All posts by Rob Agnelli

Pulling the Plug

Bioethics, End of Life

After giving them the entire synopsis of the Gospel for the first eleven chapters of his letter to the Romans, St. Paul tells the Christians to be “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).  In essence he is telling them that the Gospel ought to penetrate into every single dimension of their lives.  This is the role of the Church as Teacher—to show us just how deeply the Gospel penetrates all areas of our lives and how we can act as “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17) in all things.  For converts coming into the Church, it is often the Catholic intellectual tradition that makes the Church herself attractive because it reveals truth as an integrative whole—incorporating not just divine Revelation, but philosophy, science and even psychology all leading us to the One Who is Truth itself.  There may be no single area where this integration is more obvious than in the Church’s teaching on end of life.

Modern medicine is plagued by the problem that there is no strictly scientific way in which to determine when someone has died.  St. John Paul II in an Address to the Eighteenth Meeting of the Transplantation Society in 2000 acknowledged this difficulty when he said:

“…the death of the person is a single event, consisting in the total disintegration of that unitary and integrated whole that is the personal self. It results from the separation of the life-principle (or soul) from the corporal reality of the person. The death of the person, understood in this primary sense, is an event which no scientific technique or empirical method can identify directly.”

In defining death as the separation of the soul from the body, it is obvious that it cannot be determined empirically since the soul is non-material in nature.  Furthermore, as the Holy Father pointed out death is not a process but the definite termination of the life of the person.  What this means is that not all parts of the body die at the same time (fingernails and hair continue to grow for example).  Further complicating this is the fact that through ventilators and heart pumps the person can appear to be alive almost indefinitely.  In summary, it seems at best that medicine can only develop a set of criteria that makes the fact that death has occurred very likely.

Despite the fact that no empirical method can identify when death actually occurs, it is possible to apply Thomistic principles in order to create a criterion for death and leave it to modern medicine to determine what clinical signs may be used to obtain moral certainty that death has occurred.

LifeSupportSlider

To understand these principles, we must first look at the Catholic understanding of the human soul.  Technically speaking the soul is simply the animating principle of each living thing.  In other words, there is no such thing as a living being that does not have a soul.  There are three different types of souls that exist in a nested hierarchy of sorts.  First there is a vegetative soul that has the capacity for growth, assimilate nutrition and reproduction.  A sensitive soul has all the capacities of the vegetative soul plus has the capacity for locomotion and perception.  Finally the intellectual soul has all the capacities of the other two plus the capacity for rational thought.

It is also necessary to examine what we mean when say that “the soul is in the body.”  When a spiritual principle is “in” a material principle it really means that the spiritual principle is operating upon it.  But the human soul does not operate upon each part of the body directly.  When I will to raise my hand, it is not my will that operates directly on my arm, but instead it operates on a “primary organ” through which the soul “moves” or “operates” the body’s other parts.    Although St. Thomas thought this organ was the heart, modern biology tells us that this organ is the brain.  His philosophy was solid, he just lacked the necessary biological knowledge to be more precise.

With this understanding of the human soul and its action upon the human body serving as a foundation, we can now apply this to the practical question of when death occurs.  To say that the soul “has left” the body is to say that the soul is no longer acting upon the body.  Because the union of body and soul is a substantial one, this can only occur when it is no longer able to operate on the body because of a permanent defect in the primary organ (the brain).  This is the basis for the Church’s support of the “neurological criteria” for ascertaining death.

The problem of course is that medically speaking, “neurological criteria” for determining death means different things to different people, but the Church has a very specific understanding of this criteria.  Returning to St. John Paul II’s 200 address, he says, “…in establishing, according to clearly determined parameters commonly held by the international scientific community, the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity (in the cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem).”  This is the so-called “whole brain death.”

To see why this must be so, we can return to St. Thomas’ teachings on the human soul.  The human soul operates in three different capacities—rational, sensitive, and vegetative.  Although we have a single soul, not all these capacities need to be exercised for the soul to be present (think of when we are asleep for example).  Even if the higher capacities can no longer be exercised because of brain damage, the soul is still present and operating in its vegetative capacity.  In other words, when the vegetative capacity can no longer be exercised, we can be morally certain that the soul has left the body and the person may be declared dead.

The person who still has vegetative powers is still in fact alive and loses none of their dignity as a person.  They may be in what is defined medically as a (Permanent) Vegetative State (PVS), but they are still a person and entitled to the care that we afford all people who are incapacitated in some way.  This care includes things such as bathing, warmth, turning them to avoid bedsores, pain relief and most importantly providing food and water.

These basic elements of care are distinct from medical treatments (which are interventions made to return someone to health or cure disease) and are never optional.  There is a tendency within some medical communities to treat those in PVS as if they are already dead and only the body is left.  This leads to the practice of removing nutrition and hydration from them; a practice that was rejected by the CDF in their 2007 document Responses to Certain Questions of the USCCB Concerning Artificial Nutrition and Hydration.  In a very clear manner it was taught that

“The administration of food and water even by artificial means is, in principle, an ordinary and proportionate means of preserving life. It is therefore obligatory to the extent to which, and for as long as, it is shown to accomplish its proper finality, which is the hydration and nourishment of the patient. In this way suffering and death by starvation and dehydration are prevented. A patient in a ‘permanent vegetative state’ is a person with fundamental human dignity and must, therefore, receive ordinary and proportionate care which includes, in principle, the administration of water and food even by artificial means.”

This is why the Church so vociferously opposed the ruling in the Terry Schiavo case.  While she was in a PVS and very unlikely to ever regain use of her higher faculties, she was not dying.  Instead her cause of death was dehydration and starvation.  Unfortunately there are cases every single day that do not garner the same national attention, that still require our attention.  All too often when confronted with what appears only to be a medical decision, families defer to unethical doctors.  “Pulling the plug” is always a moral decision and one that we can make well when we value and attempt to see the truth of the Church’s teachings.

On the Meaning of Dialogue

Dialogue, Vatican II

Last week marked the 50th anniversary of the promulgation of a small, but significant document from the Second Vatican Council called Nostra Aetate.  This Declaration on the relationship between the Church and non-Christian religions has been repeatedly hailed as a watershed document marking the Church’s newfound openness to other religions.  It is often summed up in two sentences directly quoted from the document, “[T]he Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men” (NA, 2).  Like many of the documents of the Council, its overall positive tone has made the Church look more appealing to many.   But this strategy to “accentuate the positive” because it went unchecked, has led to a culture of universalism.  The Church rejecting “nothing that is true and holy in these religions” has really become the belief that the Church “rejects nothing in these religions because they contain things that are true and holy.”  As proof of this, one well known Jesuit author claims that Nostra Aetate has led to an irreversible openness in the Church and to the belief that “Jesus is radiant and alive in whatever paths lead to God, whatever is true, whatever is life giving.”

Like many of the documents of the Council, Nostra Aetate has been caught up by the “Spirit of Vatican II” and has been used to suck the life out of the Church.  When it comes to this particular document however, the Church offered an authoritative interpretation when the Declaration On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church or, simply Dominus Iesus, was issued in 2000.  Anyone who attempts to interpret Nostra Aetate (or Unitatis Redintegratio on the Church’s relationship to other Christians for that matter) without putting on the lens of Dominus Iesus will often succumb to the gravity of universalism.

When Dominus Iesus was released there were accusations that it lacked a certain amount of tact and that it set the Church backwards in her relationship with other non-Catholics.  Once the initial waves of indignation settled down it was mostly ignored despite its clarifying purpose.  It is important to note however that this document carries the same Magisterial weight as Nostra Aetate.  Both documents fall under the category of “Declaration” which means they represent a joint statement of the Pope and another religious leader or leaders regarding what ought to be considered a common understanding of some teaching.

According to Cardinal Ratzinger in Dominus Iesus, there are two truths which go hand in hand in our relationship with other religions.  First, the real possibility for salvation exists for all mankind only in Christ.  The second is not that “Jesus is alive and radiant” in other religions, but that the Church is absolutely necessary for the mediation of this salvation.  One may certainly recognize that within these religious traditions there are elements that come from God and even open up the human heart for the way of the Gospel.  But they also contain superstition and other errors that can also be a genuine obstacle to salvation.  Through the different phases of dialogue we may want to emphasize either of those aspects, but ultimately dialogue that never gets to the superstitions and other errors in order to free the followers of the false religion from them is fruitless.

Dominus Iesus

What then is the purpose of this type of document within the corpus of the Council?  It was meant to be part of an overall call to evangelize.  The Church had become closed in on itself in many ways and so the Council hoped to arm the Faithful with a means of encountering those outside the Church—but always with the intention of bringing them back into the Church.  The openness of the Church always has the goal of closing her doors behind the new members that enter.  As Blessed Paul VI said in his Apostolic Exhortation on Evangelization, the Church “exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 14).

For those who are familiar with the Latin Mass, it ends with the words Ite Missa Est, which literally means “She is sent.”  The Mass empowers us to be sent out into the world so that we might return with more members.

The optimism of the documents was meant to supply an opening to the Faithful in their encounters.  By rejecting “nothing that is true and holy in these religions” it presents common ground for the evangelizer to begin their presentation of the Gospel and invitation to discipleship.  From the Church’s perspective, dialog is part and parcel of evangelization.  It should always have the goal of conversion.  Today, dialogue has become something like negotiations.  Many think that it should be approached as some sort of zero-sum game in that if the Church would be willing to concede that Jesus’ salvific role is not unique, then Muslims would be willing to admit that He may be the savior of Christians just not the savior of Muslims.  The Council recognized that when there are truths at stake there are no winners and losers.  One side’s loss is a loss for both sides and one side’s gain is a gain for both sides.

If we only practice an openness to other religions and not a strong desire to bring them more fully to Christ, then we have failed.  What they offer is already found in the beauty of the Catholic Church.  Certainly the emphasis that other religions place on certain aspects of the truth may help us to see it more clearly in the Church, but still there is nothing loving about leaving them where they are.

At the close of Dominus Iesus, Cardinal Ratzinger supplied some additional ground rules for dialogue that are well worth repeating.  Beginning with the idea of equality he clarifies that this “refers to the equal personal dignity of the parties in dialogue, not to doctrinal content, nor even less to the position of Jesus Christ — who is God himself made man — in relation to the founders of the other religions.”  He also reminds us that if we are truly guided by charity and respect for individual freedom then the Church will be “primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments, in order to participate fully in communion with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”  The point is that by treating the mission of evangelizing with some urgency we are most assuredly doing the will of God, who wills that all men be saved. Salvation is found in the truth and those who obey the promptings of the Spirit of truth are on their way toward it—but it remains for the Church who has been entrusted as its guardian to “go out and meet their desire.”

In Defense of Relics

Saints

In November, the Church invites us all to meditate on the Communion of Saints.  It is a time in which we become aware of the link of charity between the Church Triumphant and the Church Militant and the Pilgrim Church on Earth and the Holy Souls in Purgatory.  But, the term “communion of saints” does not only refer to the communion among holy persons but also the communion in holy things that the members of the Church also share (see CCC 948).  One of these holy things that has fallen into dis-use since the Second Vatican Council is relics.  But if what the 1983 Code of Canon Law says about relics, namely that they are among the things necessary to “foster the sanctification of the people of God” (Canon 1186), then it seems fitting to offer an explanation and defense of the use of these sacred objects.

There are a number of reasons why relics have received little attention, not the least of which is a certain amount of Protestantism that has crept into the minds of the faithful.  This is especially true when it comes to the veneration of the saints.  In order to see the spiritual “value” of relics, we must first offer an explanation of the veneration we give to saints.  The two are obviously linked, but history also bears out the importance of the link.

The first attack against the veneration of the saints came by way of an attack against icons and relics during the 8th Century.  There arose within the Byzantine Empire an attempt to exclude icons from religious worship because they were deemed idolatrous.  The pressure of the iconoclasts was only made more acute with the spread of Islam which forbids the use of religious images.  In response to this pressure, the Church called the Second Council of Nicaea (787) and declared that “precious and lifelike figures of the Cross, the holy Gospels, sacred relics and monuments” were all included among valid objects of Christian worship.  To further counter the accusation of idolatry, the Council Fathers declared that “the honor paid to the image passes on to the one who is represented, so that the person who venerates an image venerates the living reality whom the image depicts.”

Once the Church supported the use of relics as a means to pay honor to the one who is represented, the next attack came seven centuries later when the Council of Trent had to defend, not the use of relics and statues, but the veneration of saints and angels themselves against the Protestant revolt.  What this shows is that the veneration of relics and statues is a defending wall against the attacks against the veneration of the saints.  Where relics and statues play a key role in Christian worship, the saints also too are seen as powerful intercessors.  This only serves to strengthen the relationship among all the members of the Church—those both in heaven and on earth.

It was around the time of the Second Council of Nicaea that St. John Damascene made the classic distinction between latria as the worship that we give to God alone and dulia, the veneration that we give to those to whom honor is due.  The biblical principle that animates this distinction is articulated by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans when he says we are to “pay respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due” (Romans 13:7).  How do we know that the saints are included in those whom we should honor?  Because Our Lord says so in the Book of Revelation when He tells John that “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord’ (Rev 14:13).

We can also offer a logical proof from Scripture as to why the saints are to be venerated.  Throughout Scripture, veneration is offered to the angels (see Joshua 5:14, Daniel 8:17, Tobit 12:16) because of their supernatural dignity which is rooted in the immediate union with God (see Mt 18:10).  Since the saints also have immediate union with God (1Cor 13:12, 1 Jn 3:2) it follows that they are worthy of veneration.

To see why relics play such an important role, we must turn to the other font of divine Revelation, Sacred Tradition.  In so doing we are able to see some of the practical ways in which the biblical necessity of honoring the saints was played out.

We begin by turning to the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (155 AD).  St. Polycarp was a disciple of St. John the Apostle (according to St. Irenaeus, Tertullian and St. Jerome).  In the account of his martyrdom, we find him setting aside his clothes and that the faithful were always “eager who should first touch his skin. For, on account of his holy life, he was, even before his martyrdom, adorned with every kind of good.”  Later we read that the Roman officials refused the faithful St. Polycarp’s remains and later destroyed it.

