Veritas in caritate

The Poor Christ Who Judges

2011-11-27T15:24:00.001-08:00

The following was a reflection I preached before my community during a recent weekly Eucharistic Adoration liturgy.

We’ll begin with a true story. “Father John” was a well-known priest in New York City. Once a week in the middle of the night he would go to St Clare’s Hospital to clean the bedpans of patients dying of AIDS and to give pastoral counsel to those who despaired of life while suffering not only the agony of physical deterioration but also rejection by society, friends, and even family. Father John was so famous that he had to work in the middle of the night. In fact, every one of the hospital staff who knew him were under the strictest orders to refer to him only as “Father John” and were forbidden from using his last name.

Who was this “Father John”? None other than His Eminence John Cardinal O’Connor, Archbishop of New York, retired Rear Admiral of the United States Navy. A Prince of the Church, an occupant of one of the world’s premier episcopal Sees; he was such an important man that he had the American President, General Secretary of the United Nations, and even the Holy Father only one phone call away, and yet he did not think himself above cleaning infected waste and loving those who may—may—have rejected God’s plan for human sexuality. This man whom Pope John Paul II once addressed as “the Archbishop of the capital of the world” was a profound lover of the poor. Because of him, the Archdiocese of New York was said to be “haemorrhaging” two million dollars per year in works of charity. Those who had the privilege of meeting him could anticipate the same words of greeting every time: “What can I do for you?”

I think that the example of this late Archbishop of New York is an important one, because at the time of his appointment, the Church in America was in its most difficult moment. Cardinal O’Connor was one of the few but resounding voices who could articulate the teachings of Holy Church and who many bishops saw as their senior in the episcopate. He was a doctrinally sound Pastor who, at the same time, was keen on the Church’s social tradition. In fact his episcopal motto came from Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum progressio—“There can be no peace without justice.”

I think we can all agree, more or less, that the Church in North America has been polarized, on one hand, between Catholics who wish to be loyal to the Magisterium but place less emphasis on social justice and charity, and on the other hand Catholics who are passionate about human dignity, the rights of workers, peace, but place less emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy. For example, I’m sure we have heard otherwise doctrinally sound believers speak contemptuously of the Canadian Catholic Organisation for Development and Peace, and we’ve no doubt met Catholics who love Bl. John XXXIII’s Pacem in terris but dismiss Paul VI’s Humanae vitae. What has emerged is a tragic dichotomy between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It is a false dichotomy and it has no place in the Catholic Faith. Our Father Rector has mentioned, on not a few occasions, of the unacceptability of pitting the ‘integralists’ and the ‘progressives’ against each other. I even accuse myself who am Catholic and Republican. Or perhaps I should say ‘Catholic but Republican.’

Let us no mistake: it is the same Christ of the Councils and Fathers who is the Christ of the Margins. It is Jesus Christ, God and Man, who is also Jesus Christ, hungry and poor.

We are at the threshold of a new liturgical year; on this last Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Roman Liturgy turns her attention to the Last Judgment. In the gospel we’ve just heard, the Lord Jesus makes it abundantly clear that He is Really Present in the margins—in the hungry and thirsty, in the immigrant and foreigner, in the homeless and imprisoned. “Amen, I say to you,” Christ will say to the blessed, “whatever you did for one of the least [sisters and] brothers of mine, you did for me.” He could not be clearer. “[F]or one of the least...” Who are the least for us? I shudder to think of what the Lord will say to me for all of those homeless people I pretended not to see, all of those mentally retarded people I ignored, all of those alcoholics I condemned, because it means I pretended not to see, I ignored, I condemned Christ of the Margins, Christ in distressing disguise.

We can be sure that there is indeed a ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the poor for at least three reasons. In the first place, they too were created by Him, because every human person is the crowning work of Creation. It is fallen human nature to organize the human race into an hierarchy of ‘more valuable’ people over and against the ‘less valuable’—our culture prizes the successful entrepreneur but makes fun of those who have meagre bank accounts, let alone those who have nothing. But it is an authoritative teaching of the Magisterium that all people are of equal dignity— When God looks upon the world, there isn’t anyone who isn’t V.I.P.; there is not a whit of difference in dignity between a Hollywood celebrity or the Queen of Canada or even the pope and a person who lives on the streets and subsists on alcohol or sells her body to feed her children. This leads us to a second reason why we know that there is a ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in the poor—evangelizare pauperibus misit me, “He sent me to preach good news to the poor.” The Incarnation had in view not only God’s solidarity with the human race, but especially his solidarity with the poor. Finally, Christ died on the Cross for those on the margins no less than he died for those who are esteemed, financially secure, and impious.

Consider the words of another “Father John,” this time the fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople, St John Chrysostom. We could not find a better time to listen to his words than here in the presence of the Most Blessed Sacrament whom we adore at this moment:

Do you wish to honour the Body of Christ? Then do not disdain Him when you see Him in rags. After having honoured Him in Church with silken vestments, do not leave Him to die of cold outside for lack of clothing. For it is the same Jesus Who says, “This is My Body” and Who says “I was hungry but you would not feed Me. Whenever you refused to help one of these least important ones, you refused to help me.”

The Eucharist, then, is the meeting-point between orthodoxy and orthopraxy, between right belief and upright life, the life which has as its foundation the precept of charity [cf. Jn 13:37], this charity which, as St Augustine tells us, is ‘why’ God is a Trinity. Doctrine and life—inseparable. Fidelity to the Magisterium, social action—absolutely mutually inclusive.

For us who are discerning a call to Holy Orders, our relationship to the Christ of the Margins is even more demanding—because priests are not simply called to a life of philanthropy but, in imitation of the Mystery of the Incarnation, to a life of solidarity with the poor. In the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Life of Ministry of Priests, we read that: “...priests are invited to embrace voluntary poverty. By it they become more clearly conformed to Christ and more ready to devote themselves to their sacred ministry.” Blessed John Paul II later wrote in his Pastores dabo vobis:

Poverty for the priest, by virtue of his sacramental configuration to Christ, the head and shepherd, takes on specific ‘pastoral’ connotations which the synod fathers took up from the Council's teachings and further developed. Among other things, they wrote: “Priests, following the example of Christ, who, rich though he was, became poor for love of us (cf. 2 Cor. 8:9)—should consider the poor and the weakest as people entrusted in a special way to them, and they should be capable of witnessing to poverty with a simple and austere lifestyle, having learned the generous renunciation of superfluous things” [n. 30].

So then: What is the bottom line? Cardinal O’Connor can answer that for us: the bottom line is eternity. In a homily he once gave, the Cardinal reminded the faithful of the crypt underneath the high altar at St Patrick’s Cathedral where the Archbishops of New York are buried. He was keenly aware that, on a fixed date pre-determined by God the just Judge, he will be interred in that narrow cubicle—about two feet wide, two feet tall, and six feet deep—and his body consigned to dust and ashes. What really matters, the Cardinal said, was not the fact that he was ‘Cardinal O’Connor,’ but rather, how he lived his life, and whether he lived it in faithful obedience to the precepts of Jesus Christ, the same Jesus Christ who commands us even now: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least brothers of Mine, you did for Me,” the same Christ who wanders around the Marian Centre, Hope Mission, or the Mustard Seed. Our salvation hinges upon our veneration of Christ, here in this Most Blessed Sacrament, and out there where He wanders cold, hungry, marginalised, and imprisoned.

Let us adore Christ, wherever we find Him, whether here in this monstrance of gold, or out there in a monstrance of rags. Let us love Christ, let us serve Christ.

O Jesus, You who are in disguise here, may we see You who are disguised in Your poor.

Is RealCatholicTV.com Really Catholic?

2011-07-30T09:25:00.001-07:00

Well, is it?

To be fair, the disclaimer on the website's About Us page states: "No materials on this website are intended to speak in the name of the Church."

One must wonder, then: Wherefore the name "RealCatholicTV"? Does this indicate that the producers of RealCatholicTV.com perceive themselves as "more Catholic" than, say, EWTN or Salt+Light Television? (It would seem that the contemporary movement to "out-Catholic" another represents a spiritual malaise which breeds polarity, division, and hostility in the Church--precisely what the enemy of our salvation wishes to accomplish.)

To push the question further, why would an organisation identify itself as "Real Catholic" when in fact it does not intend "to speak in the name of the Church"? To separate Catholicity from its ecclesial reality is an instant recipe for schism. Just ask St Cyprian of Carthage.

Canon law is quite specific in who gets to call themselves Catholic. Individuals who are baptised and profess the Catholic faith are, of course, Catholic. This, mind you, pertains to physical persons, a category in canon law referring specifically to individuals like you and I (canon 96). Two other categories of persons exist in canon law, moral persons and juridic persons (cf. canon 113.1 and .2). Moral persons are mere de facto aggregates of physical persons, whereas juridic persons are--you guessed it--de iure aggregates of physical, or even moral, persons.

Thus, insofar as the members of RealCatholicTV.com have received the Sacraments of Initiation and profess the Catholic Faith in its entirety, they are, individually, Catholic. The problem, though, is that the name of the organisation begs to differ: (1) real, (2) Catholic, (TV). A television station or broadcasting network cannot be physical persons. The members who work for the station might be moral persons, but according to canon law, the only the "Church" and the "Apostolic See" are moral persons by divine right and only these moral persons can be properly called "Catholic."

Now we get to the crux of the issue: "No association is to assume the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority according to the norm of can. 312)." The only "competent ecclesiastical authority" that can grant the title of "Catholic"--assuming that RealCatholicTV intends at least to be a private association of the faithful--is the Holy See, the episcopal conference, or the local Ordinary.

In other words, the only thing that is really and truly Catholic are (1) the Catholic Church and the Apostolic See, (2) individual believers, and (3) those associations of the faithful who have been granted, lawfully, the title "Catholic."

So, is RealCatholicTV.com really Catholic? No, it isn't.

We can go even further. It is well-known, now, that certain speakers associated with the said organisation have fallen out of favour with certain bishops who, unlike laypersons, exercise a divine right to govern their diocese and their subjects. And then we have the recent news that the organisers of World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, Spain, have clearly noted that any speaking engagement by RealCatholicTV constitutes an unofficial presence.

It goes without saying that RealCatholicTV.com is known for its combative style and forcefully uncharitiable--indeed un-Christian--diatribes. Thus we conclude with the magisterial words of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council: "Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not however persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but 'in body' and not 'in heart.' All children of the Church should nevertheless remember that their exalted condition results, not from their own merits, but from the grace of Christ. If they fail to respond in thought, word, and deed to that grace, not only shall they not be saved, but they shall be the more severely judged" (Lumen gentium n. 14).

If the viewers of RealCatholicTV.com want exposure to real Catholicity, then they should be attuned in heart and mind to the Church's liturgy, especially the Most Holy Eucharist, and to receive with docility and obedience the teachings of the Magisterium rather than view the rantings of a few disgruntled Catholic believers.

Of Biblical, Historical, Geographical, and Statistical Illiteracy

2011-07-05T19:11:00.000-07:00

George Berkeley once said that "truth is the cry of many but the game of few." The same could very well be said of people who take pride in their reputation of being Biblically literate.

I was in Italy recently, and got to see firsthand the city of Rome. When I returned home, I stumbled across a story posted by a Dominican friar on the Internet in which he was accosted by someone who asked whether he'd read Revelation 17 recently. The insinuation, of course, was obvious: That the Catholic Church fits the description found of "the harlot" in Revelation 13 and 17. In this brief post I intend to demonstrate why this interpretation is not only based upon a sloppy reading of the Sacred Page but also founded upon an ignorance of geography, history, and statistics.

