all men to be saved and concludes that the credibilia have been offered in one way or another to all mankind that has lived apart from Judeo Christian revelation via either the ministry of angels or direct illumination (c.f ST II-II, q.2 art 7).  But he doesn’t stop there because he says that implicit faith is not enough.  It is only an explicit faith in Christ that saves.  The Angelic Doctor says that once the person responds to the credibilia through the workings of Providence He leads the new believer to explicit knowledge of Christ.  With the interior assent to the credibilia and the gift of faith, comes the gifts of the Holy Spirit which perfect that faith.  In other words, ignorance is improbable because, as the Thomist Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange puts it, “if anybody were to follow the guidance of natural reason in the pursuit of goodness and flight from evil, God would by an interior inspiration reveal not only the prime credibles but also the redemptive power of the Incarnation.”

Salvation and the Man on the Remote Island

St. Thomas rejects the “man on a remote island” narrative because it is too natural of an explanation.  Faith is a supernatural gift by which God, who desires all men to be saved, saves us.  He uses the example of the conversion of Cornelius to demonstrate the principle:

“Granted that everyone is bound to believe something explicitly, no untenable conclusion follows even if someone is brought up in the forest or among wild beasts. For it pertains to divine providence to furnish everyone with what is necessary for salvation, provided that on his part there is no hindrance. Thus, if someone so brought up followed the direction of natural reason in seeking good and avoiding evil, we must most certainly hold that God would either reveal to him through internal inspiration what had to be believed, or would send some preacher of the faith to him as he sent Peter to Cornelius (Acts 10:20).”


De Veritate q.14 a.11 ad 1

In short, if God wills all men to be saved then He would not allow ignorance to get in the way.  Faith comes from hearing, but sometimes it is God Who does the talking.

There is an important corollary to this that, despite not being ecumenically correct should not be overlooked.  Bear with me on this one.  If God moves each and every man from implicit to explicit faith then there are men who, if they remain within certain religions that openly reject Christ as Redeemer, will not be saved.  Push always comes to shove because you cannot both implicitly accept Christ and simultaneously explicitly reject Him.  God’s invitation, for it to be truly accepted, must come with full knowledge and full consent.  Love would have it no other way.  That is why I say this not from a judgment seat but bedside to put to rest the prevailing mentality that non-Christians are “just fine”.  It is time we stoke the embers of the evangelical fires and enter the fray and fight for souls.  We need to stop apologizing for being Christians and start apologizing again for Christ.

On Being a Jerk

Sin, Spiritual Life, Spiritual Warfare, Virtue, , , ,

One of the funniest scenes in one of the funniest all-time movies is from The Jerk.  The protagonist , Navin R. Johnson, played by Steve Martin, gets into an argument with his wife (played by Bernadette Peters) and tells her “Well I’m going to go then.  I don’t need any of this, this stuff and I don’t need you.”  As he leaves the room he eyes an ashtray and says “except this ashtray.”  As he plots his course out of the room he picks up several more exceptions (including a chair) until his hands are completely full.  What makes this scene particularly funny is not that Johnson is acting like a jerk, but that it makes all of us look like jerks.  Creating our own list of exceptions to what we truly need is at the root of most of our unhappiness.  That is why it takes a truly wise man like St. Thomas to tell us that there are really only two things we need to make us happy, neither of which is a chair or an ashtray.  In the midst of describing the perfect political regime in his treatise On Kingship, the Angelic Doctor reminds the reader that only  virtuous action and “a sufficiency of material goods, the use of which is necessary for virtuous action” are needed for a good life.

The reason for the first one, virtuous action, is rather easy to grasp.  Only the man who is capable of truly governing himself has the power to use his freedom to pursue goodness, truth and beauty.  The virtuous man is a free man.  The vicious man is a slave—to his pride, his vanity and his passions.  Enslaved to the egotistical trinity, he is easily drudged to other men.  Profound unhappiness ensues.

Becoming a Jerk?

But even if we get the first one right, there is always a risk that we will get the second one wrong.  It is the second one that keeps us from becoming jerks.  Given that the good life consists in virtue, then everything else is evaluated by its capacity to foster the life of virtue.  To be fair, St. Thomas does not say this exactly.  Absent the rare man who has the capacity to practice heroic virtue, most men truly need material support to become virtuous.  These things include food, water, clothing, and shelter for the man and those in his care.  In St. Thomas’ day and age the scant material condition of many men made it extremely difficult to become virtuous.  He thought that it was the King’s job to foster an environment in which men were able to obtain these things with relative ease.  That is his point.

But there is an important corollary to what the Dumb Ox is saying.  What St. Thomas did not envision however was a time when material conditions had changed so drastically that a “regular” man’s virtue would be threatened because of an excess of material goods.  We live in such an age where the material comforts of even the poorest are beyond the wealthiest aristocrats of earlier ages.  Virtue now is threatened not so much by a lack of needs, but because of an excess power to obtain our wants.

We might be tempted to a knee-jerk reaction and think that the response is to only focus on those things we absolutely need.  To be clear, there is nothing wrong with wanting things we do not absolutely need.  It is not a matter of either/or.  A rich life includes wants as well as needs.  The problem is that the jerk wanders about grabbing what he can.  He wants things for the wrong reason.  What are the wrong reasons?  All of them, save one, that the thing helps him in some way to live a life of virtue.  Virtue causes in us the habit of wanting the right things.

True Wisdom of the Saints

The wisdom of St. Thomas is perennial.  He has given us a rule to live by in both lack and plenty.  In this age of plenty there are many Christians struggling not to get caught up in the economic materialism of the age.  This rule guides us in deciding what we will buy and what we won’t.  It keeps us from falling prey to the trappings of the world that are meant to lull us to sleep.  And, most importantly, it gives us a rule to pass along to our children.  Life is about wanting the right things for the right reasons and avoiding becoming a jerk.

St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises introduces the concept of indifference which serves as a perfect complement to St. Thomas’ principle.  We should, according to the saint, be indifferent to the means that God uses to make us holy.  All that we care about is that a thing is making us holy.  Everything else in this world is just a means—instruments used for our growth.  When they cease to serve that purpose, we let them go.  Lacking something?  Thank divine Providence because your need for virtue is being filled in that lack.  It is this holy indifference that also keeps us from becoming attached to things we already have.   St. Paul likewise tells the Philippians that this indifference is a key to unlocking joy: “Now I rejoice in the Lord exceedingly, that now at length your thought for me hath flourished again, as you did also think; but you were busied. I speak not as it were for want. For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, to be content therewith. I know both how to be brought low, and I know how to abound: (everywhere, and in all things I am instructed) both to be full, and to be hungry; both to abound, and to suffer need” (Phil 4:10-13)

The Gatekeeper said that only those who live out the evangelical command of poverty can enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  And herein lies the great value in the teachings of the three saints—it gives us a means to live a life contrary to the anti-poverty of the age.  Might it take heroic virtue to turn away from the excess material pleasures our world offers?  Perhaps. One of the conditions of sainthood is heroic virtue.  And in the end, that leaves us with a true either/or; either we will be saints or we will be jerks.  Don’t be a jerk.