From this we can conclude the Christians already by the 2nd Century were in the practice of collecting relics of the saints.  A “theology” of relics had already been worked out and they understood their place in a healthy Christian worship.  As the account of Polycarp’s martyrdom says “[F]or Him indeed, as being the Son of God, we adore; but the martyrs, as disciples and followers of the Lord, we worthily love on account of their extraordinary affection towards their own King and Master, of whom may we also be made companions and fellow disciples!”

What may not be so clear is the reasoning behind the destruction of Polycarp’s body by the Roman officials.  It wasn’t just that they were trying to make the Christians’ lives difficult, but the Romans acknowledged that the remains of the martyrs were a source of spiritual power.  They did not destroy the remains of any other people that they executed, it was only the Christians.

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There are additional accounts from antiquity that show that relics were a hallmark of Christian belief (such as the Passion of Ss. Perpetua and Felicity) that make clear that because Christians believed that the bodies of the saints had come to share in Christ’s humanity, they therefore shared in His power to heal.  They turned to the relics for miraculous intercession and received it.

They knew that because those same bodies were no longer animated by the soul of a saint,  it did not mean that they ceased to be holy.  In fact they knew that it is those same bodies that would be raised on the last day.  If they sought to touch the body of Polycarp when he was alive, there was even more reason to do so after his death.  It becomes apparent that the belief in relics also rests upon the foundational belief of the resurrection of the body.  In a time when this doctrine too is little believed (especially that we receive back our same, although glorified, earthly bodies ), relics act as reminders of this glorious truth.

Veneration of relics both strengthens and expresses our hope in the Resurrection by venerating the earthly remains of one who we believe will assured rise to everlasting life.  We know that there is a great “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrew 12:1) that  surrounds us, relics make it possible to worship God in one family in a way that is tangible for us.

The veneration of the saints and their relics is one of the great treasures that Our Lord left to the Church.  Not only do they help us to grow closer to the invisible members of the Family of God, they call to mind the great love and mercy of God who can raise up dust to be His adopted children.  By venerating relics, we can more fully express and appreciate this gift.

Redeeming Halloween

Paganism

Tomorrow will mark the 498th anniversary of the founding of Protestantism.  On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.  It is not without irony that this occurred on Halloween, because it directly led to the loss of meaning this once sacred feast day in the Church.  Eventually it led to a near total paganization of the day as we will all witness to varying degrees on Saturday.  Before we can reclaim this day as a Catholic day, we must begin to understand how all of this came about.

Whenever discussions about Christian holidays come up, there is always the accusation that they were originally pagan holidays lurking in the background.  In fact, many would say that Halloween as we celebrate it today is a return to its original pagan roots.  This is a claim that is worth examining because it has also been leveled at Christmas and Easter as well.  Before doing this however it is important to shed light on the implied assumption of most people that do this—Christianity, like paganism that went before it is simply another myth.  They see it as a variation on a similar theme.  Because they all basically tell the same story, they are all made up.

However, this is not the way the term myth should be understood.  To understand it as merely a made up story and therefore a falsehood is to equivocate truth with fact.  Myths can be true without being facts.  Because of his composite nature of flesh and spirit, man can often only know the truth abstractly until he experiences it firsthand.  Through the use of myth, mankind is able to overcome this limitation and  experience a truth concretely.

This is a theme that CS Lewis takes up in his essay Myth Became Fact.  In responding to a friend’s claim that Christianity was merely one more myth of the Dying God, Lewis admits that Christianity is a myth; but a myth that became fact when the Son of God took human flesh to Himself.  Lewis says that:

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.

Once we understand that myth can convey truth, rather than refuting the claim that Christianity is a myth, we can follow Lewis’ suggestion that all the myths of the primitive religions were expressions of mankind’s yearning for contact and communion with God—a yearning the true God had placed inside of all of us.  Jesus Christ and the religion He established, rather than being one myth among many, is the fulfillment of all of them.  It is a myth to be sure, but a myth that is also a fact.

pumpkin_fish

Recognizing that Christianity is the “myth that became fact,” it seems perfectly natural for it to adopt and baptize pagan holidays.  These holidays too are in need of fulfillment because they reflect to varying degrees the seeds of the myth become fact.  In particular, Halloween began when the Western Church took over the pagan festival of Samhain.  This Celtic festival was a celebration marking the end of harvest time and was a time in which they celebrated the dead.

Christians too had a way to celebrate the lives of the dead—called All Saints day.  Halloween is simply an anglicized version of “All Hallows Evening” or the vigil of All Hallows (Saints) Day.  This also marks the time of the most important harvest—the harvest of souls.  The Samhain festival honored the dead because they thought there was a thin veil that separated the living and the dead.  The Church wanted the pagans to know that there is a thin veil that separates Christians from the “Cloud of Witnesses” that had gone before and it was possible to speak with them.

The accusations regarding stolen pagan holiday also come from Protestants as well.   But this incorporating of paganism into Christianity has Pauline roots.  When he is in Athens, he compliments their religiosity and reveals to them who their “unknown god” really is (Acts 17:22-23).  St. Paul clearly adopted this as an evangelical principle telling the Corinthians that “To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:22).  When Catholics borrow from Pagans what is not sinful, they are simply doing what Paul taught us.

The gate to paganism in Halloween was actually opened shortly after Luther’s protestation.  Because the Protestants thought it idolatry to venerate the saints, All Hallows Eve became a day of mockery.  Once Henry VIII suppressed the Church in England, some of the original pagan practices were able to creep back in.  This is the form in which it was brought to the United States.

Obviously “trick or treating” has become the staple of most people’s Halloween celebration.  There are various accounts of where this came from, but the pagans believed that the souls that entered the nether world bore great hunger and would beg for food.  From this came the practice of dressing up like the dead and begging for treats.  As the holiday was Christianized, poor children would visit the houses of wealthier neighbors and receive pastries called soul cakes in exchange for a promise to pray for the dead members of the patron’s family (Sting has a song where he describes this called Soul Cake).

How can we restore Halloween to its rightful place as a Catholic holiday?  There are some who would avoid the festivities all together.  But if Christians transformed the celebration once, we could do it again by changing or restoring the meanings.  Instead, I would suggest that your children dress up as saints or, at the very least, not dress up as anything that has connections to the occult.  Also, I would suggest that rather than participating in the dialogue of “trick or treat” that they might offer prayers for the departed members of the families they visit in exchange for the candy they receive.  I recognize that this might be awkward for younger children so it would also be an excellent day to offer a family Rosary for all the families whose homes they will visit.

 

Ite Missa Est

Evangelization

One of the challenges that the Church found herself facing as the Second Vatican Council convened was that the very idea of missions found itself in a crisis.  Much of the sense of urgency with which the Church viewed missionary activity had been lost.  Many began to question whether missionary activity was even still necessary, especially in light of the truths that could be found in many of the world’s other religions.  After all, God can and wants to save all men, even those outside the Church.  It is from within this theological climate that the Council Fathers addressed the question of why the Church must continue her missionary activity by issuing the Decree on the Missionary Activity, Ad Gentes(AG).  Unfortunately the almost half a millennium that has passed since the close of the Council has seen the crisis associated with the missionary character of the Church heightened rather than alleviated.  In hopes of stemming this crisis, we should reflect upon the missionary teachings of the Council.

The call for a missionary Church evokes in the minds of most people the need to go off to some Third World country and baptize its inhabitants.  While this is certainly part of the missionary character of the Church, with the advent of the New Evangelization we no longer need to go off to a foreign land.  There are many in our personal spheres of influence who have not yet encountered Christ truly.  Despite all the information we have at our fingertips, we are perhaps the most religiously ignorant society in the history of Christendom.   This ignorance can only be shattered if we all recognize we have a missionary vocation.

In coming to understand why the Church should be missionary, it is first necessary to understand what exactly one means when using the term “mission”.  The Council Fathers defined missions as “the term given to those specific undertakings by which the heralds of the Gospel having been sent out by the Church into the whole world to carry out the task of preaching the Gospel and planting the Church among peoples who do not yet believe in Christ.” (AG 6)  In this definition we see two important concepts joined; that of individual conversion and the extending of the Church’s territory.  In defining it in this way, the Council Fathers sought to emphasize the goal of missions is to save souls and not just extend the Church’s borders.  With a proper understanding of this twofold meaning of mission, we can better begin to address the question as to why the Church must still be missionary.

The Church is described by the Council Fathers as “divinely sent to the nations of the world to be unto them ‘a universal sacrament of salvation’” and thus “missionary by her very nature” (AG 1, 2).  On a practical level what this means is that if the Church is missionary by her very nature then for the Church to cease mission would mean that it is no longer the Church.

However there is a much deeper meaning to this statement that is addressed by the Decree.  The Church is missionary by her very nature because the Church’s mission has a Trinitarian foundation.  In God, the communion of divine Persons manifests itself in the interplay of the processions of the Son from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son.  The sending or missions of the Son and the Spirit in time presuppose and reveal these eternal processions and continue throughout time in the presence of the Church in mission. In this way the Church is a sacrament, but it nevertheless seeks through its missions as its goal communion.  It is this communion then that is both the origin and the goal of the Church’s mission.

Mission to Indians--Marquette

This might explain why the Church must be missionary, but it does not necessarily instill any sense of urgency or absolute necessity on the part of the Church.  However, if we examine a further facet to the missionary nature of the Church, we find that it instills both the sense of urgency and absolute necessity.  It is the link with Christ Himself.  We hear this in the unequivocal words of the Decree in the declaration that there is “‘one mediator between God and men, Himself a man, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all’ (1 Tim. 2:45), ‘neither is there salvation in any other’(Acts 4:12). Therefore, all must be converted to Him…”(AG 7).

The missionary mandate is based upon the clear convictions that Christ is both the fullness of salvation and that outside of Him there is no salvation.  In a world that is drinking from a relativistic fountain, this is often thought to be very intolerant.  Nevertheless, even if this foundational truth is exclusivist in that only through Christ is eternal life offered, the Decree is also inclusive in that it does not exclude from salvation those who do not know Christ through no fault of their own.

The overemphasis on the inclusive character of the Decree has led to a culture of universalism in which all men are already saved.  A traditional motivation for preaching the Gospel has always been that there are men whose salvation is in jeopardy.  Once this motivation is taking away the urgency of missionary activity dies.  The true “spirit” of the Council seems to agree with St. Thomas’ assessment that the majority of non-Christians are lost when she proclaims in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium that:

“…often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator.  Or some there are who, living and dying in this world without God, are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these, and mindful of the command of the Lord, ‘Preach the Gospel to every creature’, the Church fosters the missions with care and attention” (LG 16).

Therefore at the heart of the mission of the Church is proclamation of the Truth.  This Truth is not just an idea, but a Person.  Proclamation entails both an invitation to commit to Christ and to enter into His Church through Baptism.  The Council would respond to the quote that is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi of “preach the Gospel and use words when necessary” by saying that “words and invitation are always necessary.”  This proclamation is more than simply the witness of a life of charity.  The priority is always on proclamation, albeit done in respectful dialogue.

The Council taught in Nostra Aetate that “the Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy” in non-Christian religions.  These truths can often be a starting point of dialogue with non-Christians.  Dialogue then is an inseparable part because it offers a new way of relating to and understanding the situation of those to whom the proclamation is made.  Within this dialogue there is a notion of equality.  But this equality

“…refers to the equal personal dignity of the parties in dialogue, not to doctrinal content, nor even less to the position of Jesus Christ in relation to the founders of the other religions. Indeed, the Church, guided by charity and respect for freedom, must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord, and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ and of adherence to the Church through Baptism and the other sacraments, in order to participate fully in communion with God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit” (Dominus Iesus, 22)

Finally, the Council would reject the notion that ignorance is bliss.  Missionary activity is still necessary for the Church because the Gospel is really Good News.  Those who hear it and conform their lives to it are better off both in this world and the next.  Christ is the answer to man’s deepest longings and aspirations. As the Council reminds us “(F)or by manifesting Christ the Church reveals to men the real truth about their condition and their whole calling, since Christ is the source and model of that redeemed humanity, imbued with brotherly love, sincerity and a peaceful spirit, to which they all aspire.”

Christians know that a life without Christ is a life that is incomplete and so it is a supreme act of charity and a sacred duty to go out and meet the desires of all men with the liberating truth of the Gospel in its fullness.  In this way we can see that in the Church’s history missionary drive has always been a sign of the vitality of the faith of the members of the Church.

For their part, the recipients of the message have a duty to seek the truth and once it is found they must conform their lives to it.  Nevertheless this must be done freely and the Church rejects anything that resembles proselytism.

In the encyclical Redemptoris Missio, John Paul II remarked that the number of those who do not belong to the Church had nearly doubled since the close of the Second Vatican Council.  It seems that today, as possibly never before in the history of the Church, there is both the need and opportunity to bringing souls to Christ by both witness and word.  This can only be done if the truth of Christ is emphatically preached and believed on the part of those who preach.  In this way the missionary path of the Church lays wide open.

The Lion in the Room

Atheism

In case you missed the big announcement, the American Humanist Association is having their 75th Anniversary Conference in Chicago next May.  Before you book your trip to Chicago for this historic event, it might be helpful to have a clearer idea of what you would encounter when confronted with a room full of Humanists.

On their web site under their Frequently Asked Questions, I found the following definition of Humanism:

Definitions abound.  Kurt Vonnegut, who served for many years as the AHA’s honorary president, maybe said it most succinctly when he observed that “…being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.”

It seems that this comes down to the age old question of whether we can be good without God.  In fact, the AHA has sponsored an ad campaign in the past on buses in Washington DC that said “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” Given their campaign, I think this is precisely what they are saying.

It is interesting that a group such as the AHA that says reason is the best way to understand the world around us, would treat the most fundamental question of why we should believe in God as irrelevant.  But the fact of the matter is that our ability to reason is one of the things that set us apart as human beings.  This means that above all we seek truth.  And there is no greater question related to the truth than the question of whether God exists or not.  There is no more relevant question than this and it is entirely contrary to reason to simply dismiss it.