The idea that the harlot spoken of in Rev 17 is the Catholic Church became popular with Martin Luther. But equivocations differ: some say that the popes are the "seven kings"; others say that he is "the beast." At this point the metaphor becomes confused: who rides upon whom? The pope upon the Church? The Church upon the pope?

The idea, or confusion, is still popular. Several denominations publish this idea in their official handbooks of doctrine. The late Jack Chick of Chick Publications is perhaps its most famous propagandist. But as we will see, it is insurmountably difficult to sustain such an interpretation of Rev 17 (and 13).

The basic motif in Rev 17 is found in v. 3, "...a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of blasphemous names, and ti had seven heads and seven horns." Later, in v. 9, we read that "the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated" (RSV). The Greek noun translated as "mountains" here, orē, is derived from oros which can be translated either "mountain," "mount," or "hill" (cf. W. C. Trenchard, A Concise Dictionary of New Testament Greek [New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 114). In fact the NIV translates this precisely as "The seven heads are the seven hills on which the woman sits."

(We might add that, if one wants to be literalist about Rev 17:3, one would have to find, exactly, a city with seven mountains instead of hills--especially if one is a "King James Only believer.")

What locale fits the description of "the seven hills"? Rome, of course, does: it is famously known as "the City of the Seven Hills"--with the Aventine Hill, the Caelian Hill, the Capitoline Hill, the Esquiline Hill, the Palatine Hill, the Quirinal Hill, and the Viminal Hill. This is where anti-Catholics get lost--I have yet to meet one who interprets Rev 17 as referring to the Catholic Church and can name the Seven Hills of Rome.

At this point, it is difficult to see how the Catholic Church is referenced here.

In the first place, St Peter's Basilica sits on the Vatican Hill, which is not even counted among the "Seven Hills of Rome." To make matters worse, St Peter's Basilica sits on the west side of the Tiber River; when the Revelation to John was composed, the City of Rome extended only to the east bank of the Tiber River. In point of fact, what is now "Vatican City" does not even coincide with the old city of Rome, which can be said to have two sets of boundaries. Originally, the Servian Wall surrounded the city in the fourth century B.C. and later expanded with the Aurelian Wall, constructed in the third century A.D.

But it gets worse.

St Peter's Basilica is not even the head of Catholic Christendom, it's the Lateran Basilica and it does sit on a hill--the Lateran Hill which, again, is not one of the Seven Hills of Rome. The Lateran Basilica--which is properly called the "Papal Archbasilica of the Most Holy Saviour"--is situated between the Esquiline and the Caelian Hills.

It is even harder to see how we can square the number "seven" with the Church of Rome. There are indeed "patriarchial basilicas" in Rome where the pope has the title to--but there are only five of them. In addition to the Vatican and Lateran Basilicas, there is also Santa Maria Maggiore (St Mary Major), San Paolo fuori le Mura (St Paul Outside-the-Walls) and San Lorenzo fuori le Mura (St Lawrence Outside-the-Walls). As you can see, two additional patriarchal basilicas are outside the boundaries of old Rome.

There are a few more difficulties with the equivocation of Rev 17 and the Catholic Church.

Rome wasn't always the site of the papal curia. Several times throughout its history, the popes resided in other cities, especially Orvieto, Viterbo, and Avignon, which isn't even on the periphery of Rome.

And then, of course, we have the "seven kings" (vv. 10-12), one of whom was dealt a "mortal wound" (Rev 13:14). These "seven kings" have often been referred to as popes, but since Pope Benedict XVI is number two hundred sixty-five in the papal succession, it is difficult to see how 10 can equal 265.

Moreover, "the woman that you saw is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth." The Catholic Church, obviously, is not a city. It is, well, a Church.

What can I say now? Probably none other than what can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church under the entry "Antichrist": "...the identification of the Pope with the Antichrist has been frequently made, especially in the less educated circles of Protestantism" ([New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997], 76).

And good riddance, since the word "antichrist" is nowhere to be found in the book of Revelation.

For further reading: http://www.catholic.com/library/Hunting_the_Whore_of_Babylon.asp

Mr Camping and Fundamentalism

2011-05-23T10:38:00.000-07:00

So the purported 'rapture' came and went. As a Catholic, I am not in the least bit surprised.

What does surprise me still is the way in which Fundamentalists read the Bible. Certainly, Mr Harold Camping does not represent Fundamentalism insofar as he set a date for the End. He does, however, represent Fundamentalism insofar as his method of Biblical interpretation sets up the individual reader (or one to whom the individual reader defers to) as a magisterium unto himself. The grand irony of Fundamentalism in particular, and Protestantism in general, is that it rejects the authority of the Church, only to insist on the authority of the individual believer, the pastor, or a denomination. In other words, the very premise that is rejected--the authority of the Church--becomes the very premise of Protestantism--the authority of the individual. Protestantism, and especially Fundamentalism, is founded upon a self-contradiction.

Even more than this, however, is the way in which Fundamentalism brings the obscure passages of Scripture into high relief to the point of suppressing some of the more prima facie assertions of the Biblical writers. In the case of Mr Camping and his followers, there was a strange silence on the question of Mt 24:36, "But about that day and hour, no-one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (cf. Mk 13:32). Even more astonishing is that, for all the reputed Biblical literacy which Fundamentalists advertise to be their greatest asset, hardly anything was said about the fact that even the Lord Jesus did not know the time of the End.

My point here, really, is the metod of setting aside the prima facie meanings of certain Biblical passages in favour of a collection of more obscure passages in the Protestant method of reading the Bible. A classic example is the Bread of Life discourse: "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh" (Jn 6:51). Jesus repeats his assertion several times in vv. 53, 54, 55, 56, 58. In the attempt to escape the prima facie meaning of Jesus' Eucharistic words, the Old Testament prohibition of eating blood is often invoked. Still others resort to a kind of Rationalism: "How can bread and wine be the flesh and blood of Jesus?" And, despite the masterful study of the Lutheran exegete Joachim Jeremias (The Eucharistic Words of Jesus [London, UK: SCM Press, 1990]). The same can be said about holy baptism as effecting interior regentation by a realist participation in the Passion of Christ (cf. Jn 3:5; Mk 16:16; 1 Pt 3:21; Col 2:12-13; Rom 6:3-4); the falsity of 'eternal security' (1 Cor 4:4; Gal 5:4; Heb 6:4-6, 10:26-27; 2 Jn 8-9, et al.); the existence of a doctrinal and moral Magisterium in the Church (Acts 15, et al.).

Unfortunately, the loudest bark provokes the greatest scare, and Mr Camping's doctrinal monstrosities have already caught the attention of the world and away from the authentic Christianity which has existed for two millenia. As an insider--I hold two Masters' degrees in sacred theology and I am in preparation for Holy Orders--I know that the Catholic Church does not share the eschatological views of Mr Camping or of Fundamentalism, and so I am surprised when strangers ask me whether Mr Camping is correct in his calculations. To ask a Catholic whether Mr Camping is correct is like asking a Latinist whether the magical incantations in the Harry Potter series are pronounced correctly. Although I will save the topic for a different posting, I seriously suspect that, given the theology of Divine Revelation professed by Fundamentalists, Fundamentalism disqualifies itself as "Christianity."

Yet Mr Camping has done incalculabe harm to the Church's mission. The propaganda stir he effected has rubbed off onto Christianity and damaged its credibility because most people--especially the New Atheists--are unable to ditinguish between the "christianities" of Protestantism and the Christianity of the Catholic Church. Five years ago, any theological discussion by a nonbeliever necessarily included a refutation of the historical fiction that is The Da Vinci Code. Now, any such theological discussion will necessarily include a disclaimer on Mr Camping. In fact, Mr Camping can rightly be called the next Dan Brown.

Heresy is serious business, so serious that it was a capital crime in certain parts of medieval Europe. Instead, today, we have hundreds of disappointed people, without jobs, massive credit card debts, shattered faith, and hundreds of secularists who have since become even more hardened in their unbelief. I suppose the element of surprise in the actual coming of the End will have something to do with the incredulity contributed by Mr Camping.

Dogmatic Theology and Systematic Theology

2011-02-25T12:22:00.000-08:00

For some time now, I have been thinking about the phrase 'dogmatic theology.' In particular I have been reflecting on the difference between dogmatic theology and systematic theology. Is there a difference? Should there be a difference?

A basic rule of linguistics is that there are not two words with the exact same definition. By this alone we should know that 'dogmatics' and 'systematics' cannot mean the same thing.

But we can also know that these two names denote different things by the way they 'behave' in discourse. If I say something about "Christological dogma," one should naturally think about the Nicaean response to the Arian crisis, the "Chalcedonian definition," and the "God-Man" of St Anselm's satisfaction theory. If, however, I say something about the "Christological system," instinctively my hearers know that I am speaking of quite another thing. It could very well mean the taximony of Christological beliefs, their interrelation, and speculative reflection on the person of Christ (as, for example, Roger Haight's failed experiment in Jesus as the "symbol of God" or Gustavo Guiterrez's successful experiment in Jesus as the one who is on the side of the marginalised and oppressed).

What is even more interesting, I think, is that some theological faculties describe themselves differently. Let's take Dunwoodie Seminary--a place I hold in very high esteem--in Yonkers, New York. The professors of theology are given the title of "professor of dogmatic theology." Some of them have received doctorates precisely in dogmatic theology from the Gregorianum. Others, holding to the same title, have doctorates from the Catholic University of America which has a department in "Historical and Systematic Theology."

Should there be a difference? As a lecturer in theology at my alma mater told me recently, every theologian has his method--and he said this in a less-than-endearing way.

Rather than saying that there are different methods between dogmatics and systematics (which is nonetheless true), I think it is better to say that each has its own paedagogy. The word 'dogma' should suffice to tell us this.

'Dogma,' as you know, is a narrower range of Catholic belief than is 'doctrine.' In contemporary theological discourse, dogma pertains strictly to the primary object of infallibility which requires the "assent of faith," a specific modality of belief that is owed the person of God; 'authoritative doctrine' pertains to the secondary object of infallibility which requires "firm retention and adherence." As far as 'dogma' goes, the definition proposed by Fr Philip Neri Chrismann OFM has proven to be enduring: "a dogma of the faith is nothing other than a divinely revealed doctrine and truth which is proposed by the public judgment of the Church as something to be believed with divine faith, in such wise that the contrary is condemned by the Church as heretical doctrine" (Regula fidei catholicae, quoted in W. Kasper, Dogma unter dem Wort Gottes [Mainz, 1965], 36). Those who are familiar with the dogmatic constitution on the Catholic Faith Dei Filius will immediately recognise Fr Chrismann's definition.

Dogma, then, has to do with something that is (1) divinely revealed, (2) proposed by the magisterium, and (3) to be believed with "divine faith."

What is distinctive about dogma is that the belief is disclosed by Divine Revelation. In other words, certain beliefs are knowable only because God has disclosed them. An example of this would be the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union of Christ, or the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of Mary. None of these can be known by pure reason as, can be, for example, the existence of a Creator or the natural moral law.