To make my point, suppose I change the scenario a little bit and I say, “Why worry about a lion in the room?  Just pass me the popcorn and enjoy the movie.”  I might very well be worried about the lion in the room because there is in fact a lion in the room.  To simply say that I should ignore this question and enjoy the movie is ridiculous.  In much the same way, the answer to “Why believe in God?” may in fact be because there is a God.

Aslan

What I am saying is that before you can even answer the question as to whether we can be good without the Lion of Judah, we must first address whether the claim that God exists is true or not.  If it is not true then nobody who is honest should believe it, regardless of how comfortable it make him feel.  However, if God does exist, then someone who is honest will believe in Him, even if they find it difficult.

What about the original question as to whether we can be good without God?  Despite the fact that I don’t personally think this is a good question, a little over 40% of Americans say you can in fact be good without God (and that is low compared to the rest of the Western World).  Unfortunately, I am going to split hairs again and say that this answer totally depends upon the answer to the first question.  What I mean by this is that your definition of good is totally dependent upon whether there is a God or not.

Those who believe in God also believe that life is eternal and that we are just pilgrims in training for the next world.  Our definition of what is good is going to be seen in light of eternity.  This can lead to a vastly different view of whether an act is good or not.  On the other hand, those who do not believe in God are not pilgrims but tourists and are going to see things that are good only in the temporal sense.

To illustrate my point, I will pull another portion of their definition of humanism from the FAQs.  In it they say that Humanism

is a worldview which says that reason and science are the best ways to understand the world around us, and that dignity and compassion should be the basis for how you act toward someone else.

The part that I want to emphasize is “dignity and compassion” being the basis for how you act toward someone else.  These words have very different meanings depending on your worldview.

Before you can recognize the dignity of the human person, you must first ask from where that dignity comes.  We as Christians believe that our dignity is rooted completely in the fact that we are made in the image of God and are made for God.  That is the source of our dignity.

How would the atheistic humanist answer the question as to what gives the individual dignity?  In the absence of God, we will replace Him with some other god.  These humanists seem to have set themselves up as their own gods (I am not sure how else to interpret the comment that “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.”).  When this happens, the only answer to the question then of what gives an individual dignity is that they are made in our own image.  In other words, what gives a person dignity is how useful they are to me personally.  If I have no use for them, then they can be thrown away.

This, by the way, is precisely why Communism and Atheism must go hand in hand.  If the individual is going to live forever then they are afforded the dignity due to them because they will live forever.  However, if they are merely going to go into the ground to rot then the society or the state is the most important because it will last much longer.

What about compassion?  The word compassion literally means to become a co-sufferer with.  For a Christian, compassion means a willingness to journey with another as they suffer and to take whatever burden of that suffering you can upon yourself.  The Atheistic Humanist flips this completely around so that compassion means that you will do anything you can to relieve your own suffering that is caused by the suffering of another.  This is played out in spades in “Mercy Killing”.  They advocate euthanasia because they cannot stand to see another person suffer.

So with all of this nitpicking of the questions, I will answer the question anyway—can we can be good without God?  My answer is no.  Christ asked the rich young man why he called Him good and that God alone was good.  That is why I think the idea of being “good for goodness sake” is ludicrous.  You cannot be good without some absolute standard upon which to base your goodness.  Which brings me to my second reason and that is that you can’t be good for goodness sake.

What this statement means is that the purpose of life is to “be good”.  So often I hear people say, “I’m a good person” right before they try to justify something that is not good.  When I hear this I want to grab them and shout, “NO YOU’RE NOT AND NEITHER AM I!”  The purpose of life is not to be good.  The purpose of life is to be a saint.  Saints are not merely good people, they are holy people.  As Leon Bloy said, “the only tragedy in this life is to not be a saint.”

 

The Death of Our Lady

Mary

According to some traditions dating back to the 4th Century, the tomb of the Virgin Mary sits in the valley of the Cedron, near Jerusalem.  In the past few centuries however there have been some scholars that insist that her tomb is actually in Ephesus.  For any other person the controversy might be relatively easy to solve, but because she was assumed body and soul into heaven, her tomb would necessarily be empty at this point.  In fact there are many who believe that she did not actually die.  When Pope Pius XII formally declared the doctrine of the Assumption in 1950, he left the question as to whether she died or not still open, referring to her moment of passing as a dormition.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council, while referring to the Assumption as well, did not address the question either (Lumen Gentium, 59).  Although this question still remains open, it is helpful for us to look at the reasons why it is likely that she did die before being assumed into heaven.

A fair question to ask at the outset is why we should even care about what only may amount to theological speculation.  If her body is not in either tomb, then why venerate those locations?  For that matter, why does the Assumption matter?  I would answer by responding as Fr. John Saward says about all Marian doctrines—Mary keeps the truths of the faith from becoming entirely abstract.  She is the first sharer in everything that Christ won for us and therefore the Assumption sprinkles seeds on our own hope for Heaven.

Mary’s Assumption helps us to escape the body/soul dualism in which many Christians are trapped.  Heaven is meant to be a bodily experience and we know this to be true because at least one human person is experiencing it now.  We can say that souls go to heaven, but could we actually prove it?  Her Assumption gives us proof not only that souls go to heaven but that bodies do too.  In other words, the privilege of the Assumption makes the promise of heaven palpable for all of us.  This is why we call Our Lady “Our Hope.”

To see why it matters whether she actually died or not, we must first examine why it is probable that she did.  St. John Paul II took up this question in a Wednesday Audience on July 2, 1997.  To understand his argument, it is first necessary to look at death itself.  By returning to “the beginning” in the Book of Genesis, we can learn a number of things.  First, in his natural state man is capable of death (i.e. separation of the body and soul).  God warns Adam when He enters into covenant with him that he will die if he eats from the Tree of Good and Evil (Gn 2:17).  This is not to be interpreted as a threat so much as it is one of the terms of the Covenant that God is making with Adam that God will preserve him from death.  This of course means that Adam without this preternatural gift would have died naturally.

The other important point to take into account is the specific covenantal curses that are invoked.  When God tells Adam that “you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gn 3:19), He is not only telling Adam that he will die, but also that his body will suffer corruption.  One can infer then that one of the punishments for sin is bodily corruption.

Dormition

Returning now to the Holy Father’s 1997 Audience, we can understand why he says Mary suffered death.  By the “singular privilege” of the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady was preserved from the stain of Original Sin.  This however does not “lead to the conclusion that she also received physical immortality.”  She suffered death as a result of having a human nature and not as a punishment for sin.  Being exempt from all sin, her body would not have seen corruption.

Could she not have remained in the grave, incorrupt?  Certainly this could have been a possibility, but there are other saints who have done so.  If she really is “full of grace” then her privileges as the Mother of God would have to be completely unique.  Add to this a recent finding of science that shows how a child’s DNA remains within the mother’s body for many decades after its birth and it is only fitting that the body that not only carried Christ for 9 months, but continued to carry parts of Him in her body, should be reunited to Him in heaven.  It is almost as if His own Ascension was not complete until all the parts of His body inside her returned to Heaven as well.

So far, it has been shown that she was capable of death, but why was her death probable?  Obviously, only someone who has died can share in Christ’s Resurrection.  Of all Christians, Mary most closely made Christ’s life her own.  It is only fitting then that she share in His physical death too, especially since Christ underwent death to give it a “new meaning and changing it into a means of salvation.”

While we do not know the biological cause of her death, we can say that her death was unlike any other in its sweetness.  The peaceful manner in which she passed has earned a special term—the Dormition (or falling asleep).  St. John of the Cross says that once one has achieved the highest level of prayer (spiritual marriage) death comes about through an act of love so full that it stops the lover’s heart.  This is why St. Francis de Sales says her death was a “transport of love” (Treatise on the Love of God, bk. 7, ch. 13-14).  In short, she died of love.

To answer why her death matters to us, we turn one last time to the Marian Pope—“The experience of death personally enriched the Blessed Virgin: by undergoing mankind’s common destiny, she can more effectively exercise her spiritual motherhood towards those approaching the last moment of their life.”

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. O Refuge of sinners, Mother of the dying, do not forsake us at the hour of our death.

 

On Indulgences

Sacramentals, Sin

Saints can be so old-fashioned.  In a retreat leading up to his priestly ordination, the 20th Century saint Maximilian Kolbe plotted out his spiritual strategy that included what seems like 15th Century advice—“[T]ry to gain as many indulgences as possible, and you will become a saint.”  For many of us, Indulgences remain an untapped source of sanctification that Christ offers us through the Church.  What little we do know about them usually centers around their abuse prior to the Reformation.  The danger today however is not their abuse, but their disuse.  While the Church corrected the abuses in the 16th Century, Indulgences have fallen out of use, mainly because of ignorance about these beautiful gifts.

In his 1967 Apostolic Constitution, Indulgentiarum doctrina¸ Blessed Paul VI invited the Church to “ponder and meditate well on how the use of indulgences benefits their lives and indeed all Christian society.”  With the approach of the Year of Mercy, this seems an excellent time to accept the Blessed Pontiff’s invitation.

Certainly one need not understand the theology behind the doctrine of Indulgences to use them.  But without an understanding of why there are useful, they will quickly fall into dis-use.  To begin to understand, it is helpful to begin by clearing up some confusion surrounding justification.  The word justification is one of those loaded theological terms that is used by Catholics and Protestants alike, but not really understood.  Most simply equate it with forgiveness, but that is not the only way that it is used in the New Testament.  St. Paul devotes a significant amount of time in his letter to the Romans clarifying this important term.  While emphasizing that justification is a free gift (Romans 5:17), he also emphasizes that it is “not hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the word who will be justified” (Romans 2:13).

What this means is that the term is used to represent both an action and a process.  As an action it marks the moment when God makes a man righteous and invites (or re-invites if the case may be) him into His family.  As a process it is the ongoing sanctification by God of one who has embraced the demands of the Gospel.  Both of these aspects are necessary because personal sin always has two effects—guilt and punishment.  This punishment can be both eternal and temporal (see 2Cor 2:6).   In other words, justification involves both the removal of the guilt of sin (forgiveness) and also the purging of its effects (satisfaction).  The Decree on Justification from the Council of Trent (1547) summarizes justification as “a translation from the state in which a person is born a son of the first Adam into a state of grace and adoption as sons of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ…advancing from virtue to virtue,  they are renewed, as the Apostle says, day by day, that is, mortifying the members of their flesh, and presenting them as instruments of justice unto sanctification, they, through the observance of the commandments of God and of the Church, faith cooperating with good works, increase in that justice received through the grace of Christ and are further justified…” (Decree on Justification, Chapters IV, X).

Once we are able to see the two dimensions of justification, we must then address the role of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice in our justification.  In an earlier essay, it was mentioned how necessary it is to see Christ’s sacrifice as “vicarious representation” to have a proper view of God’s “wrath.”  The gist is that Christ died on the Cross as the representative of mankind so that we must participate in order to share in its fruit.  This means that His sacrifice was both necessary and sufficient to remove our guilt and pay the debt of our eternal punishment.  While the sacrifice on Calvary is also necessary for us to pay the temporal punishment for sin, it was not sufficient.  St. Paul says that there is something lacking in the sacrifice of Christ (Col 1:24) and that thing was his (and our) participation.  It is through our participation in the Cross that we are given the currency by which we are able to pay to Divine Justice our temporal debts.

Many think of only of “offering it up” as our participating in the Cross of Christ.  But that is not the only way.  In fact it is probably not even the primary way.  When Christ died on the Cross, His death exceeded the debt of sin.  This created a treasury of merit that was deposited in the Church.  The Church, as the Body of Christ, is now the dispenser of the means of salvation (not its cause).  It is from this treasury that all sources of sanctification flow, including the remission of the temporal punishment for sin.  This is where the doctrine of Indulgences comes in.

Handbook of Indulgences

Blessed Paul VI defined an indulgence as “An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints.”  In other words, an indulgence properly understood is the Church’s application of Christ’s merits toward the debt of punishment we owe God.  St. Thomas says the one who gains an indulgence is not excused from paying the debt of punishment but is given the means to pay it.

There is a tendency within the Church today for many people to be satisfied with reaching Purgatory.  Personally I find this rather sad.  Obviously for one whose love of God is pure, they would not want to spend any time there because it represents a separation from Him.  And, while it is certainly true that those who require Purgatory avoid Hell and will eventually reach Heaven, it trivializes the intensity of the sufferings of Purgatory.  The sufferings of Purgatory are more intense than we can possibly imagine.  It is called the Church Suffering for a reason and that reason is because suffering is all they do.  Much of this suffering can be avoided however by actively seeking indulgences.

Once we accept that Indulgences are an effective part of a healthy spiritual life, we can ask how they are obtained.  First it is worth mentioning that indulgences can only apply to those sins which have been forgiven.  The debt of guilt must first be paid before the debt of punishment can be.

Traditionally, there has been the distinction between plenary and partial indulgences. “An indulgence is partial or plenary according as it removes either part or all of the temporal punishment due sin” (Indulgentiarum doctrina (ID) n. 2).  What did change with Blessed Paul VI’s Apostolic Constitution is that any particularities with respect to days or years attached to a partial indulgence were removed.  It is now simply referred to as a “Partial Indulgence” (n. 4).

To obtain a partial indulgence there are four conditions:

  • be baptized
  • be in state of grace
  • have the intention to obtain the indulgence
  • perform the works or prayers prescribed correctly

For a plenary indulgence all the conditions of a partial indulgence apply (so that if we fail to obtain the plenary we might still obtain the plenary) plus

  • not be excommunicated
  • have no affection for sin, even venial
  • receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation and Communion (in the prescribed period of time)
  • offer prayers for the pope’s intentions (in the prescribed period of time)

While we must have the intention to gain a particular indulgence, this can be done through a habitual intention represented by a sincere expression to gain every indulgence the Lord ever offers us.  It is a good idea to renew that intention frequently so as to be aware of God’s great mercy through the Indulgences the Church offers.  Personally I have added the following to my morning offering:

Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, You suffered upon the Cross for me and in Your great mercy have given to Peter and his successors the power to remove temporal punishment for sin.  In great sorrow for those sins which You have forgiven, I wish to obtain the indulgences You now offer me.