Let's put this aside and take a look at how sacramental theology has been done since the closing of the Second Vatican Council. According to Trent, a sacrament was "instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord" (DS 1601). Now when one takes, for example, the Sacrament of Penance, just how or when Christ instituted it asks a question that does not give full justice to the event of Divine Revelation (see D. Coffey, The Sacrament of Reconciliation [Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001], 32ff). There is no question that Christ established Penance as a means of absolving post-baptismal grave sins. But it must be understood within the context of Christ as the "primoridal sacrament." In other words, the economy of the Incarnate Word, especially the life of Christ, achieved a certain 'plurification' in the sacramental system of the Church. Christ, obviously, instituted baptism and Eucharist, but less obviously but no less truly instituted penance, confirmation, and the other sacraments in virtue of certain patterns in his life. As K. Rahner said,

The sacramentality of the Church's basic activity is implied by the very essence of the Church as the irreversible presence of God's salvific offer in Christ. The sacramentality is interpreted by the Church in the seven sacraments, just as the Church developed its own essence in its constitution.

I am convinced that dogmatic theology has developed in a fashion not wholly unlike the seven sacraments. If the sacraments represents an endurance of Christ's Incarnation (as, indeed, the Incarnation is the very "principle" of sacramentality), then dogma represents an endurance of Divine Revelation. I would go so far as to say this: If Christ is the primordial sacrament, the Divine Revelation is the primordial dogma.

The next step, then, has to do with the believer's response to Divine Revelation as 'crystallized' in the Church's dogmatic definitions. This is precisely what is meant by "divine faith" or, to put it juridically, by "the assent of faith." Thus dogmatic theology requires a modus operandi that demands the habitus of the theological virtue of faith than perhaps even systematic theology does, as the latter may deal with speculative questions that do not require the assent of faith (such as, for example, whether St John the Precursor was cleansed of sin in the womb of Elizabeth in virtue of Mary's greeting or whether the Mother of God was the first to know that Christ was risen from the dead).

Even more than that, it is perhaps worth considering--not without some degree of perplexity--that the various treatises of theology are presented almost in isolation from other treatises. For example, there is the commonly-heard complaint (especially by Rahner) that the treatises de Deo Uno and de Deo Trino are too often in total separation that a transition from the One Creator God to the Triune God is next-to-impossible to achieve, at least in the way that manual theology was taught. The Eastern Christians, however, do not make such a separation. (In fact, true to the form of St Gregory of Nyssa, the unity and oneness of God is inferred from the three hypostaseis).

To take another example, consider the treatise de Ecclesia. We know, of course, that there is no Church without the Eucharist; yet too infrequently do we hear a lecture on the centrality of the Eucharist in the Church. Moreover, there is a definite Trinitarian structure to the liturgy: how does this liturgical Trinitarianism bear on the Eucharist and, subsequently on the Church? Take treatise, and there is a guarantee that each and any one of them can be brought to bear upon every other treatise. De Quattuor novissimus and de Sacramentis; de Deo Trino and de Natura et gratia (Pope John Paul II has done precisely this in his theology of the body); and de Incarnatione Verbi and de Mysterium Paschale; any one of these treatises can be brought to bear upon another.

This, I would propose, is what distinguishes dogmatic theology from systematics: it bears in mind the totality of Divine Revelation as the horizion against which to read the Church's dogmatic definitions. In other words, dogmatic theology stands closer to the "primordial dogma" of Divine Revelation and considers the articles of faith before its systematization in the different treatises. As such, it requires a different exercise of faith in its study. Systematic theology, then, is posterior to dogmatic theology, because it classifies the various dogmata of the Church into various treatises. The intermediary state between Divine Revelation and theological treatises, I would suggest, is precisely "dogmatic theology."

Since dogmatics is to be studied in front of the horizon of Divine Revelation, it might be useful to take M. Lohrer's proposal that the function of dogma is to mediate the kerygma. That having been said, it is probably a good habit, when looking at the lens of dogma, to discern what aspect of the Gospel it is intended to highlight. Thus dogma bears greater promise of providing not only certitude but clear perception of Divine Revelation.

But here I must interject with a complaint. The study of theology, especially Catholic theology, ought to presuppose a basic knowledge of the Church's magisterial teachings. How often have we taken a course in Triadology (1) without a course in the Gospel of John as a prerequisite and (2) without any grounding in the letter of Pope Dionysius I to Dionysius of Alexandria, the Cappadocian Settlement, and the Eleventh Council of Toledo? This same pattern can be repeated across several fields of theology. I remember taking a course in Christology in which my professor, aware of the advancements of Biblical studies (and probably R. E. Brown's New Testament Christology), said that the lectures would not begin with an examination of the Gospels and Pauline/Johannine literature as that would be "anachronistic." Cardinal Schonborn's recent book, God Sent His Son, is a perfect example of how it is not anachronistic. Fr G. O'Collin's Christology likewise does a good job presenting the dogmatic picture of Christ, making use of both Scripture and the Church's teaching authority.

To translate what I've just said into practical terms: Denzinger-Schonmetzer.

Dogmatic theology and systematic theology, although there is a tendency to use the two terms interchangeably, should not be confused. They are differentiated not so much in their methods as in their paedagogy and, if we are to take B. Lonergan's very useful suggestion, then systematics is posterior to dogmatics.

To close, I pulled out an old paper and uploaded it for your viewing pleasure, if you are so inclined to investigate this question from the point-of-view of Bernard Lonergan.

The Universal Call to HolinessAnd Particular Vocations

2011-01-30T22:42:00.000-08:00

Anyone who visits Washington, D.C., should take the time to visit the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a magnificent structure dedicated to the Mother of God. Some of the readers who followed Pope Benedict XVI's Apostolic Journey to the United States may remember that he presided at a Solemn Vespers in the Crypt Church of the National Shrine. Yes, that one.

The Great Upper Church is a monument to the Catholic faith--we not only express our Catholicity in what we believe, in how we behave, and in the prayers we offer. Our Catholicity is expressed in the architectural and artistic patrimony of the Church. The National Shrine is a notable example of this.

When a pilgrim enters the Great Upper Church, immediately above the doors is one of the world's largest marble relief sculptures, titled The Universal Call to Holiness. It prominently features a dove in the upper centre, with streams of light radiating from him towards all sorts of people: priests, couples, single people, religious, as well as famous contemporaries such as Mother Theresa of Calcutta and Pope John Paul II.

The relief sculpture, proposed by His Eminence James Cardinal Hickey, then-Archbishop of Washington, is a tribute to a teaching of the Second Vatican Council, the "universal call to holiness." The holy Council taught:

Therefore in the Church, everyone whether belonging to the hierarchy, or being cared for by it, is called to holiness, according to the saying of the Apostle: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification".(215) However, this holiness of the Church is unceasingly manifested, and must be manifested, in the fruits of grace which the Spirit produces in the faithful; it is expressed in many ways in individuals, who in their walk of life, tend toward the perfection of charity, thus causing the edification of others; in a very special way this (holiness) appears in the practice of the counsels, customarily called "evangelical."
...
Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society. In order that the faithful may reach this perfection, they must use their strength accordingly as they have received it, as a gift from Christ. They must follow in His footsteps and conform themselves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. They must devote themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history (Lumen gentium, 39, 41).

The Church's supreme authority is abundantly clear that each person, not just those who have a parish named after them, or those who lived in former times, but each and every one of the baptised, is called to live a life of holiness, of the perfection of charity. The late and great Pope John Paul II reiterated the Church's teaching in the following terms:

The Council Fathers laid such stress on this point, not just to embellish ecclesiology with a kind of spiritual veneer, but to make the call to holiness an intrinsic and essential aspect of their teaching on the Church. The rediscovery of the Church as "mystery", or as a people "gathered together by the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", was bound to bring with it a rediscovery of the Church's "holiness", understood in the basic sense of belonging to him who is in essence the Holy One, the "thrice Holy" (cf. Is 6:3). To profess the Church as holy means to point to her as the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave himself precisely in order to make her holy (cf. Eph 5:25-26). This as it were objective gift of holiness is offered to all the baptized (Novo millennio inuente, 30).

Our Lord was clear that the programme of discipleship consisted in the perfection of charity (Jn 13:34-35); St Peter instructed his readers, "As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; since it is written, 'You shall be holy for I am holy'" (1 Pet 1:14-16). And, if we take our clue from the sacred liturgy, the fact that the gospel of the Beatitudes is proclaimed on the Solemnity of All Saints indicates to us that holy women and men are those who were obedient to the Beatitudes and that Christian holiness likewise requires obedience to the Beatitudes. Jesus taught the Beatitudes for all of His followers.

Holiness is for each and every Christian. Only when that is established can we approach the question of the particular vocation. Each figure in the relief sculpture of The Universal Call to Holiness falls into one of only four categories: (1) Holy Matrimony, (2) Holy Orders, (3) consecrated life, and (4) the single life. These four "states in life" are a particular means to holiness. In Holy Matrimony, the husband and the wife offer each other in exclusive and life-giving generosity, whose expression of love yields a growth in spousal love and parental love. In Holy Orders, the ordained man is configured to either Christ the Servant (as a deacon) or Christ the Good Shepherd (as a priest or bishop) for exercising the ministries of teaching, sanctifying, and governing the Church. Consecrated life is one of profound self-donation to the Lord by the profession of the evangelical counsels. The single life is the state in which one offers her or his virginal and celibate consecration in witness of the Age to Come, in which "none are married or given in marriage, but are like the angels in heaven" (Mt 22:30). Every baptised Christian, in addition to her or his obligation to pursue holiness in the perfection of charity, is called to one of these states in life.

What is significant, however, is how each of these four states are rooted in the mystery of Christ. Our Lord, and Our Lord alone, lived each of these states in life all at once.

Christ is given into Holy Matrimony in a nuptial bond with the Church as His spouse (Eph 5:21-33). In fact, the Magisterium teaches that the sacrament of Holy Matrimony is founded upon the mystery of Christ's union with His Church (cf. Pius XI, Casti connubii; Leo XIII, Arcanum divinae sapientiae).

Christ is our Good Shepherd (Jn 10:1-18) and is therefore our Great High Priest (cf. Letter to the Hebrews).

Christ lived, perfectly, a life of obedience, material and spiritual poverty, and chastity in his utter dedication to God the Father. In fact many scholars believe that "Jesus the Nazorean" refers His taking of the Nazirite vow of asceticism (cf. Num 6:1-21). Those who have read Prof Jaroslav Pelikan's famous tome Christ Through the Centuries may remember his chapter "The Monk Who Rules the World." Some may even recall Dom Columba Marmion's Christ the Ideal of the Monk.

Christ, of course, was unmarried, at least in the earthly sense. He had no wife and experienced perfect virginity in His complete self-donation to the Father's will and the proclamation of the Kingdom.

Each of us who is called to a particular vocation--whether married, ordained, consecrated, or single--will find in Christ the Perfection and the Ideal. In Christ we find the Exemplar of Holiness and the Exemplar of Vocations!

Finally, we cannot forget that the root of the vocation is in the family. Once, when I lived in New York, I visited the mother-house of the Sisters of Life, founded by His Eminence John Cardinal O'Connor and Mother Agnes Mary Donovan SV. At the mother-house, we were challenged with a question from one of the sisters: "Where does a vocation begin?" After each of us gave a failed answer, the sister said: "The family! It is in the family that the Lord plants the seed of a vocation."