It is worth pointing out that by no longer referring to the amount of time that is removed in Purgatory, the measure of how efficacious an indulged work is in removing punishment will depend on the intensity of the love with which the act is performed and the perfection of the task itself (i.e. how well we do it).  This is why Blessed Paul VI greatly reduced the number of indulgences so that the faithful could focus on doing them well—“the greater the proliferation of indulgences, the less attention is given to them; what is offered in abundance is not greatly appreciated.”

It cannot be encouraged enough to get a copy of the Handbook of Indulgences and see the specific indulged acts.  Worth pointing out are the “Three General Grants” at the beginning of the Handbook.  These represent a class of partial indulgences that are given so that “Christ’s faithful might, as it were, weave their daily life with the Christian spirit and, according to their state, grow in the perfection of charity.”   Specifically, a partial indulgence is granted to any of Christ’s faithful, who:

  • in the performance of his duties and bearing the trials of life, raises his mind to God in humble confidence and adds, even mentally, some pious invocation
  • in a spirit of faith and mercy give of themselves or of their goods to serve their brothers in need
  • in a spirit of penance voluntarily deprive themselves of what is licit and pleasing to them

Now it becomes clear what St. Maximillian Kolbe meant when he said what he did about indulgences.  It wasn’t just the juridical nature of Indulgences that he was interested in.  Instead he was saying that these works were all worthy of doing because they were things that those on the path to sanctity should be doing.  In other words, they act as trustworthy guides of the prayers and works saints do.  Judging by his own personal witness, I would say he was right.

Sorry, Not Deacons Either

Holy Orders, Women's Ordination

In a recent interview with Catholic News Service, Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Quebec called upon his fellow Synod Father to reflect on the possibility of allowing for female deacons.  Specifically, he said “I think we should really start looking seriously at the possibility of ordaining women deacons because the diaconate in the church’s tradition has been defined as not being ordered toward priesthood but toward ministry…It’s a just question to ask. Shouldn’t we be opening up new venues for ministry of women in the church?”  I suspect that the Archbishop is not being entirely genuine in his response.  On the one hand, he says that we should “start looking seriously” and on the other it is “just a question to ask.”  But since he “just asked,” we can talk about why the Synod Fathers should waste no time on “looking seriously” at it.

One of the fruits of the Second Vatican Council was a restoration of the permanent diaconate.  But we cannot ignore the fact that it was “re-introduced” into a world that was very different from the world in which it went into hibernation nearly 800 years before.  Gone is a sacramental understanding of reality, replaced with one that is entirely functional.  Through this paradigm, the deacon is viewed primarily by what he does rather than first and foremost what he is.  He might look and act like a Protestant minister through his ministry of preaching and service, but the difference is a sacramental one and not merely a functional one.

Obviously then there is a necessity to explain and develop further a Theology of the Diaconate.  The current prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Gerhard Cardinal Müller lays a firm foundation for this in his 2002 book, Priesthood and Diaconate.  The former Bishop of Regensburg offers what is an irrefutable argument for why women cannot be deacons–“because Mother said so.”

In order to see the issue properly, we must properly understand the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  It is not three separate Sacraments but instead a single sacrament that is separately administered with three successively higher sacramental effects.    The criterion for belonging to the sacramental higher orders is whether or not the degree is ordered to the full priestly authority of Christ as given to a Bishop.  The priest is given the authority to act in persona Christi while the deacon shares in the priestly action by participation.  At the beginning of the 2nd Century we find Ignatius of Antioch  already giving expression to the interconnectedness and distinctions among the degrees of Order—“Let everyone revere the deacons as Jesus Christ, the bishops the image of the Father, and the presbyters as the senate of God and the assembly of the apostles.  For without them one cannot speak of the Church.”  In continuity with this, the threefold hierarchy of the single sacrament is taught in the Council of Trent and is a theme of Pope Pius XII’s 1947 Apostolic Constitution Sacramentum Ordinis.  In this document, he emphasized the unity of the three degrees of Holy Orders—Diaconate, Priesthood and Episcopacy and was cited as a source for the Second Vatican Council’s document on the Church, Lumen Gentium.  Why this unity of a single sacrament is important will be seen in a moment.

Women Ordination

In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis John Paul II said that “the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.”  In other words it is an issue solely based on the authority given to the Church.  The Church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women.  The Church has never said that it will not ordain women only that it cannot.

In order to clear up any confusion and close the discussion once and for all, one of Cardinal Müller’s predecessors as Prefect for the CDF, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI)  when in the audience of John Paul II confirmed that it was an infallible teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium.  Specifically he said:

This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith.

Given the Magisterial precedents above, there can be no doubt that Ordinatio Sacedotalis refers to all three degree of the Priesthood given through the Sacrament of Holy Orders and not just to the second degree of what we commonly call priesthood.  This question should be considered closed and the attempts by dissenting theologians and priests to find loopholes in definitive Church teachings should move elsewhere.

In all honesty, I find the whole issue particularly puzzling.  If someone is a faithful Catholic they know that when the Church speaks infallibly then it speaks for Christ.  To continue arguing on this issue is not an argument for deaconesses or priestesses but an argument against the Church as the voice of Christ.  We also know that the truths of the faith do not arise from common human experience but they come to us form God’s gracious self-giving.  A doctrinal tradition that is grounded in objective revelation must be preserved and monitored by an authority that transcends subjectivity and is capable of real judgment.

Before closing, it is helpful to address the argument that the Early Church had deaconesses.  The problem with this argument is that the term diakonein could be used in any or every form of service in the early Christian community. According to the Apostolic Traditions (written around the year 400) the role of the deaconess was to assist with the baptism of women.  In the first few centuries baptism was done completely naked.  “A deaconess does not bless, but neither does she perform anything else that is done by presbyters [priests] and deacons, but she guards the doors and greatly assists the presbyters, for the sake of decorum, when they are baptizing women.”

Furthermore there is no evidence that these deaconesses were ordained and in fact there is evidence to the contrary.  Both the First Council of Nicaea (325) and the Council of Laodicea (360) said that they are not to be ordained but be counted among the laity.  Deaconess was simply one of a number of ecclesial ministers.

In conclusion it is worth mentioning that while the Archbishop may consider himself “progressive” and listening to the “Spirit of Vatican II,” his suggestion really represents a step backwards to the clericalism that plagued the Church prior to the Second Vatican Council.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council attempted to lay the groundwork for a theology of the laity that did not view them as somehow second class citizens of the Church.  While we still have a long way to go in this regard, we must overcome the habit of defining a lay person as one who is less than a priest and therefore full participation is somehow lessened by a lack of woman’s ordination.  Furthermore by treating the possibility of the diaconate as a mere concession to women since they cannot be priests, you are not solving the problem of the so-called inequality between the genders in the Church.  You are merely admitting to it and trying to throw women’s ordination proponents a bone.  If prelates and priests inside the Church would leave the question closed, perhaps we could get on with the necessary work of understanding more fully what the roles of the laity (both women and men) are within the Church.  Quite frankly, if you look around the problem is not the participation of lay women in the life of the Church but lay men that seems to be the larger issue.

Jesus and the Terrible Twos

Mary, The Life of Jesus

Many a young mother and father’s aspirations for living a re-incarnation of the Holy Family has washed up on the shores of their child’s second birthday.  Something is in the birthday cake that turns them into little monsters—it is the beginning of the “Terrible Twos.”  As the child becomes more mobile, the world has opened up before them.  With greater access to their surroundings and a constant curiosity, defiance sets in.  Lacking adequate language skills to express themselves, they master the art of the dramatic tantrum.  Most parents comfort themselves with the idea that it is a normal developmental stage and will soon pass.  Some turn to the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph for help and understanding.  But can they really understand?  They were truly parents of Our Lord and they were truly a family, but did Jesus go through the “Terrible Twos?”

For the first five or six centuries of the Church, the Magisterium had to wrestle with the Person of Christ.  There was little question as to His divinity, but how He could also be fully human was something that needed to be hashed out.  The fruits of this discussion were borne in the ideas of the Hypostatic Union and the philosophical idea of a Person.

During the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Church declared that the two natures of Christ are joined “in one person and one hypostasis” where hypostasis simply means a single substance. The Church followed with the expression “hypostatic union” to express the belief that in Jesus Christ there are two perfect and real natures, divine and human.  The Eternal Son of God took to Himself a true human nature.

From this the Church was led to make the necessary distinction between person and nature.  It is necessary at the outset to make two important distinctions.  The first is between nature and person.  The nature that a rational being has decides what that being is and can do.  However it is the person that actually exists and does the action.  The nature is part of the person, but does not exist outside the person.  The nature may answer the question what, but it is the person that answers the question who.

Recall that because of the Hypostatic Union, Christ has two natures.  This means that He has two principles of action; Divine and human.  Because He is Divine, He could raise Lazarus from the dead.  Because He is human, He asked the woman at the well for a drink to quench His thirst.   However, it was always the Divine Second Person of the Trinity that performed these actions.

All of this is necessary because there is a new tendency to do away with the divinity of Christ.  In fact in his book on spiritual Christology called Behold the Pierced One , Pope Benedict XVI says that it is ultimately the attempt to cancel out the divinity of Christ that is most damaging to faith today.  He says that the linguistic change from the name “Christ” to the personal name “Jesus” in referring to Christ reveals a spiritual process with wide implications.  It is an attempt to get behind the Church’s confession of faith and reach the purely historical figure of Jesus.

With this (over) emphasis on Jesus’ humanity, we attempt to apply modern psychology and stages of development to Christ.  If He is fully man then He too had to go through a process of growth in human nature.  He had to grow physically, He had to learn to speak, and He had to experience things so as to learn new things.  All of this is true, but for Christ is means something entirely different.  Surely He is “like us in all things but sin.”  The problem in our thinking however is that Our Lord’s “but” is much bigger than we initially think.

The “but sin” that the author of the Letter to the Hebrews is referring to is not just personal sin (after all God is incapable of sin, even if He takes on human flesh) but the effects of sin—namely the Fall.  With the Fall came a darkening of the intellect (which we call ignorance), a weakening of the will and disintegration in the emotional life (or the heart).  This is one of the reasons why He was so desirous of leaving us the Eucharist.  It literally infuses His human nature to ours so that we are healed through this “medicine of immortality” through a share in His divinity.  If His human nature was in any way defective then it no longer serves as our medicine.

Baby Jesus walking on Water at Bathtime

To understand the question about Christ’s “Terrible Twos” we need to go a little deeper into His human nature.  Because the human nature of Christ is united to the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ always had the beatific vision. In Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer in John’s Gospel, He says that eternal life is that the blessed should know God.  This is what beatific vision is—eternal union with God.  Christ’s soul had this from the moment of conception because it was more closely united to God than any other soul.  It was only by a miracle that it did not also spill over into His body.  In fact He lets the “governor” off so to speak at the Transfiguration where the Apostles see the glorified humanity of Christ.  To have the beatific vision means that He knew all past, present and future things.

One might ask however why, when Christ is asked about the end of the world, He responded by saying that only the Father knows that?  What Aquinas says is that He means that it could not be known through human reason or the natural light of the created intellect but by this knowledge of vision.  This seems plausible since the saints in Heaven surely have this knowledge.  Augustine goes even further in commenting on Christ’s not knowing the end of the world that there are two types of divine knowledge.  Christ had communicable knowledge which is related to His mission as Redeemer and that which was noncommunicable.

Aristotle said that the human mind has the capacity to know all created things.  Aquinas picked up this theory and said that there are two ways in which we come to know anything; either by divine revelation (infused knowledge) or by acquired knowledge.  Bearing in mind that Christ had a perfect human nature, there would have been no ignorance in Him.  He would know all things that could be known by the human intellect.

If Christ knew all things, how could “He grow in knowledge and wisdom before God and man” (Lk 2:40)?  This is because he grew in acquired knowledge.  By “acquired knowledge” St. Thomas means that knowledge which proceeds from the combination of sense perception and the abstracting activity of the intellect that produces universal concepts and ideas.  For Christ to grow in knowledge would mean that what He learned by acquired knowledge, He already knew by infused knowledge.  It was not new content so much as it was new in the way He came to know it.  We do this ourselves anytime we formulate arguments for things that we already know to be true.

With all this serving as a foundation, we can finally answer the question.  Our Lady and St. Joseph never suffered through the “Terrible Twos” because Christ was incapable of it (as an aside, Our Lady would have no experience of the “Terrible Twos” because she too would not have gone through them).  Because Our Lord from the moment of His conception had perfect control over His heart, there would have been no temper tantrums.  Because He already knew all things He would not have been driven to curiosity.  He would not have been capable of defiance.  He would have seen His parents in their proper authoritative role and would have always obeyed them (more on this in a moment).

Does this also mean that Jesus came out of the womb talking?  Certainly it is possible, but I don’t think so.  In some respects talking depends on physical development as well as intellectual.  The intellectual development was always there but the physical would have occurred in the normal course of growing.  He learned to speak in a normal timeframe, although I would expect that it came all at once and not in fits and starts like we see in a “normal” child today.  Either way, I wouldn’t expect a papal pronouncement on this question any time soon.  But I think the principle is solid.  Anything that depended upon intellectual development would have been there at the moment of conception.  Anything requiring physical at the appropriate time.

The fact that He had the intellectual ability to communicate would also lend itself to the belief that He would have understood communication from the moment of His conception.  So while He could have felt some level of frustration at not being able to communicate by speaking with His parents, He would not have expressed that frustration beyond reason.

One objection might arise to what I said about Jesus always obeying His parents.  In fact one of the only episodes in Jesus’ childhood recorded in the Gospels gives the appearance of Him disobeying Mary and Joseph by remaining in the Temple after the rest of the caravan had left.  There is only one way to make sense of this and it is related to what I said earlier about Mary herself not having the capacity for the “Terrible Twos.”  Because Mary did not suffer from ignorance as an effect of Original Sin, then she should have known that Jesus was not in caravan.  The only way that she could not have known was if it related to His mission as Redeemer—which His rather veiled response tells her.  This is why Our Lady is surprised that He did what He did—she simply did not expect the “sword of sorrow” to pierce her so early on.

 

 

 

 

God and Commitment Phobes

Leisure, Sin, Spiritual Life, Virtue

In an address on the New Evangelization to Catechists and Teachers in 2000, then-Cardinal Ratzinger said the greatest obstacle modern man faced in accepting the Gospel was “an inability of joy.”   Although this aversion to joy is particularly acute in our time, it is certainly nothing new.  In fact it is something that is captured quite beautifully in Dante’s Purgatorio.  At the midpoint of his ascent of the Mount of Purgatory, Dante encounters those who are being purged of sloth and its effects.  The slothful race about the terrace shouting out famous examples of the vice and its opposing virtue, zeal.  The souls appear to be enjoying their punishment of the breathless race they are on.  This is not because they find joy in punishment so much as the joy is their punishment.  Dante believed that the slothful are marked by an inability to joy.

Because of his reliance on the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, Dante’s Divine Comedy has often been called the “Summa in Verse.” By returning to the teachings of St. Thomas on the Capital Sin of sloth or acedia, we may be able to learn a great deal about not only the world’s aversion to joy, but why it remains so elusive for many of us.

To begin, there is an important point to be made regarding the Seven Capital Sins.  St. Thomas rarely referred to the Seven Capital Sins as sins but instead as vices.  His reason for this is because something like sloth is not usually the actual sin the person commits, but the disposition or habit that leads to other sins.  The term “capital” derives from the Latin word caput, meaning head.  The point is that these seven vices are usually the source or head of all of the sins we commit (see ST II-II, q.153, art.4).  The reason why this is important is that these vices remain hidden to us because they act as subconscious motivations for the sins we do commit.  Unless we are in the habit of examining our motivations along with our sins, they will almost always remain off our spiritual radar.  Understanding the vices and how they tend to manifest themselves allows us to work at the virtues directly opposing the vice of sloth.

Certainly one of the reasons why sloth is particularly hidden is because most people view it as simply laziness.  One of the fruits of the Protestant Reformation was that sloth became associated with laziness and neglect in doing one’s duty.  The opposing virtue was seen to be diligence or industriousness and “busyness” became a cardinal virtue.  But for St. Thomas and the Desert Fathers that went before him, sloth is a spiritual vice.  There is a link of sorts to effort, but not primarily to bodily effort.  It is not an aversion to physical effort but an aversion to the demands of love.  It causes us to see the burden of love to be too great.

In order to fully capture how this vice ensnares us, it is helpful to look at the two parts of the definition that Aquinas gives for acedia in the Summa.  He says that acedia is “sorrow about spiritual good in as much as it is a Divine good” (ST II-II q.35, a.3).

The second part of the definition describes what is the cause of our sorrow—namely the “spiritual good in as much as it is a Divine good.”  For St. Thomas this “spiritual good” that is internal to the person and yet also a “Divine good” is friendship with God.  This friendship with God is the virtue of charity by which we participate in the love God has for Himself.

The sorrow itself need explanation as well.  Sorrow is analogous to sadness but it rests in our soul.  It is more like a pain of soul that makes joy impossible.  This sorrow is experienced because what should be experienced as a good (namely the love of God) is instead viewed as bad.  Not bad in itself, but too much work and too demanding.  The word acedia literally means “a lack of care” meaning that it simply is not worth the effort.  In this way then it is not so much a rejection of God Himself, but of friendship with Him.  This partial rejection of God is what makes sloth so deadly.

Dante seems to capture this lack of love by placing sloth in the middle of the Mount of Purgatory.  The first three terraces are meant to heal love that has been perverted by being directed towards an evil object or end (pride, envy, and wrath).  The three terraces above (greed, gluttony, and lust) are directed to healing love that is excessively directed towards a good object.  Sloth sits alone in the middle because it shows a lack of love that begins with loving God less than we should and spreads to everything else.

Dante

Without delving deeply into psychological motivations, why would we do this?  To understand sloth, the fact that love is demanding cannot be forgotten.  There is a sweetness that comes from love, but for the most part it makes demands upon us.  In fact sloth makes us “commitment phobes” with God because of the burden of commitment.

Of course any explanation must include the given of Original Sin.  St. Paul tells the Galatians that “the flesh lusts against the spirit” (Gal 5:17) which means that without virtue the flesh will be dominant in us and we will loathe spiritual goods as somehow bad for us.  It is sort of like how we crave junk food and have to force ourselves to eat wholesome foods.  Acedia as sorrow at the thought of being in relationship with God because of the “burden of commitment.”

An analogy might help to better understand it.  Think of a married couple who argues and rather than doing the work of apologizing and forgiving, they would rather take the “easier” route of going off to separate rooms and sulk.  They both know of the goodness that follows from reconciliation, but refuse to do the work of getting there.

In looking at the sins that are caused by sloth or “daughters of acedia” as St. Thomas divides them into two types.  The first are those sins which represent our attempts to escape from the sorrow.  The most common way in which it manifests itself is through curiosity.  Most people would say that curiosity is a good thing and it is insofar as it represents a desire for knowledge.  But St. Thomas says we cannot look at only the desire but also must consider the motive and the effects the knowledge has on the knower and others.  Curiosity is the desire for knowledge simply for the pleasure that it brings as opposed to knowing for the sake of knowledge itself (as in the truth) which is the virtue of studiousness.  From curiosity flows listening to gossip.  There is also a fear of missing out on something interesting that will help divert us from the sorrow.  This fear is what truly drives the almost obsessive nature in which many people are constantly checking social media.

St. Thomas also says it manifests itself through an aimless wandering after illicit things.  Drinking excessively, promiscuity, drugs often represent attempts to escape the sorrow of sloth.  But it is not just illicit things but an excess of busyness too.  This busyness blocks us from seeing the reason why we have no joy is because we are slothful.  After all, how could one be slothful when they are constantly involved in activity?  St. Thomas recognized this temptation and presented acedia as primarily a sin against the Third Commandment because it is an avoidance of doing the “work” of the Sabbath rest.

At a certain point the realization that the sorrow is inescapable sinks in and a new level of vices arise.  The most obvious would be despair, but I would like to focus on a second one that is not so obvious—boredom.

To prove that the overwhelming majority of Americans is at this point, what other explanation could there be that the average person watches 4 hours of TV (25% of their waking time) than that they are bored?  What about the obsession with celebrities?  Out of boredom the cult of celebrities arises because when one’s own life lacks meaning, you become obsessed with others’ lives.

In essence for those with despair and boredom life loses its pilgrim character.  For the bored they become tourists instead of pilgrims. What we do when we are bored really doesn’t matter only that it alleviates the boredom.  Everyone knows that there is no happiness in the endless diversions, parties, drinking and promiscuity.  But at least one is less empty for a while.

There is a great spiritual principle that comes into play when we are trying to root out vices like sloth.  We cannot simply stop doing it.  Certainly identifying the root cause is important, but the only way for us as fallen creatures to overcome evil in our hearts is by replacing it with good.  I already mentioned how sloth is truly opposed to charity but there are two other virtues that we should strive to cultivate.

First is the virtue of gratitude.  One desert father said that sloth is ultimately a hatred of being.  Everything seems hard and meaningless.  By viewing everything through what St. John Paul II called the “hermeneutic of the gift” we find everything charged with meaning through its bestowal upon us.  With gratitude comes to the desire to repay that gift by making a gift of ourselves.  To quote from JPII’s favorite line of Vatican II, “man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (GS, 24).

The second is the virtue of magnanimity.  Literally magnanimity means “large-souledness.”  It is a generous acceptance of the missionary character of our lives.  It is a response to Blessed John Henry Newman’s a clarion call:

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission—I never may know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. Somehow I am necessary for His purposes, as necessary in my place as an Archangel in his—if, indeed, I fail, He can raise another, as He could make the stones children of Abraham. Yet I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do His work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep His commandments and serve Him in my calling”

As Dante enters the Fifth Circle of Hell, he encounters two groups confined to the River Styx—the wrathful and the slothful.  The wrathful fight each other above the surface, while the slothful simply stew beneath the swampy surface.  By Dante’s standards their punishment is rather light, but that is because they really didn’t do anything.  They simply slid into hell through a lack of effort.   Please God that we might overcome the “noonday devil” and avoid a similar fate.

 

Celebrating Angel Awareness Week

Angels

Did you know that it is Whole Grains Awareness month?  Were you aware that it is also National Yoga Awareness Month?  In fact according to the National Health Information Center, the month of September is marked by thirty-three distinct “Awareness” celebrations.  It seems all you need is a cause and you too can declare your own Awareness period.  What if the Church got in on this?  They could have something like Passion Awareness Week or maybe each week they could celebrate Resurrection Awareness Day or maybe even yearly celebrate Faithfully Departed Souls Awareness Day.  If they did, then maybe they could even declare the week between September 27th and October 3rd “Angel Awareness Week.”  They could even distribute little blue bracelets with wings and halos on them.  We would celebrate the week by getting to know the angels a little better and maybe even have special celebrations honoring two groups of them, Archangels and Guardian Angels.  Think of what raising angel awareness could do for the Church and for the world!

More than anything else, the discussion thus far probably reveals that I need a personal Liturgical Calendar Meaning Awareness Week.  Nevertheless, with the feasts of the Archangels (the 29th) and Guardian Angels (October 2nd) this is an excellent time to get to know the angels and develop a relationship with them.

Perhaps the best place to go to learn about the angels is to the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas.  In the Summa he summarizes the teachings of Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church.  While knowledge of angels comes from divine revelation, St. Thomas argues from analogy to show why it is reasonable that angels exist.

If we examine creation we find two things.  First that it is clearly ordered and second that there is something like a hierarchy of being in which each thing that exists acts as a bridge between the thing beneath it and the thing above it.  Broadly speaking if we start with something like animals, we could see how they act as a bridge between plants and man.  They share in the plants’ vegetative powers in that they are alive but also share in man’s sensitive powers.  We could do this all throughout visible creation and find that there are no gaps.  Now when we come to man, we find that there is a great gap between man who shares materiality with the animals but the spiritual powers of knowing and willing with God.  In fact this gap is too large unless we posit that there is a creature who is pure spirit (like God).  We call this creature an angel.  This is why St. Thomas says it is “fitting” that angels exist and concludes that universe would be seriously lacking in order and completeness if angels are not part of it.

Turning to what Divine Revelation says about the angels we are immediately struck by what a vital role they play in God’s plan.  This is why belief in angels is a dogma of the faith.  They are mentioned in 31 of the 46 Old Testament books and 158 times in the New Testament.  In nearly every instant we see them as somehow acting for the benefit of mankind.  In essence they act as intermediaries between God and man.

St. Raphael

Unlike any other book of the New Testament, the Letter to the Hebrews instructs us as to what they do exactly.  Their role is to act as “ministering spirits sent to serve, for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:14).  In fact they served as mediators of the Old Covenant and the author uses this fact to show the greatness of the Mediator of the New Covenant, Jesus Christ (see Hebrews 1-8).

Angels are intimately involved in the affairs of mankind.  In reading the first creation account in Genesis, there are two different Hebrew words that are used to describe the act of creation.  The author uses bara to describe the creation of the heavens and the earth, the sea creatures, and man.  This word literally translated would be “to create out of nothing.”  The rest of creation is described by the word Asah which translates as “brought forth.” It is the angels who do the brining forth.   In other words, the angels play a role in governing the physical universe.  This does not in any way make the physical laws superfluous but it acts as an admission that in the physical universe there is a tendency to decay and disorder.  The angels maintain the order of the universe.

Scripture also testifies that nations are entrusted to angels.  Not only is Israel (and subsequently the Church) entrusted to St. Michael but also Greece and Persia (see Dn 10:31-21) have angels guarding them as well.  In fact Deut 32:8 says that God “appointed the bounds of people according to the number of angels of God.”  In other words, each nation has its own protecting angel.  In this time of great turmoil in our own country we should be seeking the aid of the Angel of America.

All of this reveals a very important Scholastic Principle about God’s tendency to use secondary causes in everything that He does.  What St. Thomas says is that, “God never does directly Himself what may be achieved through created causality… For any result which does not require actually infinite power, God will sooner create a new spiritual being capable of producing that result than produce it Himself.”  This is because God is love and wants to bestow dignity upon His creatures by making them share in His goodness and love.

St. Thomas defines an angel as a “pure, created spirit, called angel because some angels are sent by God as messengers to humans. An angel is a pure spirit because he has no body and does not depend for his existence or activity on matter. ” To be a spirit means that they are a capable of knowing and willing.  To be a pure spirit means that they are always knowing and willing (as opposed to us who are a body/spirit composite that takes breaks from knowing and willing like when for example we sleep).

Three things follow from St. Thomas’ statement that “the angels have not bodies naturally united to them.”

First that each angel is its own species.   Each of us have a human nature—this is what is common to all of us.  Yet we do not all share one human nature because we have bodies.  Matter is what allows human nature to be multiplied and makes each of us individuals.  Angels on the other hand do not have bodies and so have no inherent individuating principle.  This means that each angel must have a unique nature (or species) in order to separate it from the other angelic creatures.  These natures exist in a hierarchy.

Second, angels come to know differently than we do because they do not have bodies. As human beings we rely on our senses to know things.  We encounter a particular thing and from that particular thing we are able to abstract to a universal idea.  For example, a man encounters a particular lion in the jungle.  He has never seen that particular lion and it is different from any other lion he has seen.  He is able to abstract the universal essence of “lion” from the individual lion using his intellect.  This is why Aristotle (and St. Thomas afterwards) said “that which is in the intellect was first in the senses.”