Holy Church teaches that the Incarnate Word was born into a family and was raised in a family. Thus we have a devotion to the "Holy Family"--the original "domestic church" where the Incarnate Word began His vocation--as a nuptial, a priest, a religious, and a single Man. It is in the family, therefore, that the parents have a grave obligation, indeed, a privileged role with God to assist their children in pursuing holiness of life and in discerning a vocation to either marriage, ordination, religion, or as a single person. Even as we grow older and continue to discern, we must never forget that each of us is a member of the Holy Family--and that we can continue to invoke the prayers of St Joseph and the Mother of God to assist us in our vocation, just as they assisted Jesus Christ in His.

I invite you to make the following a regular part of your daily prayers:

Heavenly Father,
bless Your Church with an abundance of holy and zealous
priests, deacons, brothers, and sisters.
Give those You have called
to the married state
and those You have chosen to live
as single persons in the world
the special graces that their lives require.
Form us all in the likeness of Your Son
so that in Him, with Him, and through Him
we may love You more deeply
and serve You more faithfully,
always and everywhere.
With Mary we ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

This post is a tribute to the Revd Fr P. Terrio, Director of Vocations of the Archdiocese of New York, and Mr M. Irizar, a candidate to Holy Orders in the same archdiocese.

The Church's Bible, the Bible's Church

2011-01-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

As of tomorrow, 10 January 2011, I will have been a Catholic for eighteen years. I was baptised at St Mary's Parish in Muskegon, Michigan, by the late Fr Marvin Archer on the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord in 1993.

I came to join the Catholic Church from the Baptist denomination. In seventh grade, I read a book about the Catholic Church that utterly astounded me: as a Baptist, I was always under the impression that any gathering of "Bible-believing Christians" was haphazard. As a former confrere put it, "I am a Christian; I happen to go to a Baptist church." My reading of Church history, on the other hand, demonstrated to me beyond any reasonable doubt that the Catholic Church of today traces its lineage to the original community of disciples gathered by Jesus Christ. In other words, no other denomination could make the same claim as did the Catholic Church: that Jesus Christ is our Founder. It would not be until I was a sophomore in high school, however, that I was received into Holy Catholicity.

At a local parish, I introduced myself to a priest after Mass and indicated that I wanted to become a Catholic. He was an elderly man, and a serious one, but full of warmth. I remember his tight grip on my hand as he was greeting parishioners on their way out of Mass. In front of me was a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that seemed strangely familiar, strangely "right." We never had statues in Baptist churches, but the mere gaze upon this figure proclaimed to me Christ who was eager to receive my soul, full of love and mercy.

After the priest finished greeting the parishioners, we drove to his rectory. I was shocked by how bare and simple it was--hardly any furniture, a small television, and a little dog. At the time, I had been attending a Baptist church just around the corner from this parish, much to the priest's surprise, since he was accustomed to slander and misinformation about the Catholic Faith on the part of non-Catholics, especially Baptists and Fundamentalists. We chatted for a while and, as I was leaving, he gave me two books. The first, Catholic Answers to Fundamentalists' Questions, was a useful compendium of Catholic replies to common Fundamentalist misinformation. The second was a catechism, Instructions in the Catholic Faith, which is unfortunately out of print.

Instructions in the Catholic Faith was unique in that the beginning of each chapter began with a section from the Scriptures and the documents of the Second Vatican Council. I distinctly remember reading those chapters on the peculiarly "Catholic" doctrines like the Eucharist, papal primacy, and purgatory with the accompanying texts from Scripture. I was astounded at how biblical the Catholic Faith was, so astounded in fact that I checked these Biblical references in my NIV Bible just to make sure. And, sure enough, those Scripture texts cited by the catechism to substantiate those peculiarly Catholic beliefs. From that book began my journey to the study of sacred theology, my "love affair with the Truth" to use the title of a documentary on Pope Benedict XVI.

I had been vaguely aware of the Baptist comment that "Catholics don't read the Bible." My experience of the Catholic Church during the first few years of exploration completely obliterated that. When I attended Sunday Mass, I noticed that there were always three readings from the Scriptures, generally the first from the Old Testament, the second from the New Testament, and a Gospel. Between the first and second readings was a sung Psalm. We never sang the Psalter in the Baptist church! In fact, it was fairly common for there to be only two to five verses read by the pastor followed by a forty-five minute speech. The Catholic homily, on the other hand, is rarely more than ten minutes, but is preceded by a "Liturgy of the Word" that is often lengthy. More to the point, at the Easter Vigil, there is an extremely long Liturgy of the Word with eight readings from Scripture. The charge that Catholics don't read the Bible is nothing more than misinformation. Really, "misinformation" is a euphemism for "lie"--it is a patent lie that Catholics don't read the Bible. What do we have Lectionaries for?

A year after my baptism, when I was seventeen, I ordered a set of the Liturgy of the Hours and began to use it, albeit with some difficulty at first. Coming from a Fundamentalist background, the breviary is a most unusual book: in four volumes, the Bible arranged for prayer at least five times daily, preceded (generally) by three Psalms and a short reading (as is the case for Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer, and Evening Prayer). The so-called "Office of Readings" began with three Psalms but concluded with two lengthy readings--the first from Scripture and the second, generally, from one of the Fathers of the Church. Here again I encountered what was assumed nonexistent as a Baptist--that there are writings from the first Christian centuries, and let me tell you, they don't sound anything like any Baptist preacher I know!

So here I am, attending Sunday Mass with three readings, praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and reading the Bible on my own time. I was getting myself soaked in Scripture.

One day, I was with my Boy Scout troop manning a fundraising booth at the annual fair. I saw one of my former confreres at the Baptist church I attended during my earliest years. When I mentioned that I had become a Catholic, he launched into a two-dimensional commentary on how Catholics don't read the Bible. Catholics attend Sunday Mass with three readings, but "Catholics don't read the Bible." Priests and religious are required to celebrate the Liturgy of the Hours but "Catholics don't read the Bible." Every parish had a Bible study group going on but "Catholics don't read the Bible." I remember being very, very irritated by this man whose contact with the world beyond his prejudice was governed by the garbage he was fed at my former Baptist church, passed off as "Sunday School." Little did I know that this promised to be a consistent experience.

When I was a senior in high school, one of the sign-language interpreters came from my former Baptist church (which was, in fact, right across the street from the school). She is a wonderful lady, and to this day she is a friend of mine. A genuine Christian. But, for the life of me, her self-advertisement as a "Bible-believer" had little to show for it. I distinctly recall a discussion in the hallway before class about why the Catholic Old Testament was slighly longer than the Protestant one. I had begun to explain that the Jews of Alexandria had translated the Old Testament into Greek and this was the Old Testament used by the earliest Christians...

"I'm really not interested in that," was her interruption.

I was astounded. A "Bible believer" not interested in the history of the Bible? Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Fundamentalism.

As a Catholic, I am continually in awe of the reverence that the Church shows to the Bible. "The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures as she venerated the Body of the Lord, in so far as she never ceases, particualrly in the sacred liturgy" (Dei Verbum, 21). The parish I was baptized had a beautiful, silver-plated cover for the Book of the Gospels. During the reading of the Gospel, it was held aloft by the priest during the singing of the Celtic Alleluia, and kissed when the reading reached its conclusion. Anyone can see this sort of thing when they watch the pope's Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve: an ornate Book of the Gospels is enthroned on an elaborate stand , then carried in procession accompanied by candles, enveloped in clouds of incense, and not just read alout but sung. It is brought to the pope at the conclusion of its proclamation for him to kiss and to take up and bless us with the sign of the Cross. I am appalled, on the other hand, to see Bibles rolled up in one hand by television "preachers," slammed on the pulpit, and worst of all, quoted in isolation from the rest of the text. If singing the Bible, incensing the Bible, kissing the Bible, enthroning the Bible, does not count for reverence and veneration, I don't know what does!

Additionally, an ancient monastic praxis of reading the Bible known as lectio divina is a uniquely Catholic patrimony. Every silent retreat I have ever attended as a Catholic has included strong encouragement not only to spend time with the Bible in prayer each day, but has recommended especially the method of lectio divina.

There is more! The 'Biblicality' of the Catholic Faith, if I may coin a word, is understood in terms of culture. Catholics are not satisfied with simply a retrieval of doctrine from the Bible but even more a celebration of Biblical symbols in the life of the Church. It is true that there is a three-year cycle of Scripture readings on Sundays (and a two-year cycle for weekdays), but there is also a liturgical year which commemorates the various events of the Biblical narrative: the Annunciation (25 March), the visit of the Magi on Epiphany (6 January), the Baptism of the Lord (Sunday after Epiphany), the Presentation of the Lord (2 February), the Purification of Mary, the Temptation in the Desert (First Sunday of Lent), the Transfiguration of the Lord (6 August), Pentecost (fiftieth day of Easter), and so forth. There are also days in which the memory of various Biblical figures are commemorated, such as Sts Peter and Paul (29 June), St Andrew the First-Called (30 November), St John the Apostle and Evangelist (27 December), the Prophet King David (29 December), the Prophet Isaiah (6 July), the Prophet Elijah (20 July), and so forth. Still, Fundamentalists say that "Catholics don't read the Bible."

And again, the symbols of Biblical narratives are used: on Epiphany, extra candles are lit in the church as a reminder of the Star that led the Magi to the infant Jesus. On the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord, water is sprinkled on the liturgical assembly as a reminder of our baptism. At Easter, the astronomical interplay of the sun and the moon reminds us of the Light of the World who was resurrected. During the Advent season, the "Jesse Tree" serves to remind us of the ancestry of Jesus, rooted in the history of Israel. I could go on. And still, Fundamentalists say that "Catholics dont' read the Bible."

As a seminarian preparing for Holy Orders, I am required to devote a bulk of my time to the study of Scripture. According to the supreme authority of the Church, "Hence, [seminarians] should be trained for the ministry of the Word, so that they may gain an ever increasign understanding of the revealed Word of God, making it their own by meditation and giving it expression in their speech and in their lives" (Optatum totius, 4). At my own seminary, I am proud to say, at least eight, 3-credit courses in Scripture are required for Ordination: Introduction to Scripture, Matthew and Mark, Like-Acts, Pauline Literature, Johannine Literature, Prophets, Psalms and Wisdom Literature, and the Pentateuch.

Every non-Catholic institution of higher learning offers degrees in the study of Scripture, but the Catholic Church alone has a system of credentialing those who undertake such a study at a higher level. These degrees are known as the Licentiate of Sacred Scripture (abbreviated "S.S.L.") and the Doctorate of Sacred Scripture ("S.S.D."). In Rome, there are at least two institutions of higher learning known for their curricula in Scripture, the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Pontifical Gregorian University, both of which are operated by the Society of Jesus (popularly known as the Jesuits). In point of fact, one of the editors of the current Critical Text of the Greek New Testament is himself a Jesuit, His Eminence Carlos Cardinal Martini, who holds a double doctorate in both fundamental theology and Scripture. The pope also has a body of advisors on matters of Scripture known as the Pontifical Biblical Commission. And, according to Fundamentalists, "Catholics don't read the Bible"?

In recent times, popes have issued numerous documents on the Scriptures, beginning with Providentissimus Deus (Pope Leo XIII, 1893), Dei Filius (First Vatican Council, promulgated by Pope Pius IX, 1870), Spiritus Paraclitus (Pope Benedict XV, 1920), Divino afflante Spiritu (Pope Pius XII, 1943), Dei Verbum (Second Vatican Council, promulgated by Pope Paul VI, 1965), and most recently Verbum Domini (Pope Benedict XVI, 2010). I wonder how many Fundamentalist have even heard of these documents, let alone read them.

The Catholic Church is, for lack of better phraseology, the house of the Scriptures. Our art, our study, our liturgy, our prayer is saturated with the Scriptures.

At a deeper level, however, Catholicity and Protestantism differs enormously in the "reception" of the Scriptures. Since the Catholic Church was founded by Christ, the "deposit of faith"--that is to say, the body of doctrines--was "once for all entrusted to the holy ones." In other words, the delivery of the doctrine of Christ happened once and only once; it cannot be "delivered again." The body of Catholic doctrines that is believed today was set in motion by Christ and His Apostles; Scripture is a reminder of what Christ and the Apostles has taught. This is a crucial difference between the fundamental theology of Catholicity and of Protestantism. Recall that, at the Transfiguration, God commanded Sts Peter, James, and John to "Listen to Him!" Colossians 2:3 speaks of "the knowledge of God's mystery, that is Christ himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." It is Jesus Christ who is the locus of Divine Revelation, it is He who discloses God, not the Bible. Remember that the Pauline communities were already Chrisians when the Apostle wrote his epistles (cf. Rom 15:15); many of these communities were founded by Paul himself, and not one of the ancient Christian communities were founded on the basis of an apostolic letter! This is precisely the Catholic position: the Faith is handed on to us by the preaching and teaching of the Church's leadership and the Bible is a reminder of what was handed on. Protestantism, on the contrary, is only one-quarter as old as Christianity itself, and for that reason it does not exist in the privileged stream of apostolic succession; it has tried to use the Bible to represent a "leapfrogging" of Church history from the age fo the Apostles to the time of Martin Luther. Christianity is just that: the religion of Christ, not the religion of the Bible, otherwise it would be called 'Bibleanity.' The Bible cannot be a 'reset button' that can be hit whenever we suspect our pastor of un-Biblical doctrines--to do so is to usurp the privileged work of the Holy Spirit, who was sent to lead us "into all the Truth." The Catholic Church, therefore, is a Biblical culture. Fundamentalism--the attempt to be "Bible-based"--is ultimately an idolatrous and blasphemous endeavour because it is Christ who is our foundation. Christ reveals God. To substitute the Bible for Christ...I won't bother to finish that thought because, if I needed to, then my reader has wasted time reading this post.

The Scriptures is preeminently the Book of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. That's all there is to it.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Am A Catholic Christian

2011-01-02T22:51:00.001-08:00

The eighteenth anniversary of my baptism is fast approaching, and a recent viewing of anti-Catholic propaganda on my Facebook page has led me to decide upon a series of postings on why I left the Baptist denomination to become a Catholic. I am, to be frank, exhausted by the sheer intentional ignorance of so many people about the Catholic Faith. Despite my two masters' degrees in theology and Scripture, there will still be people with no more than a high-school education who will pontificate a contrarian position.

Bring it on.

As I said, this is a first in a series, and in this particular posting I wish to provide my own "top ten" list of why I became a Catholic, in no particular order:

1. The Baptist denomination, as well as every other Protestant denomination, is a product of human imagination. The Catholic Church of today, on the other hand, is descended from the first community of disciples organized by Jesus Christ. As the Psalmist says, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain" (Ps 127:1).

2. Some Fundamentalists insist that the "true church" remained in hiding from the end of the Apostolic Age until the Protestant Reformation. The evidence of NT manuscripts and the field of textual criticism contradicts this assertion at least five thousand times over. (For you duller ones, it means this: if the "true church" went into hiding, then show me at least one NT manuscript that was created by these supposedly "hidden Christians.")

3. Many Protestants insist that the Bible is a toolkit for becoming a Christian when, in fact, the collection of writings that constitute the Bible were determined to be "inspired" and therefore "canonical" on the basis of ecclesiastical authority. To be a Protestant, then, is to use a Catholic book to engage in antii-Catholicism. That's analogous to using the United States Constitution as a Communist manifesto.

4. No other community claiming the name of "Christian" has maintained Jesus' commitment to the poor and marginalised as much as the Catholic Church. Who could possibly be the Pentecostal counterpart to Mother Theresa of Calcutta or the Baptist counterpart to Francis of Assisi?

5. As a Protestant, I often came across passages in the Bible that was difficult to understand. When I asked my Sunday School teacher or my pastor about these passages, a common rejoinder was "you'll find out when you get to heaven" which, even to my twelve-year-old mind was a plain cop-out. If the Bible is the toolkit for a "personal relationship" with God, why would He even bother to put in a passage that was undecipherable?

6. The radicality of Christian discipleship exhibited by the early martyrs, Desert Fathers, of Sts John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Dominic Guzman, Ignatius Loyola, Edmund Campion, Isaac Jogues, of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, John Cardinal O'Connor, and many others is unmatched by Protestantism. There are, to be sure, towering figures who command even my respect such as John Stott and C.S. Lewis, but for the life of me I cannot find any Protestant spirituality that is comparable to the Imitation of Christ or Christ the Life of the Soul.

7. Protestantism is only one-quarter as old as Christianity itself. Need I really explain this one?

8. The liturgy of the Catholic Church is chock-full of Scripture. When I attended Protestant churches (and anyone can pick this up from your average televangelist), an entire sermon consisted of a long-winded exposition of one to five verses of Scripture. The Catholic liturgy, on the other hand, consists of three Scripture readings on Sundays and a number of Rites that is plentous of allusion to Scripture. Not only that, but the Divine Office--prayed five times a day by clerics--is full of Psalms, Canticles and Readings. To say that "Catholics don't read the Bible"--as one member of my former Baptist church told me even as I carried my copy of the Divine Office with me!--is patently false. Heck, I even run a Bible study camp for Deaf Catholic adults every year in New York!

9. There have been some real idiots for popes and bishops, and I really do mean idiots. That having been said, enter A. J. Tonybee: "...no merely human institution with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight." What would Rabbi Gamaliel say to this? (Cf. Acts 5:34-39).

10. I have met Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. Since I have become a Catholic, Jesus has consistently beckoned me to follow Him more closely than the day before. He has made His voice clearer with every reading of the Scripture, with every prayer I offer, and every act of charity I show. To not be a Catholic, then, is to abandon Jesus Christ for an idol of my own fashioning.

Okay, okay I lied. I really have eleven reasons off the top of my head, and here is #11:

Almost every exposure to the Protestant "gospel" has been about what God can do for me: get me a pre-booked place in heaven, get me prosperity and wealth, get me the gift of tongues, or whatever. As a Catholic, I know that God offers salvation freely in Jesus Christ, but the Catholic Church has been more interested in what we can give to God--our own lives. In other words, if I had to describe the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, I'd say that whereas Protestantism asks what God can do for me, Catholicism asks what we can do for God. It's the difference between being selfish and being self-giving.

Stay tuned for more.

The Parable of Lazarus and the Capital Sin of Luxuria

2010-09-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

On this twenty-sixth Sunday of the year of St Luke the Evangelist, the Roman Church proclaims the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31) that Jesus told to the "Pharisees, who were lovers of money" (Lk 16:14).

In the Lesson of today's Mass, we also heard Amos 6:1a, 4-7, in which the prophet Amos chastises "those who lie upon beds of ivory...who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp...who drink wine in bowls...but are not grieved over the run of Joseph!"

Similarly, in the Gospel, Jesus narrated the story of the "rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and who feasted sumptuously every day" while ignoring Lazarus, "a poor man" who day at his gate every day and "who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table."

I have found it helpful when, reflecting on the lectionary readings for a day's Mass, to check them against the fourteen articles of faith, the capital sins, and the virtues, in hopes of finding a practical application of Gospel in daily life.

We know of the "Seven Capital Sins" outlined by Pope St Gregory the Great in his Moralia in Iob 31:45, but what is often lost upon contemporary readers is that the so-called "fifth capital sin," namely "lust," has a broader meaning than what the English noun would suggest. In Latin, the word is luxuria. According to Lewis and Short, luxuria has the meaning of "riotous living, profusion, luxury, excess." In this context of hedonism, pleasure, and sensuality we derive the narrower vice of "lust." The connexion between luxury and lust is illustrated well by Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion, which often sets the standard for luxurious leisure, sensuous pleasure, and extravagance. Luxury, then, is a capital sin.

The Church has long taught that wealth, money, and comfort are not sinful in se. What makes these gifts incline us to sin is the fact that they often cause us to be blind to our neighbour's needs. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, never once does the rich man take notice of Lazarus. He is indifferent. "It's none of my business." "I'm not going to get involved." How man times have we heard these quintessentially American isolationist ethos? The plight of the poor is our business.

Think of the story in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. When Meriadoc and Peregrin try to convince the ent Treebeard to assist the World of Men in fighting against Isengard and Mordor, Treebeard says effectively that it does not involve the ents. "But you're a part of this world!" was Meriadoc's rebuke.

So it is with us. The poor is as much a part of the human family as our middle-class next-door neighbours, the homeless Vietnam War veteran, or the abandoned patient at a psychiatric ward. The grave sin of the rich man was that he never took notice of Lazarus in his need. He does not offer him any leftovers from the dinner-table. He does not provide him with employment and a living wage. Nor does he even negotiate with any other employers who might take in Lazarus for work. Being "full of sores," Lazarus may very well have been physically debilitated from working. The one who "feasted sumptuously every day" refused any measure of self-sacrifice to hire a doctor to look after Lazarus.

So the rich man, who disregarded the plight of the poor, rejected the Gospel mandate of almsgiving (cf. Mt 25:31-46) which is necessary for salvation. It is one of the three works of piety required of all Christians during the Lenten season and is found among the Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy.

Finally, I was struck by the inversion of fortunes between the rich man and Lazarus: "But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish'" (Lk 16:25).

We imperil our eternal salvation by neglecting the poor.

The Assumption of the Theotokos:Eschatological Icon of the Church

2010-08-15T23:00:00.001-07:00

The Glorious Apostles Peter and Paul,Founders of the Holy Roman Church

2010-06-29T21:22:00.000-07:00

Today, the historic Christian churches--Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and Lutheran--commemorated the two "founders" of the Church of Rome, Saints Peter and Paul. In this posting, I would like to elaborate a bit on the meaning of today's solemnity and why it is a preeminently "Catholic" holiday.

Note, first of all, that neither Sts Peter or Paul have their own feast day. Indeed, the Church celebrates the "Conversion of Paul" on 25 January and the "Chair of St Peter" on 22 February. The mere fact of conjoining two different classes of 'apostles' on one feast day merits some attention, because Peter was one of "the Twelve" and Paul was not. More to the point, the two once expressed fierce disagreement on the question of Torah-observance among gentile converts to Christ, which Paul related in Gal 2:11-13. By commemorating these two apostles at the same feast, the Church wishes to remind us of two things: first, their preeminence in virtue of their founding of the Roman Church, and second, that despite their earlier disagreements, they confessed and proclaimed the same Faith, and communion with these two apostles ensures communion with Jesus Christ. For this we have the venerable testimony of St Irenaeus of Lyons, who served as a bishop in Gaul (modern-day France), and himself a third-generation bishop in apostolic succession (since he was consecrated by St Polycarp of Smyrna, who in turn was consecrated by St John the Evangelist). This is what St Irenaeus has to say about Sts Peter and Paul and the Church of Rome:

"Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that Tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to people, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the Tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere" (Against Heresies, 3.3.3).