Angels on the other hand, because they do not have bodies, must have their knowledge infused in them by God at the moment of their creation.  Because it is directly infused, the angelic idea is at once universal and concrete. The angel’s infused idea of the lion, say, represents not only the nature of the lion, but all individual lions that either actually exist or have in the past been objects of the angel’s intellect. Angelic ideas are thus participations in God’s own creative ideas.

It is also important for us to understand that angels cannot know the future in itself—that belongs only to God—so like us they can only know it in its cause.  However because they are far more intelligent than us they can know the future more accurately.  Although God alone can know the secrets of our hearts, angels can deduce them because our movements often betray our thoughts (even things like our interior emotions and our heart racing).

Finally, without bodies angels move and will differently than us.  An angel is spiritually present at whatever place in physical space happens to be occupied by the body on which it acts—this presence is an occupation of the place.  As opposed to the fact that when a body occupies a physical place it is said to do so extensively by filling it with its bulk, an angel occupies a place intensively by surrounding it with its power.  Think of sunlight coming into a room through a window.  The sunlight is “in the room,” but if you were to cover the window, the light would not be trapped in the room but would cease to be present.  The sun is no longer acting upon the room by lighting up and so it is no longer present, just like an angel ceases to be present when he ceases to act on a physical space.  Practically speaking what this means is that two angels cannot occupy the same place at the same time.  To answer the age old question, only a single angel could dance on the head of a pin.

Why have I spent so much time talking about the angels when I emphasized at the beginning that we needed to develop a deeper relationship with them?  Because they are not visible most of the time, we can only see them through their effects.  Because we can only see them through their effects we have to know how and when they tend to act.

A word about why we should strive to enter a relationship with them.  One might argue that they are hidden and they are doing their work so why not leave them alone?  Of course the same thing could be said about any of the saints as well, but in the case of the angels it is easy to forget that they too are members of the Church.  Our belief in the Communion of Saints includes the belief that we share in the merits and in some respect the powers of all the saints. Angels as the first saints are no different.

We also owe them a debt of gratitude for all the ways in which they have acted in our lives.  Next to God Himself and the Blessed Mother, there is no one who loves us more than our guardian angels.  Your Guardian angel was assigned to you at the beginning of time and his test somehow had to do with whether he would serve you or not.  Think of the great love he has for you and how deeply he wills your good.  Now I am not saying he is tested somehow on whether he helps save us or not, but whether he wills to act as a servant in saving us.  At the very least we ought to strive for friendship with him and the rest of the angels who assist us directly or indirectly.

As to how we might do this, I would say the approach is no different than our exercises of devotion to any of the saints.  It is particularly striking when you compare the human response to angels in the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Angels are met with great awe and fear in the Old Testament while they are met with a spirit of friendship and equality in the New.  They truly desire friendship with us.  Speaking regularly to Our Guardian Angel and thanking him is certainly one way.  Even speaking to thanking the guardian angels of those closest to us as well is a good practice.  Many of the saints (Padre Pio and St. Gemma come to mind) had the habit of sending their guardian angels on missions to other guardian angels to help another person in difficulty.

Personally, I have found that the Chaplet of St. Michael is a great way to honor this powerful Archangel along with the other nine Choirs of Angels. Servant of God Antonia d’Astonac had a vision of St. Michael in which he told Antonia to honor him by nine salutations to the nine Choirs of Angels. In return St. Michael promised that whoever would practice this devotion in his honor would have, when approaching Holy Communion, an escort of nine angels chosen from each of the nine Choirs and he promised his continual assistance and that of all the holy angels during life.

The Pope, the President and Religious Freedom

Freedom, Pope Francis

Yesterday on the South Lawn of the White House, President Barack Obama and Pope Francis exchanged brief remarks.  To listen to the remarks one would think that there was near perfect agreement between the two.  They both spoke of the environment, immigration and religious liberty.  While they were using the same words, they each attach very different meanings to those words.  Once we begin to look at this more closely,  understood, we find that the apparent agreement is much less than initially thought, especially when it comes to religious freedom.

In his remarks, the Holy Father said that American Catholics “are likewise concerned that efforts to build a just and wisely ordered society respect their deepest concerns and their right to religious liberty. That freedom remains one of America’s most precious possessions.”  President Obama for his part said that “[H]ere in the United States, we cherish religious liberty…So we stand with you in defense of religious freedom and interfaith dialogue, knowing that people everywhere must be able to live out their faith free from fear and free from intimidation.”  Although it seems they are in support of the same thing, there is a subtle difference in what they are saying that makes all the difference in the world.  It is as if Pope Francis is saying that American Catholics like religious liberty because it is good and President Obama is saying Americans think religious liberty is good because they like it.  One is rooted in the objective natural law, the other as a concession made by the government so that its citizens can worship if and how they want.

For all the discussion of religious liberty, very rarely is it examined for what it is.  Before we can address religious freedom, we must know what kind of freedom we are talking about.  In other words, what is religion?  Philosopher John Carlson defines religion as a “set of beliefs, relations and activities by which people are united, or regard themselves as being united to the realm of the transcendent.”    This definition has four fundamental characteristics of all religions.  First, since religion is a set of beliefs it assumes that man can somehow grasp and relate to this transcendent order through the use of reason.  Religion as a set of relations means that religion is something that people do in common and not merely as isolated individuals.  Because religion is a set of activities these beliefs are not only theoretical but require a response in the practical order.  Finally, and most importantly, religion concerns a relationship between man and some reality that is distinct from or above the empirical order.  It seems that this four-fold definition is consistent with the understanding of religion that informed our founding fathers.  The author of the Bill of Rights, James Madison, defined religion as “the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, being under the direction of reason and conviction only, not of violence or compulsion, all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to the dictates of Conscience” (James Madison, Amendments to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 1776).

Pope and Pres

While the fourth US President thought that religion was rooted in the nature of man as “the duty we owe to our Creator, ” the forty-fourth President thinks it merely one of “our core views as Americans” (Press Conference with President Obama and President Hu of the People’s Republic of China, January 19, 2011).  This leaves us with the need to answer the fundamental question of whether freedom of religion is something that is natural or given by the State.

Recall that St. Thomas thought that the natural law directly followed from the natural inclination of man towards four fundamental goods that perfect him—to preserve their life, to procreate and educate his children, to live in society, and to know the truth, especially about God (ST I-II, q.94, a.2). Because man is naturally inclined towards these goods he has a duty to obtain them and a corresponding right arises to pursue these goods.  Furthermore, whatever pertains to each of these goods directly would be considered a natural right.  Because life is an intrinsic good there is a right to life.  Because marriage and the rearing of children is a single intrinsic good, there is a natural right to marriage and children have a right to be raised by their biological parents.  Since man is by nature social, each person has a right to contribute to the common good.  Finally, from the duty to seek the truth the natural right to religious freedom follows.

Furthermore, the four intrinsic goods represent a hierarchy.  This hierarchy proceeds from the most basic, life, to the highest good of seeking the Ultimate Truth, Who is not just a concept or set of propositions, but a Person.  From this it follows that freedom of religion is, as the US Bishops have labeled it, “our first liberty.” This is because it is directly related to man’s end and ultimate Good, God Himself.  Furthermore, the lower goods often must be freely sacrificed for the sake of the higher ones.  Therefore we must be prepared to forgo the other goods—being a part of society, marriage, and even life—in defense of this ultimate good.  That is why Cardinal George could say “I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square” if the assaults on religious liberty continue without being accused of suffering from delusions of paranoia.

The Second Vatican Council issued one of its most controversial documents, Dignitatis Humanae, to address the issue of religious freedom.  The Council Fathers enumerated three principles that can serve to illuminate true religious freedom from its counterfeits that are threatening it today.  These three principles concern its foundation, its purpose, and its limits.

Foundation of Religious Freedom

As was mentioned above the foundation for religious freedom is the dignity of the human person.  The Council put it this way:

“It is in accordance with their dignity as persons…that all men should be at once impelled by nature and also bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth… Therefore the right to religious freedom has its foundation not in the subjective disposition of the person, but in his very nature.” (DH, 2)

This bears repeating here because one of the imposters that threatens religious freedom today is the notion of religious tolerance.  Recall that religion is considered a human good that ought to be promoted.  Therefore it should not be treated as an evil to be tolerated.  In recognition of the fact that it is a true human good, rather than tolerate the religious life of its citizens, the State should “take account of the religious life of the citizenry and show it favor.” (DH, 3)

Tolerance was initially proposed as a concession that confessional states such as Anglican England and Catholic France would make towards other Christians.  It was based upon the assumption that the state had recognized a certain religion as true and the state would tolerate other practices and beliefs as a concession to those in error.  As the Enlightenment project took further root, the idea of tolerance was extended to religion in general especially in non-confessional states like the United States.  The danger that is ever looming is that if the state views itself as extending tolerance to religion, it can also cease toleration altogether.  Religious freedom becomes merely a civil right and is no longer viewed as a natural right.  This would be the view of the President.

The Purpose of Religious Freedom

The Council Fathers also addressed the purpose of religious liberty as well.   Religious freedom is necessary so that persons may fulfill their duty to seek the truth, to embrace it, and to live in conformity with the truth, once it has been discovered and accepted (DH, 1-2).  Like all liberties it should not be viewed as an end in itself but instead as a means to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to come to know the truth and live in its fullness.  A society that respects religious liberty is one that contributes to a spirit of openness to transcendent truth especially through education and respectful exchanges.  This mutual search for the truth can act as a cohesive force to bind a society together.

Modern man views freedom and objective truth as somehow in opposition to each other rather than truth being a condition for freedom’s fulfillment.  If truth and freedom are in opposition with each other then one must be rejected.  The modern tendency is to reject the existence of objective truth.  In the absence of truth then the will becomes primary and so choice becomes the greatest good.

In his ad Limina Visit with US Bishops in 2012, Pope Benedict XVI said that based upon this reduced anthropology there is a “tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.”  Once religion is no longer seen as a search for objective truth about the transcendent order but instead as a subjective preference then religion is a strictly private affair.  This creates a two-headed hydra of sorts in that freedom of worship is always accompanied by “freedom from religion” or, more accurately, “freedom from other people’s religion” in which people recoil from religious believers insist on “imposing their truth on others.”

Limits on Religious Freedom

The Council treats religious freedom as a two-edged sword with respect to limits.  First, religious liberty “means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others” but this freedom can only be exercised “within due limits.”

The right to use coercion is a defining characteristic of the state.  Not only is this power a means to protect the safety of people against evildoers, but it also serves a teaching function that helps the evildoer himself remove the obstacles to a life of virtue.  But this power also is limited in that it should not force anyone to act against the truth as he understands it.  This is the fundamental issue with things like the Gay Marriage SCOTUS decision.  The Church views this mandate as coercive in the manner in which it forces Catholics to act against the truth of what is truly good for the human person.

On the other hand, with the modern exaltation of liberty much of civil discourse centers around what Mary Ann Glendon terms “rights talk.”  This way of speaking of rights has led to the tendency to absolutize all rights without any reference to the limits of those rights.  Religious freedom is not an absolute right but instead is governed by “due limits.”  These due limits are based upon whether they inhibit the exercise of others’ duties and their effect on the common good.

There has been a great emphasis in the Church on the need to dialogue with those who do not understand or agree with the Church.  In fact, Pope Francis described his visit as “days of encounter and dialogue.”  While this is certainly necessary and laudable, this can never truly happen without first making sure we are speaking the same language.  Just because we are using the same words, doesn’t mean that we are talking about the same things.

Reading Between the Lines

marriage, Mary

Catholics are often accused of reading between the lines of Sacred Scripture, especially when it comes to her teachings regarding Our Lady’s role in the Incarnation.  There is some truth to the accusation in that one way to look at Sacred Tradition is to see it as a reading between the lines.  But this does not mean that we ignore the lines themselves.  One place in particular where the lines are being ignored is directly related to the status of the marriage of Mary and Joseph at the time of the Annunciation.

Early in Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1:26-34), we are introduced to Mary, who is “a virgin betrothed to a man whose name is Joseph.”  To the modern ear, it is assumed that the word betrothed means that Mary was engaged to Joseph, but not yet married.  That is why some otherwise good translations (like the RSV Catholic Edition) have Mary responding to Gabriel’s proposal by saying, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?”  What follows is the assumption that Mary’s yes meant that she was to become an unwed mother and that Jesus is somehow illegitimate.  Part of Our Lady’s share of the Cross would be to bear this shame.  Despite the fact that this understanding is contrary to the perennial teaching of the Church, it is amazing how many Christians accept this unquestioningly.

By turning first to Matthew’s Gospel we can see that Joseph and Mary are in fact married when the Annunciation takes place.  We are given an account of “how the birth of Jesus Christ took place.  When His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph being a righteous man…resolved to divorce her quietly (Mt 1:18-19, emphasis added).  Clearly, Mary and Joseph are in fact married and not merely “engaged.”  The Evangelist introduces Joseph as Mary’s husband, Joseph contemplates divorce, and the angel tells Joseph not to fear to take Mary, “his wife” into his home.  The use of the terms husband, divorce, and wife all make it pretty clear that they were married.

St. Joseph and Our Lady Marriage

Some of the confusion stems from ignorance surrounding the Jewish marriage rite.  The Jewish matrimonial procedure was normally is divided into two distinct phases—an initiating phase and a completing phase.  The first phase consisted in the man presenting himself at the house of his desired bride to ask her (or her father) for her hand in marriage.  Once he received consent, a marriage contract was drawn up and the two were officially married.  This initiating phase was designated by the Rabbinic term kidushin, which referred to a marriage actually contracted.   The problem is that in modern languages we do not have an equivalent term that describes an initial phase of marriage and it is rendered as espoused or betrothed.  In this context however, it does not mean that they were merely engaged.  At this stage the couple was married with all the rights and duties that come with it.  The completing phase or nisuin, would occur when after a previously established time has passed, the man takes the wife into his home and fulfills all the promises of the marriage contract.  This second phase can be seen as completing or sealing the marriage.  Nothing new is added except the husband takes full possession of the wife and the wife is “husbanded” and given all the rights as his wife.  This is also when the marriage was normally consummated.