This passage is well-known, even to Christians who furiously refuse to submit to the constitution Christ willed for his Church. Opinions abound as to how the full force of Irenaeus' words can be diluted in order to escape the imperative of obedience to the Church's leadership, but this is only weakly effective when Adversus haereses 3.3.3 is lifted from the context of Books III and IV. For example, if one wanted to discover who has the "valid platform" to proclaim the Gospel, Irenaeus responds: "It is possible, then, for everyone in every Church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the Tradition of the Apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. Any we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the Apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (3:3:1). Again, "The true knowledge is the doctrine of the Apostles, and the ancient organisation of the Church throughout the whole world, and the manifestation of the Body of Christ according to the succession of bishops, by which succession the bishops have handed down the Church which is found everywhere" (4:33:8). But Irenaeus' point about the Church of Rome, organized and constituted by Sts Peter and Paul, remains: "For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its preeminent authority..." (3:3:2).

We should not imagine Irenaeus to be an innovator. The priority of the Roman Church was attested in a twofold manner by St Clement of Rome, an early bishop, perhaps third or fourth in succession after St Peter, and probably the same person mentioned by St Paul in Phil 4:3. In his so-called First Epistle, Clement of Rome strenuously objects to the ejection of presbyters by the members of the Church at Corinth. In so doing, a bishop on the Italian peninsula is exercising a kind of jurisdiction over a local Church in Greece. Already, by A.D. 95, the Roman Church has exerted itself authoritatively. And, to buttress his argument, Clement wrote:

"The Apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the Apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Spirit, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and of those who should afterward believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus says the Scripture in a certain" (First Epistle of Clement, 42).

In other words, just as Christ came from the Father, the Apostles came from Christ (cf. Jn 20:21). Subsequently, the Apostles appointed bishops and deacons as superintendents and servants over the communities of Christians they had founded. Clement then quotes the Septuagint version of Isaiah 60:17 in a variant no longer extant. The critical text here reads, καὶ δώσω τοὺς ἄρχοντάς σου ἐν εἰρήνῃ καὶ τοὺς ἐπισκόπους σου ἐν δικαιοσύνῃ, "and I will make thy princes peaceable, and thine overseers righteous." Leaving aside questions of the historical-critical method, Acts 14:23 speaks of Sts Paul and Barnabas appointing presbyters in the Churches they established in Asia Minor; in Phil 1:1, St Paul refers to the "bishops and deacons" in the Church at Philippi.

But we can go back futher still. According to his brief autobiography in Gal 1:11-2:12, St Paul retreated to Arabia and then to Damascus after his conversion (1:17). Three years after his conversion, Paul met with the leadership of the Mother-Church at Jerusalem (1:18). "Then after fourteen years, I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, and also took Titus with me" (2:1). This would correspond with Acts 15 during which the first "dogmatic decree" was issued by the Church. But note that Paul speaks of his companionship with Barnabas, who first emerges in Acts 4:36. Later, in Acts 11:22, the Church at Jerusalem had dispatched Barnabas to encourage the Church at Antioch (good riddance, for his name means "son of encouragement"). Soon, he sought out "Saul" and both of them "assembled with the Church and taught a great many people. And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch" (Acts 11:26).

What is significant is that while Paul encountered the Lord Jesus on the way to Damascus and from this experience received a transmission of Divine Revelation from Him, he never presumed any authority therefrom. In fact, his mission was not inaugurated until a certain liturgical experience (λειτουργούντων δὲ αὐτῶν τῷ κυρίῳ, Acts 13:2) at the Antiochian Church, during which the Holy Spirit commanded that Barnabas and Saul be "set apart...for the work to which I have called them" (ibid.). While indeed the experience on the way to Damascus was an encounter with the Risen Christ, we cannot ignore this encounter with the Holy Spirit, or even to set the two in opposition. Jesus Christ invited Saul to believe in him while on the way to Damascus; the Holy Spirit invited him to exercise an office. "Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off" (Acts 13:3). The Antiochian Church was planted as a result of the Christian diaspora following the martyrdom of St Stephen the Archdeacon (11:19); it had also grown due to the witness of Christians from Cyrpus and Cyrene, but it was not allowed to flourish without any oversight from the Mother-Church at Jerusalem: "News of this came to the ears of the Church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch" (11:12). St Luke the Evangelist does not tell us what "rank" Barnabas held when he was sent from Jerusalem to Antioch, but he most certainly exercised an authority, especially in light of 12:23. Later, "prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch," who were, again, authority-figures in the earliest Church (and who, apparently, still flourished when the Didache was composed: "But permit the prophets to make Eucharist as much as they desire," 10.7).

There is no question of the "ordination" of Paul and Barnabas, since the "imposition of hands" is a recurrent motif in the Scriptures which signals a transfer of authority. The classic example of Moses bestowing authority on Joshua in Numbers 27:18, 23) should suffice as a paradigm example.

What is even more significant is that St Paul did not presume to act on his own authority--despite being called by Christ and dispatched by the leadership of the Antiochian Church. "Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with barnabas, taking Titus along with me. I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain" (Gal 2:1-2). In other words, Paul wanted to ensure that his teaching was consonant with the that of the Twelve, and indeed it was, as the verdict of the "Jerusalem Conference" decreed. Later, he was 'promoted': "...and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognised the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship..." (Gal 2:9).

Even after granting a kind of nihil obstat, the Jerusalem Church still saw it fit to provide additional oversight to the Antiochian Church: "Then the apostles and the presbyters, with the consent of the whole Church, decided to choose men from among their members and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leaders among the brothers..." (Acts 15:22).

Space necessitates passing over many more details of St Paul's ministry, especially with respect to his work in perpetuating the Church's authority and leadership. In the chapter following the narrative of the "ordination" of Paul and Barnabas, St Luke reports that "After they had appointed presbyters for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe" (14:22).

Where is St Peter in all of this? Apart from his role at the Jerusalem Conference, he appears to have been a travelling bishop who, on the basis of his authority as primus inter pares among the Apostles addressed the Churches scattered across "Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (1 Pet 1:1)--quite a large expanse of territory to address a letter, for which reason we must assume was intended to have an "encyclical" quality. Towards the end of his first epistle, St Peter speaks about the exercise of the Pastoral Office: "Now as a presbyter myself...I exhort the presbyters among you to tend the flock of God what is in your charge, exercising the oversight [ἐπισκοποῦντες]" (5:1-2). The Apostle here speaks clearly of the exercise of episcopal authority, that is to say, the authority of a bishop. The scarcity of New Testament witness to the ministry of St Peter makes the witness of the Early Fathers--especially the Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists--to be invaluable. We cannot delve further here.

Finally, let us consider the evidence of the Epistle to the Hebrews on the question of ecclesial leadership. The author makes use of the Greek noun hegumenos (pl. hegoumenoi) to denote the officers of the Church to whom Christians owe obedience. "Remember your leaders [ἡγουμένων], who preached the Word of God to you, and as you reflect the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith (Heb 13:7); "Obey your leaders [ἡγουμένοις] and do as they tell you, because they must give an account of the way the look after your souls; make this a joy for them and not a grief--you yourselves would be the losers" (Heb 13:17); "Greetings to all your leaders [ἡγουμένοις] and to all the holy ones" (Heb 13:24). Jean Galot explains that "hegoumenos which is the participle of a verb that means 'to walk in front of, to guide, to lead, to command,' and implies 'preeminence, authority, direction'" (Theology of the Priesthood, San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1985 [63]). These leaders cannot be anyone other than those established by the Apostles and, in turn, their successors (cf. 1 Clement 42 above).

Both Sts Peter and Paul brought their testimony of Christ to Rome. The 'grand finale' of the Acts of the Apostles is that St Paul arrived at Rome, first as a confessor (cf. 28:14b, 30-31) and then as a martyr, for which the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside-the-Walls stands as an eloquent memorial. On 6 December 2006, it was announced that this glorious "Apostle to the Nations" was indeed interred at this church. St Peter hints at his presence in Rome by the code-word "Babylon" (1 Pet 5:13). He is interred beneath the high altar at the Patriarchal Basilica of St Peter on the Vatican Hill. From Rome, then, emanated the Church's mission to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world, since it was to the Successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him that the task of evangelism was entrusted. Today, this communion is manifested, in part, by the bestowal of the pallium by the Successor of Peter to the metropolitan archbishops. It was on this date in 2007 that the Archbishop of Edmonton, the Most Reverend Richard Smith was invested with the pallium to signify his charge to "tend to the flock of God" that is in his charge (1 Pet 5:2). On this Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, the Church commemorates our ecclesial communion that is effected, in part (albeit significantly) by our own communion with the local bishop. As St Ignatius of Antioch--who received the office from St John the Evangelist--said, "Wheresoever the bishop appears, let the people be, even as wheresoever Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, 8).

For Further Reading

Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (London, UK: Penguin Books, 1993).

Frederick J. Cwiekowski, The Beginnings of the Church (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1988).

J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 1979).

Adrian Fortescue, The Early Papacy to the Synod of Chalcedon in 451 (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2008).

Veselin Kesich, Formation and Struggles, Part 1 (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir Seminary Press, 2007).

Francis Sullivan, From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church (New York, NY: Paulist Press, 2001).

This entry is dedicated to the Most Reverend Lord, +RICHARD WILLIAM SMITH, Archbishop of the Metropolitan Church of Edmonton. Ad multos annos.

Dulcis hospes animae:Meditation on the Interior Pentecost

2010-05-24T21:06:00.001-07:00

Pentecost is one of my favourite liturgical solemnities. It's been a long haul: On the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the date of Pentecost was announced; the Church began her pilgrimage on Ash Wednesday, and across the forty days of Great Lent, the days of Holy Week, and fifty days of Easter, we come to it--the Solemnity of Pentecost. Since we began our Lenten discipline, it's been ninety-six days. As I prepared to celebrate Second Vespers of Pentecost last night, a certain sadness came over me, because the Easter Season was coming to a close. In some parts of the blogosphere, there was a Traditionalist furore over the loss of the so-called "Pentecost Octave."

Yet, even if the liturgical commemoration of Pentecost is over, the Mystery of Pentecost remains. We are members of the Church born on Pentecost Sunday and continues to grow younger, despite the suffering she is now experiencing. At each Eucharist, during the epiclesis, the priest invokes the Holy Spirit over the Holy Gifts to change them into the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, "Quo ibo a Spiritu to? Et uo a facie tua fugiam? Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from your Presence" (Ps 139:7).

As I was reflecting on the Mystery of Pentecost, a line from the Golden Sequence, the Veni, Sancte Spiritus, came to mind: "dulcis hospes animae" or, in the famous English rendition Holy Spirit, Lord of Light, "Thou, the soul's delightsome Guest." In our baptism, we become children of God, co-heirs and siblings of Christ, and temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. Gal 4:4-7; cf. Jn 1:12).

Visiting our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is a venerable custom, and the Church wholeheartedly commends this practise. But do we visit God the Holy Spirit who is present in our souls? Do we adore the Holy Spirit who indwells us who have been baptised? Do we understand that we are living tabernacles? Under the Old Dispensation, the children of Israel carried the Ark of the Covenant which carried the Law, the observance of which reminded them of God's presence. The later Jewish understanding of Pentecost or the "Week of Weeks" was that it commemorated the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai. But with the New Dispensation (2 Cor 3:7-11), the Law has been abolished (Eph 2:15); in place of the Ark of the Covenant which housed the tablets of the Law is the Church, the People of God, who house the gift of the Holy Spirit (Eph 2:21).

There is more. On the Feast of Weeks or Shauvot, the children of Israel offered to God the first-fruits of their harvest (Ex 23:16, 32:44; Deut 16:10). In this New Dispensation, we no longer offer to God tokens of ourselves; rather we offer our very own selves to God. The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost--the birthday of the Church--places that "indelible mark" on our souls whereby we are given to God. In the gift of piety is our growth in this very self-gift to God, a self-gift which is enabled only by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

Pentecost, then, is about the "total abandonment to the Divine Providence."

For those who have been invited to the priesthood or religious life, the Mystery of Pentecost takes on an even more urgent meaning. Their state of life deprives them of legitimate goods such as marriage and childbearing, and so there is a certain measure of loneliness experienced by the priest or religious. But if, as St Thomas Aquinas says, religious profession is akin to a "second baptism," then the Holy Spirit indwells the religious in such a way that she is able to imitate the Mother of God who is the "spouse of the Holy Spirit." The anointing of the hands of priests--and of the heads of bishops--indicates an outpouring of the Holy Spirit that enables them to serve the Church with the same self-donation as the Incarnate Word. Thus when the priest or religious sings "...dulcis hospes animae", it should be remembered that the Holy Spirit is a Guest of a different sort; the commitment to celibacy means that our loneliness is meaningless: both in virtue of baptism and confirmation as well as religious profession and ordination, the Holy Spirit presents himself as that Guest always ready to visit his gracious host.

The Mystery of Pentecost, in order for it to remain, consists of all of us Christians--baptized, ordained, and vowed--being gracious host to the Holy Spirit, the "soul's delightsome Guest." This is our interior Pentecost.

For magisterial teaching on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, see H.H. Pope +John Paul II, Dominum et vivificantem (18 May 1986) and H.H. Pope +Leo XIII, Divinum illud munus (9 May 1897).

Mark Seven Bible Institute2010 Study Week/Retreat

2010-05-04T10:14:00.001-07:00

The flyer for the event can be found here.

Check out the new Mark Seven Bible Institute website at http://Mark7BibleInstitute.Wordpress.com.

You can register with Camp Mark Seven here.

Incarnate Word, Revealer of the Father

2010-01-09T20:49:00.000-08:00

As I prepare myself for the upcoming Mark Seven Bible Institute (9-19 June 2010), I have once again been looking at the splendid and brilliant documents that issued from the Twelfth Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops which met last year. In our own metropolitan province, the Most Reverend +Luc Buchard, bishop of St Paul and a Synod Father, will be sharing his own experience at the synod next week at my alma mater, Newman Theological College. More to the point, a recent news communique has indicated that the post-synodal apostolic exhortation on "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church" is forthcoming. I pray that it will be available well before our study week/retreat in Old Forge, NY.

As we know, the Holy Father's area of expertise is that of fundamental theology; as a matter of fact his own habilitationsschrift and his book Revelation and Tradition, co-authored with Fr Karl Rahner, found its mature expression in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, promulgated on 18 November 1965.

Not unlike the Arian heresy which still flourished at least until the sixth century despite the First Ecumenical Council, many Catholics still suffer from a profound misunderstanding on the nature of "Divine Revelation" despite the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council and, more recently, the 2008 Synod of Bishops.

Recently I came across a posting at a Traditionalist website in which someone wrote "Dei Verbum--revealed in Sacred Scripture and Divine Tradition." Besides the obvious paucity of proper Latin grammar, our blogger perpetuates the blunder that then-Father Ratzinger fought so hard to suppress: that Revelation is something contemporaneously tangible. Of course Fr Ratzinger had in mind the "propositional model" of Revelation, but our blogger comes close to the position and perhaps even surpasses Protestantism in equating Revelation and Scripture by insisting that Tradition "reveals" Scripture!

Consider three starting-points. First, in the Gospel According to John, we read at the end of the Prologue, "No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known [exēgēsato]" (RSV). The NAB is perhaps better, "...has revealed him." A direct-equivalency translation might read, "the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has exegeted him." According to the Fourth Evangelist, then, Jesus Christ, or more to the point, the Incarnate Word (cf. Jn 1:14) has "revealed", "exegeted", or "made known" the Father. It was God, qua God incarnate, who reveals God, albeit in a human language because his audience was the human race (Jn 1:1).

Second, the narratives of the Transfiguration makes abundantly clear the superiority of Jesus Christ as the revealer of God. The premise of the Transfiguration is that the Incarnate Word, as Divine Revelation, supersedes the revelation of the Old Testament, personified by Moses (= "the Law") and Elijah (= "the Prophets") when the two figures disappear and only Jesus remains, to which the Father says "Listen to him!" (Mt 17:5, Mk 9:7, Lk 9:35). It is significant that in each of these narratives, the evangelists were careful to preserve the note that Jesus was found "alone" in reference to the Father's voice.

Third, at the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews, the author compares the history of God's self-disclosure by contrasting how God once "spoke through the prophets" but now "he has spoken to us by a Son" (Heb 1:1, 2).

The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei verbum, makes it clear that it is the Incarnate Word who is the revealer of God, and that there will be nothing more revealed:

Then, after speaking in many and varied ways through the prophets, "now at last in these days God has spoken to us in His Son" (Heb. 1:1-2). For He sent His Son, the eternal Word, who enlightens all men, so that He might dwell among men and tell them of the innermost being of God (see John 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, therefore, the Word made flesh, was sent as "a man to men." He "speaks the words of God" (John 3;34), and completes the work of salvation which His Father gave Him to do (see John 5:36; John 17:4). To see Jesus is to see His Father (John 14:9). For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal.

The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ (see 1 Tim. 6:14 and Tit. 2:13). (Dei verbum, 4).

The Council Fathers offer us nothing new, for as "archaic" as the time of the sixteenth century, St John of the Cross had already spoken of the finality and definitiveness of Jesus Christ as the revealer of God (cf. Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 2, Chapter 2).

To equate Scripture and Tradition with Divine Revelation, then, is to compromise the finality of Divine Revelation in Jesus Christ. The Incarnate Word reveals the Father, and none else. In the Incarnate Word, everything that can be said of God has been said. Pentecost was, as it were, the "period" at the end of the divine discourse that was the life of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, therefore, Scripture and Tradition cannot "reveal" the Word of God precisely because to "reveal the revealer" reduces the revealer to a forerunner. It would reduce Jesus Christ to a "precursor of Scripture and Tradition" and lower him to the rank of St John the Baptizer, who was the Forerunner of the Lord.

Coming back to the Synod of Bishops, we must ask, if the Incarnate Word is the revealer of the Father, why do we need Scripture and Tradition?

What has been "said" in Divine Revelation has been committed to the memory of the Church. We find a pointed expression of this in the charism of infallibility which Christ has entrusted to his Church. Scripture and Tradition, therefore, are "aids to memory" as they help us to remember the deposit of faith that has been handed onto the Church. Inasmuch as I might have a childhood memory buried under more recent ones and a perchance visit home to browse through old family albums helps me to "recover" what I had apparently forgotten, the Church has recourse to the Bible and Tradition as a method to evoke an article of faith in her vast repository of memories of her Founder. As the Synod Father said in their "Message to the People of God":

The Sacred Scriptures “bear witness” to the divine word in written form. They memorialize the creative and saving event of revelation by way of canonical, historical and literary means. Therefore, the word of God precedes and goes beyond the Bible which itself is “inspired by God” and contains the efficacious divine word (cf. 2 Tm 3:16). This is why our faith is not only centered on a book, but on a history of salvation and, as we will see, on a person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, man and history. Precisely because the capacity of the divine word embraces and extends beyond the Scripture, the constant presence of the Holy Spirit that “will lead you to the complete truth” (Jn 16:13) is necessary for those who read the Bible. This is the great Tradition: the effective presence of the "Spirit of truth" in the Church, guardian of Sacred Scripture, which are authentically interpreted by the Church’s Magisterium. This Tradition enables the Church to understand, interpret, communicate and bear witness to the word of God. Saint Paul himself, proclaiming the first Christian creed, will recognize the need to “transmit” what he “had received” from Tradition (1 Cor 15:3-5). ("Message of the Synod of Bishops to the People of God," no. 3).

Scripture and Tradition, then, "bear witness" to the Incarnate Word who reveals the Father. Since it was born of the Church (for they were written by members of the Church, e.g. St Paul the Apostle) under unrepeatable circumstances (e.g. "inspiration"), it cannot supersede Divine Revelation but only testify to it. And because they are family albums, only members of the family called "Church" are entitled to insert themselves into its audience (cf. Tertullian, Praescriptione haereticorum, 15.3-4) and see themselves in the memories evoked. More importantly, the Church's "memory" of the Incarnate Word must be coupled with the fact that God has no memory but lives at each moment in history instantaneously. In the sacred liturgy, the mystery of anamnesis takes place in which the syntaxis is inserted into the event of Christ and therefore become contemporaneous with the life of the Incarnate Word, especially in his paschal mystery.

It is in the liturgy, then, that we "hear" the Father's Son, that we become participants in the act of Divine Revelation, beholding the Father in the face of Jesus Christ, this liturgy which bears Tradition and proclaims Scripture. It would be appropriate, here at the end of this posting, to include the great "Hymn of Justinian" chanted in the Byzantine Rite before the Liturgy of the Word. It captures well the subject-matter of our reflection:

Only-Begotten Son and immortal Word of God,
who for our salvation did will to become incarnate
of the holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary,
who without change did become Man and was crucified, O Christ our God,
trampling down death by death, who are one of the Holy Trinity,
glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!

My M.Th. Thesis Synopsis

2009-09-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

On 16 September 2009, I successfully defended my Master of Theology thesis, with a number of concrete suggestions for clarification.

My director asked that I produce a synopsis the assembly who attended the defence/examination, since they would not have had the opportunity to read the text of my thesis itself until it is made available in the library at Newman Theological College. Since a number of people have asked for a summary of my arguments in favour of sign language as a valid liturgical language, I have decided to post the text of the synopsis here.

The comment box is open for exchange. This topic is long overdue for serious dialogue.

This essay [= my thesis] seeks to answer a very specific question: Would the ‘Words of Consecration’ in sign language (i.e., a non-audible language) fulfill the conditions of ‘sacramental form’ of the Eucharist? Conversely: would the Eucharistic Form (= the ‘Words of Institution’) be invalidated by sign language? I conclude that, given the fact that sign language is no less a language than English, Chinese, or French, and thus cannot be excluded as a liturgical language. The effects of the Eucharistic consecration are not mitigated by the fact that sign language dispenses with morphemes.

The essay is divided into two parts, representing two different but complementary methods, the dogmatic way and the systematic way, paying close attention to the distinction outlined by Bernard Lonergan.