Analogously we could look at these two phases of marriage in a similar way to what we do today.  The couple exchange vows and are validly married (initiating phase) and the marriage is sealed through consummation that occurs sometime after the exchange of vows.

St. John Paul II affirms this understanding of the rite in his Apostolic Exhortation on St. Joseph, Guardian of the Redeemer saying, “according to Jewish custom, marriage took place in two stages: first, the legal, or true marriage was celebrated, and then, only after a certain period of time, the husband brought the wife into his own house. Thus, before he lived with Mary, Joseph was already her ‘husband.’” (Guardian of the Redeemer, 18).

The reason why a proper understanding of the married state of Joseph and Mary is so important is because it serves as an example of the sanctity of marriage.  Mary and Joseph were validly married and the natural fruit of marriage is a child.  That is the place in God’s divine plan where a child is to be conceived and born.  Now certainly Our Lord’s conception is altogether different than any other, but that does not change the fact that He is conceived and given as the fruit of Joseph and Mary’s marriage.  What would it say if Jesus Himself were conceived out of wedlock and God performs a shotgun wedding of sorts through the Angel Gabriel?  It would be an affirmation to many that having children outside of marriage is no big deal, especially because the Mother of God did it.  Certainly there are many with diabolical intent who would like to promote this idea.

There was never any accusation against Jesus as illegitimate, which most certainly would have been the case had Joseph and Mary not been married.  The Pharisees spent a lot of time trying to find dirt on Jesus and He was called many things, but a bastard was not one of them.  Why would God allow the reputation of His Mother to be sullied in any way?

It is worth mentioning as well Joseph’s consideration of quietly divorcing Mary.  This is not at all because he suspects her of adultery.  Mary’s intention to remain a virgin was well known to Joseph prior to their marriage.  A proper translation of Mary’s response to the angel reveals this.  She asks “how can this be because I know not man?” (and not “how can this be because I do not have a husband?”)  to indicate that she intends to remain perpetually a virgin, a vow that she assumed precluded her from having a child.  The tense of the Greek suggests that her virginity was to be an enduring condition.

Given this knowledge Joseph would have had no reason to suspect her of adultery.  In fact if you correctly read between the lines of Matthew’s text, you can conclude that if Joseph was in fact a “righteous man” then he would have followed every precept of the law of Moses including the requirement that if a wife was found in the act of infidelity by her husband then he was forced to divorce her and make her crimes known.  Anyone who hid the crime was also guilty (see Lev 5:1).

He contemplated putting her away quietly because he did not think he was worthy of being married to her.  He knew she was completely given to God, but he could not have known that it was to such a high degree.  It is like a single man or woman who meets their ideal in a consecrated person and immediately knows they are not meant to be.  They do not want to interfere in the life of someone given to God.  As Aquinas says, “Holy Joseph pondered in his humility not to continue to dwell with so much sanctity.”  This explains the angel’s response to Joseph that he should not “fear to take Mary his wife into his home.”

One might rightly wonder why, if Mary had been inspired by God from her youth to remain a virgin, she would have been given in marriage at all?  This certainly speaks to the love and holiness of St. Joseph that he would take a woman with such a vow to be his wife.  It could only be explained by Joseph himself being inspired to make a similar vow to live a life of wedded continence.  Her father would have given her away because a father was obliged not to leave his daughter a virgin because it was seen as an inferior condition of a lack of fulfillment as a woman and mother.  This is why the daughter of Jephthah mourns her virginity after she becomes a victim of her father’s rash vow.  She is mourning not because of a lack of integrity but because of a lack of fulfilment (Judges 11:37-38).

In summary, Cardinal Burke as the following to say:

The reason for the virginal marriage of Mary with Saint Joseph was to secure the conception and birth of Jesus within wedlock, the normal context for all conception and birth. For all who are born of man and woman are intended eventually to be part of the Holy Family first constituted by Joseph, Mary and Jesus. For Jesus to have been born out of wedlock would, in fact, make the Holy Family something significantly less than holy. The fact that Jesus was virginally conceived and born after the marriage of Mary and Joseph means that Jesus was conceived and born within wedlock. This is contrary to what so many, even priests, are saying at the present time, namely, that Jesus was born out of wedlock, like the children of so many unmarried women today, and that this is not an ‘abnormal’ situation. A pregnant, un-wed mother is said to be, according to these people, in the same condition as Mary, who they claim was also un-wed at the time she conceived Jesus. This is false; it is indeed a very serious falsehood, for it undermines the sanctity of marriage and the reason for that sanctity. It is said by defenders of this position that Jesus was conceived after Mary and Joseph were engaged, but not yet married.

 

Dying with Dignity?

End of Life, Human Dignity

Americans have always been a very practical people.  Proof of this can be seen by examining the number of how-to books that make their way onto the bestseller lists.  One how-to book that is particularly noteworthy, entitled Final Exit, climbed to the top of the New York in September of 1991.  Derek Humphry’s bestseller was unique in that it was a practical guide on “self-deliverance and assisted suicide for the dying.”  Given the book’s popularity, it is not surprising that the demand for assisted suicide has been on the rise in our country.  Physician Assisted Suicide is considered one of the most effective remedies for restraining death.  There are a number of arguments that have been brought forth to defend this practice.  The reasoning ranges over a number of fields including: legal, philosophical, medical, practical, and economic arguments.  With the possibility of the State of California joining Oregon and Washington as states where assisted suicide is legal, it is important that the Church come to the defense of truth.

To begin it is necessary to define what one means when they speak of assisted suicide.  Dr. Timothy Quill, one of the champions of the cause of assisted suicide defines it as “the act of making a means of suicide available to a patient who is otherwise physically incapable of suicide, and who subsequently acts on his or her own.”  Although Dr. Quill and many proponents of assisted suicide differentiate it from euthanasia, the Church for her part views both though the same lens.  Each is an act of the intentional killing of an innocent human person for reasons of mercy.

At the heart of each of the arguments is the notion of the principle of autonomy.  Simply put this principle says that if a person gives free and informed consent then they ought to be in control of their own life and manner of death.

The legal arguments are founded upon this principle of autonomy.  Current American jurisprudence seems to recognize assisted suicide as a liberty interest.  To date, the Supreme Court refused to recognize assisted suicide as a fundamental right.  However in Vacco v. Quill (1997) and Washington v. Glucksberg (1997), the Court ruled that because it was a liberty interest it ought to be left it up to the states to decide.  Currently there are three US states (Oregon, Washington and Montana) in which assisted suicide is legal.

These arguments clearly confuse freedom with license.  In man, his freedom is the most “exceptional sign of his being made in the image of God” (Gaudium et Spes, 17).  However, this freedom does not extend to control over life and death.  That is not freedom but license.  “We are stewards, not owners, of the life God has entrusted to us. It is not ours to dispose of” (CCC2280).

Assisted-Suicide sign

Although the legal argument sits upon the philosophical principle of personal autonomy, there is another philosophical reason that is often put forth.  This viewpoint involves a functional definition of personhood in which a person has value only insofar as they can be useful to society.  This represents a reduced view of human dignity that is finds its basis in the writings of Thomas Hobbes, who defined dignity as “the public worth of a man, which is a value set on him by the commonwealth.”

The Church for her part places human dignity upon a threefold foundation with a permanent character that cannot be taken away.  Regardless of the extent to which a person suffers diminished spiritual and physical capacities, or even if he commits the most heinous sin, he still retains his human dignity.  This dignity is “manifested in all its radiance when the person’s origin and destiny are considered: created by God in his image and likeness as well as redeemed by the most precious blood of Christ, the person is called to be a ‘child in the Son’ and a living temple of the Spirit, destined for the eternal life of blessed communion with God” (Christifidelis Laici, 37).

In reflecting upon this threefold foundation we find an additional characteristic other than its permanence.  Human dignity is also something which is to be achieved and realized in “communion with God.”  This notion of dignity shows that even when ‘quality of life’ diminishes or perhaps hasn’t been ‘achieved,’ ­dignity can actually increase because of the response of the sick to their suffering.

The economic arguments are perhaps the most straightforward.  Supporters of assisted suicide argue that the economic resources that are spent treating a seriously ill person could be put to better use by the family or society as a whole.  This viewpoint is flawed in that it puts economic resources ahead of the life of a person.  We ought to recognize this and be willing to accept any economic burden that would accompany allowing a person to die in a manner that is commensurate with their inherent dignity.  Mercy consists not in aiding to kill a person, but in shouldering the burden of journeying to death with them.  This often includes not only an emotional burden, but an economic one as well.

The medical arguments usually involve an argument that appeals to the just principle of “treating like patients alike.”  If terminally ill patients with free and informed consent are able to refuse medical treatment that will prolong their deaths, then those who are suffering but are not dependent upon medical treatment to live, ought to be able to hasten death through assisted suicide.

This argument fails to distinguish between refusing an extraordinary measure and being allowed to die and acting with the direct intent of causing death in the patient.  The decision to refuse treatment may be based upon the excessive burden that the treatment places upon the person and not represent a direct choice to die.

From 1990 through 1998, Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted in the deaths of over 130 people.  While he had in mind the goal of reliving the suffering of the afflicted, his motivation was of a more practical nature.  He argued that “if the patient opts for euthanasia…he or she can save anywhere from five to ten lives.  Now the death becomes definitely positive.”  His argument was that by donating their bodily organs, their death contributed to the good of society as a whole.  He is not alone in arguing for assisted suicide for “practical” reasons.

This is a misapplication of the principle of totality.  In its simplest form, the principle of totality holds that that under certain circumstances it is morally permissible to sacrifice the good of a part for the sake of the whole.  However there is an “essential difference between a physical organism and a moral organism.”  The organs of the body exist solely for the sake of the body while each human person does not exist for the sake of the whole of humanity.  Instead each human person has intrinsic worth and thus cannot be coercively sacrificed for the sake of the whole (Pope Pius XII, “Speech to Leaders and Members of the Italian Association of Cornea Donors and Italian Association for the Blind”).

We see then just how important the distinction between a physical organism and a moral organism is in determining the application of this principle.  A physical organism is one in which there is a unity on the level of essence.  Thus the relationship of part to whole exists if the part by its very nature has no finality outside the whole.  A moral organism however is a group of individuals that are bound together in some unity of action.  Each member of the group has a value that is intrinsically bound up with what (or more accurately who) they are rather than what they contribute to the community.  To kill another person for the sake of harvesting their organs is always morally wrong, regardless of the good that may come from it.

In conclusion, although many argue in favor of assisted suicide using legal, philosophical, medical, practical and economic reasoning, these arguments ultimately are flawed.  It is always contrary to the dignity of the person to directly intend their death by either an act of commission or omission.  Furthermore, we find that in allowing this to occur it only further promotes a culture of death, not just in the killing of the person, but in what it does to those who willingly participate.  As Archbishop Charles Chaput said, “in helping the terminally ill kill themselves we’re colluding not only in their dehumanization but our own.”

 

Catholic Divorce?

marriage

In the life of the Church, we live in unique times.  Never before has so much sensationalism surrounded papal pronouncements.  Unfortunately this type of sensationalism is almost always based on misconceptions and misreporting and becomes a breeding ground for confusion among the Faithful.  The release of two documents by the Holy Father this week related to the canonical procedure for declaring the nullity of a marriage is a case in point.  What makes these documents particularly prone to this type of sensationalism is the fact that very few people understand what it is the Church teaches regarding declarations of nullity.  Therefore, the documents themselves and what was actually reformed has very little chance to be understood.  With this in mind, what exactly does the Church teach regarding what are commonly referred to as annulments?

By far the most common misconception is that the process of declaring a marriage null is simply a Catholic loophole around Our Lord’s prohibition of divorce.  The Church however is quite emphatic that marriage is indissoluble, teaching that “[I]n his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning permission given by Moses to divorce one’s wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts.  The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it ‘what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder’” (CCC 1614).  By indissoluble the Church means that a valid, consummated marriage can never be dissolved with a right to remarry.  This means that marriage is both intrinsically indissoluble (cannot be dissolved by contracting partners) and extrinsically indissoluble (no earthly authority can annul it). Only death can separate man and woman in marriage.

The Church’s teaching that marriage is indissoluble is not and cannot be changed by Pope Francis, despite widely disseminated media reports to the contrary.  The changes that the Holy Father is implementing represent no change in Canon law either, only procedural changes that hopefully make access to Marriage tribunals easier.

One can see from the Catechism that the indissolubility of marriage hinges on two things, namely, validity and consummation.    Validity is something that is determined at the time the marriage takes place.  This is an important distinction between divorces and declarations of nullity that cannot be overlooked.  Divorce essentially says “I shouldn’t have married this person” while a declaration of nullity says “I didn’t marry this person.”

annulment

The Church says that a valid marriage hinges on three principles.  The first is that there are no canonical impediments to marriage.  What this means is that they are capable of marriage. Some obvious impediments would be that they are already married (even if they are divorced), too closely related (consanguinity), too young, or unable to consummate the marriage (impotence).  Some impediments such as disparity of cult (a Catholic who wants to marry a non-baptized person) can be removed by special dispensation.  It is worth mentioning as well that when someone’s first marriage is to a divorced person that marriage is not valid due to impediment of a valid prior marriage bond.

The second condition of validity is that the each spouse freely exchanges his or her consent.  This means that something like a shotgun wedding would not be considered valid.  Along the same lines the couple must understand what marriage is and what they are actually consenting to.  This means they have the intention to marry for life, to be faithful to one another and be open to children.  Given the success of the cultural attack on marriage, these things are no longer a given for anyone who enters into marriage.  While they may be grounds for declarations of nullity in the future, the Church ought to take very seriously her role in forming society in what marriage really is to avoid much heartbreak now.  This is where telling the truth in and of itself is always an act of charity.

Finally, the third condition is that their consent is given in the presence of two witnesses and before a properly authorized Church minister.

Marriage between baptized persons is always intrinsically indissoluble and is extrinsically so once it has been consummated.  A valid marriage that has not been consummated may be declared null by the Pope if one of the parties so wishes or through the profession of religious vows.  Consummation is so important simply because it becomes a visible sign that the two have in fact become one flesh in marriage and serves in some ways as a completion of the act of becoming married.

Cardinal Burke when he was Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, the Church’s highest court, lobbied against the use of the term “annulment” because it adds to the confusion.  In most people’s minds the term is constitutive and suggests a cancellation of a reality (like returning a shirt you bought but did not fit).  What a declaration of nullity truly is though is a declaration that a marriage never actually existed.

What also adds to the confusion is the role of the Tribunal specifically.  Their role is not merely administrative, but juridical in that they are trying to uncover the truth as to the validity of the marriage.  This will always take time because it is in almost all cases difficult to discover the mindset and circumstances of the couple at the time they exchanged vows.  They are seeking an objective judgment that requires careful examination.  Certainly this process should be as streamlined as possible, but because the vocation to marriage is so intimately tied to the salvation of both parties it can only be so efficient while maintaining justice.

It is also worth mentioning that declaration of nullity is concerned only with the question of whether a marriage is valid, not whether it is sacramental.  In an address to the Roman Rota in 2001, St. John Paul cautioned about trying to make an unnecessary distinction between natural marriage and marriage as a sacrament.  He said that

“[W]hen the Church teaches that marriage is a natural reality, she is proposing a truth evinced by reason for the good of the couple and of society, and confirmed by the revelation of Our Lord, who closely and explicitly relates the marital union to the “beginning” (Mt 19: 4-8) spoken of in the Book of Genesis:  “male and female he created them” (Gn 1: 27), and “the two shall become one flesh” (Gn 2: 24).  The fact, however, that the natural datum is authoritatively confirmed and raised by Our Lord to a sacrament in no way justifies the tendency, unfortunately widespread today, to ideologize the idea of marriage – nature, essential properties and ends – by claiming a different valid conception for a believer or a non-believer, for a Catholic or a non-Catholic, as though the sacrament were a subsequent and extrinsic reality to the natural datum and not the natural datum itself evinced by reason, taken up and raised by Christ to a sign and means of salvation.”

When two Christians marry (i.e. those who have been validly baptized) the natural reality that is marriage is raised to a Sacrament.  Note that it need not be two Catholics, but only two validly baptized Christians that bestow the Sacrament of Matrimony upon each other.  This is often a source of confusion for many people as to what constitutes a sacramental marriage and what doesn’t.  All valid marriages between Catholics are sacramental because you can’t be Catholic without being baptized. However, a valid marriage between a Catholic and a baptized non-Catholic is sacramental, while a valid marriage between a Catholic and a non-baptized person is not.

It is also worth mentioning that non-Catholics are not generally under the authority of canon law concerning marriage, so marriages between non-Catholics are generally recognized to be valid unless proven otherwise. Some of these marriages are sacramental (when both parties are baptized) and some are not (when one or both are not baptized).

Regarding the documents in general, the major news organizations labeled Francis’ reforms as “radical” suggesting there were fundamental changes to the whole process.  What they failed to mention was that all of these changes were procedural and none of them represented changes to the grounds for a declaration of nullity nor a lowering of standards.  The reason why clarity on this issue is so important is because the Church truly is the last voice left for a sane view of marriage.  When the world mistakenly sees annulments as “Catholic divorce” she loses much credibility.  The world will not listen to what the Church has to say when it is not reflected in the way its members live and so a proper understanding is vital to the Church’s evangelism.

On Reading Great Books

beauty, Culture

One of the marks of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth Century was their propensity for burning books in an attempt to “cleanse” the culture of any spirit that was contrary to their ideology.  Anyone who has read or seen the Book Thief can see an example of those who acted as a cultural remnant to keep the great works alive.  Every totalitarian culture has needed this remnant to act, and unfortunately ours is no different.  Interestingly enough though, we willingly give them away and no actual book burning is necessary.  Instead we bury them under a mountain of dust.  We cannot really say why other than “reading is boring.”  But I believe there is a deeper reason at work here, one that needs to be brought out into the light of day so that we can restore literary works to the prominent role they have held in nearly every culture that has gone by.

According to the CIA World Factbook, the United States has a 99% literacy rate.  Despite this incredible fact that nearly everyone can read, so few choose to except when absolutely necessary.  I deliberately referenced the CIA World Factbook and spoke of the “incredible fact” of nearly everyone being able to read.  At the heart of the Information Age is the fundamental confusion between information and understanding.  We confuse having a lot of facts about a thing with having an understanding of it.

Most people read merely for information.  They increase their store of facts, but have not increased their understanding.  In many ways, our patron saint is Cliff Clavin who could bombard the patrons at Cheers with fact after mind-blowing fact.  But all of these facts without an overall context in which to place them leaves us fragmented.  Where do these facts fit into reality and how do they help explain it?

Cliff Clavin

Of course, reading also takes a great deal of time and attention.  If I am reading merely to increase my store of information why bother reading at all when I can simply turn on the TV?  The average time a TV new show in America devotes to each subject is less than a minute.  This gives the viewer no time to interpret what the meaning of what they just saw is and they assume that the facts speak for themselves.  If the media is wise (often like serpents) they will spin the presentation of those facts and hide the interpretation within that presentation.  The point however is that each event become merely like an episode on a sit-com with very little connection to some overall story.  By next week, the focus will be on a new set of facts.

Reading for understanding however takes in information but attempts to fit it into an overall context.  It seeks to understand so that one might explain.  You are left fundamentally changed by an encounter with a good book because you have moved from understanding less to understanding more.  You will forget facts, but understanding never ceases.

There is a second reason why we do not read and that is because we have been conditioned to be chronological snobs.  To read the good books assumes that those who have gone before us are wiser than us in some way.  There is a certain inequality that must naturally exist between a teacher through speech or writing and a student.  We tend to think that those who have gone before us were simpletons.  We don’t read Aristotle’s metaphysics and his ethics because we proved his physics were wrong.

Even if we read good books by the authors who are still with us, we don’t like the presence of this inequality between teachers and students.  We prefer to have “facilitators” and not teachers.  All of the great men throughout history however were great readers and schooled in the classics.  Read the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and see what a love of reading and learning turned him into.

Obviously it is not enough to say why we don’t read.  What makes reading an integral way for us to grow in understanding?

The most obvious reason is that we can only learn from teachers who are somehow present to us.  Books makes the great teachers who are absent present to us.  It is as if we can have a conversation with the greatest minds of those who ever lived.  I have long claimed that St. Thomas Aquinas is my spiritual father because of the conversations I have had with him through his writings.  The fact that he is a saint obviously helps facilitate that learning as well, but whether the author is a saint or not, reading allows us the vantage point of reality that is only possible when we “stand on the shoulders of giants.”

Culturally, we suffer from a form of ADD in which we cannot sit still or concentrate for any length of time.  This is because we have forgotten how to control our imaginations and memory.  The minute things are quiet, our imaginations begin to run amok.  However when we read, the mind seizes control of these two faculties to form images and recall other things related to what we are reading.  This soon becomes habitual and we have greater control of them even when we are not reading.  In many ways, reading can help to undo this effect of the Fall.

In reading this essay, one could rightly sense a certain amount of personal prejudice for reading Old Books.  The Old Books have stood the test of time not because they are particularly well written (most of them are), but because they shed light on the eternal truths.  As CS Lewis says in his introduction to Athanasius’ On the Incarnation, we ought to be prejudicial toward the Old Books because,

Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and especially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.  The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we.  But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.

What makes Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets so enduring is his portrayal of the good and evil that runs through man’s heart.  The Divine Comedy is remarkable not just for its innovative use of terza rima, but also for the imaginative manner in which the author depicts man’s journey to his ultimate end that Dante built on St. Thomas’ philosophical vision of man.  With all the books on marriage and family being written today, which one could supplant Homer’s Odyssey in portraying the family as the center of civilization?

In closing, I can find no better summary than that of Chesterton (another giant we should mount), “It is always supposed that the man in question has discovered a new idea.  But, as a fact, what is new is not the idea, but only the isolation of the idea. The idea itself can be found, in all probability, scattered frequently enough through all the great books of a more classic or impartial temper, from Homer and Virgil to Fielding and Dickens. You can find all the new ideas in the old books; only there you will find them balanced, kept in their place, and sometimes contradicted and overcome by other and better ideas.  The great writers did not neglect a fad because they had not thought of it, but because they had thought of it and of all the answers to it as well.”

Seeing the Rainbow Clearly

Homosexuality

One could arguably say that in no other time in her history has the Church faced such vehement opposition to her teaching regarding the immorality of homosexual acts.  For this reason, it is especially important that the principles underlying her stance presented in a clear and pastoral manner.

With the advancement of many of the empirical sciences in the last half century, we are only now coming to understand just how complex an issue homosexuality is.  While these sciences have aided in understanding much of the underlying psychology associated with same-sex attraction, it is because of the Church’s global vision of “the rich reality of the human person in his spiritual and physical dimensions” (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons(PCHP), 2) that the Church is able to authoritatively discuss how those who suffer from this disorder can achieve integral human fulfillment.

An important distinction needs to be made at the outset in order to fully understand the teaching.  The Church makes a firm distinction between homosexual inclinations and homosexual acts.  Having a homosexual inclination is not in and of itself sinful.  This does not mean however that having such a tendency is neutral or even good.  Because it is a tendency towards a grave moral evil, the inclination itself is properly understood as an objective disorder (PCHP, 3).

Even if a person has this inclination, the Church cautions against labeling a person as homosexual because there is something much more fundamental to each person than their sexual inclinations.  In fact the Church, “refuses to consider the person as a ‘heterosexual’ or a ‘homosexual’ and insists that every person has a fundamental identity: a creature of God and by grace, his child and heir to eternal life”(PCHP, 16).

Furthermore, it is important to recognize that no one is ontologically homosexual.  The fact of the matter is that there really is no such thing as “homosexuality” or “heterosexuality”.  In truth there are only two sexual identities; male and female.  Our sexuality is the call of men and women to love as God loves in and through their bodies.  The unfortunate reality is that we live in a fallen world where there can be distortions that obscure our sexual identity.

Even though the Church recognizes that same sex attraction is an objective disorder, in her wisdom she leaves it to the empirical sciences to determine what causes this inclination in some people and not in others.  The Church does recognize that in most cases the inclination is not directly willed by the individual.  Although the inclination is not directly willed, it does not mean that a person is not free to choose whether these inclinations are acted upon.  For that reason she is most concerned with freely chosen homosexual acts when it comes to moral judgment.

Once this foundation is set, we can begin to look at the Church’s reasons for her constant teaching that homosexual activity is intrinsically evil.  Like all of her moral teachings, the Church bases her reasoning “on human reason illumined by faith” (PCHP, 1).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts are contrary to the natural law (CCC 2357).  To see why this is the case, we begin by recalling that the first principles of the natural law are based upon the fundamental human goods, of which marriage and procreation are included.  God is the author of human nature so what is natural is also good so that “we offend God only by acting contrary to our own good” as St Thomas says.  The Church says that homosexual acts are immoral because they do harm to the good of the person by acting against fundamental human goods.  The fundamental human goods that the sexual act is ordered to are the union between husband and wife and the procreation of children (CCC 2201, 2249).  In other words, every sexual act then must be both unitive and ordered to procreation in order to be a true human good (CCC 2369).

Marching outside Church

Although this should be obvious to us, the fact that it is not is because we are steeped in a culture that approaches man dualistically and also encourages contraception.  Much of Pope John Paul II’s teachings on Theology of the Body were spent trying to help us clear away these two dangerous misconceptions.  In developing what he called an “adequate anthropology”, Pope John Paul II showed that the sexual difference that is marked by the reciprocal complementarity in the sexes reveals that the body has a spousal meaning. It is this complementarity through which man and woman are able to make a sincere gift of themselves to each other.

If we examine sodomitical or other homosexual activity we see that the unitive aspect of the marital act cannot be achieved.  In fact because they lack sexual complementarity the act is truly self-indulgent in that each partner uses the other for his own gratification.  Not only does this do harm to the spousal meaning of the body, but because it is based on an illusion of intimacy it leaves each of the partners emptier in their search for love.

These homosexual acts also lack the procreative aspect as well.  Although this is obvious, many say that the marital embrace is not intrinsically ordered to procreation.  One can then see how a culture’s acceptance of contraception leads to its acceptance of homosexual activity.

The Church’s teaching is also based upon divine revelation as well.  There are numerous biblical passages in which homosexual activity is clearly condemned.  Perhaps the best known passage is the story of Sodom (Gn 19:4-11, PCHP, 6).   This story refers to the attempted homosexual rape of Lot’s visitors by the men of Sodom.  Modern exegetes have attempted to reinterpret this passage and say that Sodom was destroyed for a lack of hospitality.  However, this interpretation not only is contrary to the traditional understanding of the Church but also is contrary to the interpretation that is given in Scripture itself.  The Letter of Jude says that the people of Sodom acted “immorally and indulged in unnatural lust” (Jude 7).

There are numerous texts within the New Testament as well, but the clearest condemnation comes in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans in which homosexual activity is regarded as punishment for disbelief: “For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error” (Romans 1:26-27).

Even if these individual Scriptural texts were omitted, one could easily argue the immorality of homosexual acts based upon the Scriptural understanding of sexuality itself.  Like her Divine Master, the Church points us back to” the beginning” to gain a proper understanding of human sexuality.  “God, in his infinite wisdom and love, brings into existence all of reality as a reflection of his goodness. He fashions mankind, male and female, in his own image and likeness. Human beings, therefore, are nothing less than the work of God himself; and in the complementarity of the sexes, they are called to reflect the inner unity of the Creator. They do this in a striking way in their cooperation with him in the transmission of life by a mutual donation of the self to the other” (PCHP, 6).  Only in marriage then do we find the proper place for sexual expression that finds its meaning in union and procreation.

In conclusion, despite the fact that the Church is often viewed as “intolerant” in her condemnation of homosexual activity, she bases her teachings on what is truly good for the human person.  This has been the constant teaching of the Church and is confirmed by both natural law and divine revelation.