In the First Part, I approach the question of the ‘Words of Consecration’ from a strictly dogmatic view, since objections to sign language in the celebration of the Eucharist or, more precisely, the in the Eucharistic Form, must take into account the doctrinal pronouncements of the Church. As such I begin with the unfolding Eucharistic doctrine of the Fathers with special attention to the Cappadocians, St John Chrysostom, St Ambrose of Milan, and St Augustine, the last of who handed onto the Scholastics a peculiarly ‘Roman’ Eucharistic doctrine. Then, beginning with the first dogmatic canon (the two oaths of Berengarius of Tours), The Council of Florence, the Council of Trent, the Second Vatican Council, the ‘Decision of 17 January 2001’, and ultimately the XI Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops in 2005, I determine the ‘theological note’ or doctrinal certitudes of the various canons presented, whether they are a document of faith or not, and if they are, whether they be ‘dogma’ or ‘authoritative doctrine.’ My primary sources are the dogmatic canons themselves, taken from either Denzinger’s Enchiridion symbolorum (38^th ed.) or Neuner and Dupuis’ The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church (7^th rev. and enlarged ed.). For the Fathers I make use of de Journel’s Enchiridion patristicum.

In the Second Part, I approach the same question from a systematic view. Since ‘systematic theology’ is broader than ‘dogmatic theology’, I chose to work with IIIa of St Thomas Aquinas’ Summa theologiae, with special attention to qq. 60, 64, and 78. The crux of my retrieval of Aquinas’ sacramental theology is threefold: (1) the ‘hylemorphic theory’ of the sacraments is to be understood strictly as analogy, not equivocation; (2) the form of the sacraments or ‘Word’ derive their instrumental causality only on account of their signification, not by their sounds; (3) at the root of the sacramental Word is the intention of the minister to do as the Church does and, as such, to proclaim the Church’s faith by way of sacramental signs. A significant portion of my argument draws attention to the fact that sacramental hylemorphism has never been taught by the Magisterium; this does not warrant a rejection of the theory, but rather a more careful retrieval without losing sight, again, of the theory as analogy, not equivocation, as per Aquinas’ insistence.

In both Parts note is made of the traditional phraseology of verba consecrationis—rather than lingua consecrationis or sermones consecrationis—and thus argue that, guided by the Spirit of Truth, the nuances of doctrinal language merits attention in their interpretation. Were there is a tradition of “speech of consecration” or some similar phrase, we would have an argument in favour of the sacramental Word as necessitating morphemes and thus a serious counterargument to the sacramental validity of sign language in communicating the sacramental form. More to the point, there is a faint tradition, found in Sts John Chrysostom and Ambrose, of distinguishing the historical utterance of the Words of Institution as sermo and their sacramental repetition as verba and that if the outward sound were necessary, such conditions have been fulfilled by the historic Christ.

I conclude in favour of the sacramental validity of the Eucharistic Form in sign language, finding no substantial argument to the contrary. There is, for example, no tradition of the instrumental causality of the sound patterns or breath emanating from the minister’s pronunciation of the Words of Consecration. There is, on the other hand, a significant retrieval of the ‘sacramental Word’ as the verbum fidei and thus the celebration of the Christian sacraments as a ritualized and symbolic act of faith, especially by K. Rahner and E. Schillebeeckx. Once ‘sacramental form’ is understood as a proclamation of faith, the fact that the proclamation is to be made in language rather than mere sound emerges as the one more consonant with the Church’s received Tradition.

Since this essay is but an inaugural study, I propose several trajectories for further research. Since the hylemorphic theory of the sacraments have been ingrained in the Church’s catechetical tradition especially since the Neoscholastic movement, it is necessary to return to Aristotle’s own doctrine of matter and form (a return that will show that the hylemorphic theory of matter is actually tripartite: matter, form, and potential) and to meticulously retrace the development of sacramental hylemorphism proposed by Stephen Langton and William of Auxerre. Building on the emphasis on verba consecrationis, and since Aquinas’ own doctrine of ‘word and element’ is derived from Tractatus super Ioannem 80.3, it will be necessary to return to St Augustine of Hippo’s doctrine of language and signs. Since ‘instrumental causality’ is a complexus of actions, the relationship between the sacramental Word and its efficacy through the ministry of priests needs to be critically examined. Finally, a proper understanding of the sacramental economy, thanks to the works of Rahner and Schillebeeckx, should break down between the munera docendi and the munera sanctificandi: while there is indeed a distinction between the two, the sacraments must be understood as ‘sacraments of faith’, paying special attention to the sacramental Word as a proclamation of the Church’s faith rather than a formula of incantation or magic. Aquinas gives tremendous evidence for this by his method by not having a separate tractatus de sacramentis in his Summa theologiae but rather situating the sacramental economy within the tractaus de Incarnatione Verbi, thus intending to show the parallelism between the Incarnate Word and the sacramental Word.

It is precisely a retrieval of the sacramental economy as proclamation that gives strong warrant to the use of sign language in the celebration of the sacraments: a symbolic and ritual summons to faith addressed to a certain people in their own language, not excepting Deaf people and their native sign language.

Who are the Cumans for us?

2009-08-07T18:54:00.000-07:00

Today we celebrate the Feast of St Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Order of Preachers and, naturally, a commemoration enjoying the rank of a solemnity among the children of St Dominic. That having been said, I wish to convey my heartfelt greetings to all the members of the Dominican family, especially my professors and confreres at my alma mater, the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, in Berkeley, as well as to my onetime undergraduate institution, St Thomas Aquinas College in Sparkill, New York. Finally, I extend my warmest greetings to the friars of the Dominican Missionaries for the Deaf Apostolate headquartered in San Antonio, Texas.

Dominic was a soul on fire with evangelical zeal, a true missionary who burned with the desire to proclaim Jesus Christ to everyone he met. We all know the story of Dominic, while still a canon of Osma, at a layover during a diplomatic journey to Denmark with his bishop, stayed up all night conversing with an Albigensian and, at the break of dawn, ended up hearing his confession and received him back into the Church.

On the way to Denmark, Dominic and his bishop, Diego de Acebo, passed through Germany and saw the disaster and chaos left by the barbarian Cumans, a pagan culture still deprived of the Gospel. Rather than expressing outrage, Dominic was touched with pity, because he knew that the onslaughts of the Cumans had little to do with their race but everything to do with their ignorance of Christianity. For the rest of his life, Dominic expressed his deepest desire to preach Christ among the Cumans.

Some eight centuries later, a successor of St Dominic, the Very Reverend Vincent de Couesnongle OP, wrote his prophetic encyclical to the Order, Who are My Cumans? Master Vincent turns the drama between Dominic and the Cumans into an icon of the Dominican charism, in which, after everything has been said and done, we must shake off the status quo and go off among the people who have been deprived of Christ. He writes,

"To go to the Cumans" means not being satisfied with "saving the saved", but reaching out also, indeed especially, those who are not "saved", but who will make or unmake tomorrow's world. Above all it does not mean criticising what is happening in our times, and then carrying out as well as possible the narrow way of life which we have laid down for ourselves, once and for all. What it does mean above all is to carry on the work of Saint Dominic, or in other words to allow him to be still present in the world as it exists.

The work in the parish is often simply "saving the saved"--most parishioners are already Catholics, have already received the Sacraments of Initiation, and are in the business of ensuring that flock remain steadfast in the Faith. However, parish life must be outward-looking; when +Allen Vigneron was still the Bishop of Oakland, he rightly lamented that most parish evangelization efforts seldom looked beyond the parish rosters to the souls who languish in ignorance of the Gospel.

The Albigensians whom Dominic and his friars preached to were heretics--which means they were Christians before but had succumbed to error. The Cumans, on the other hand, were not; they simply knew nothing about Christ and his Church. We know who our "Albigensians" are. But who are our "Cumans"--who are those people we know that have never been Christians?

For me, my Cuman is the Deaf person who has been ignored by parish priests.

I have had dozens of conversations about the necessity of the Deaf apostolate (as opposed to Deaf ministry). Here is a sampling of comments that make their rounds fairly often:

1. Deaf people have not approached the diocesan curia for the sacraments; therefore there is no need for outreach to the Deaf.

2. We don't have any Deaf parishes to begin with.

3. There are ministers who sign in neighbouring dioceses, so in case of necessity, we can always appeal for their help.

Contrast these remarks with the Church's supreme authority:

The Church, which has been sent by Christ to reveal and communicate the love of God to all men and to all people, is aware that for her a tremendous missionary work still remains to be done. There are two billion people--and their number is increasing day by day--who have never, or barely, heard the Gospel message; they constitute large and distinct groups united by enduring cultural ties, ancient religious traditions, and strong social relationships. Of these, some belong to one or other of the great religions, others have no knowledge of God, while other expressly deny the existence of God and sometimes even attack it (Ad gentes, n. 10, emphasis added).

Consequently, to conduct ordained ministry that falls short of evangelical zeal of harvesting souls for Christ is to disobey the Second Vatican Council's Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity. I have found it puzzling that many dioceses actively pursue ministries to specific cultures such as Vietnamese, Filipino, Hispanic, Chinese, and so forth, but shrug off the pastoral needs of Deaf people. "If the Church is to be in a position to offer all [people] the mystery of salvation and the life brought by God, then it must implant itself among all these groups in the same way that Christ by his Incarnation committed himself to the particular social and cultural circumstances of the [people] among who he lived." Contrast this with the practise of many diocesan curias who, on one hand, deprive able priests of a post in the Deaf community and, on the other hand, are content to station inept priests in Deaf parishes. In fact, one priest I know, who signs fluently and has ably worked in Deaf ministry with distinction has decided to pursue laicization because his Ordinary has refused to allow him to continue his ministry among the Deaf.

The Code of Canon Law, an entire title is set apart for "The Missionary Action of the Church" (cc. 781-792). "Since the whole Church is by its nature missionary, the work of evangelization must be held as a fundamental duty of the People of God..." (c. 781). Moreover, "As sponsors of the universal Church and of all the churches, individual bishops are to have special solicitude for missionary work, especially by initiating, fostering, and sustaining missionary endeavors in their own particular churches" (c. 782.2). For those dioceses who neglect the evangelization of Deaf persons, I ask: How does one justify such negligence in the face of the Church's supreme authority, and indeed, in the face of the Church's doctrine of mission which is rooted in the mystery of the Trinity (Ad gentes, ch. 1; cf. Christus Dominus, 22.3).

Among the "Cumans", obviously, are Deaf people--with their unique language, social norms, and culture. True, not every person is called to evangelize and serve every culture, but that by no means justifies any lack of pastoral solicitude for them. I may not be called to evangelize or catechize the Chinese peoples, but I am certainly obligated to ease the path of those missionaries who proclaim the Gospel among them. Likewise, not every cleric is called to evangelize and catechize the Deaf, but that does not excuse any sort of pastoral negligence or apathy.

The real question then, is this: do Deaf people have souls worth saving? Was not the Incarnation also for the eternal welfare of all peoples, including the marginalized such as those who cannot hear, cannot walk, cannot see, or have mental disorders? We know that Christ had a special love for the disabled: he healed a deaf man (Mk 7:31-37), cured diseases (e.g. Lk 5:12-16), restored paralytics (e.g. Mk 2:1-12), and gave sight to the blind (Mk 10:46-52). Christ, who is the exemplar for every Christian, expect us us to imitate his love for disabled people.

For me, "my Cuman" is Deaf person who does not know Jesus Christ. Who is your "Cuman"?

Saint Dominic Guzman, pray for us!

This post is dedicated to H. E. the Most Reverend +Kevin Rhoades S.T.L., J.C.L., D.D., Bishop of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and episcopal liaison for the National Catholic Office for the Deaf, in gratitude for his pastoral solicitude towards disabled persons in his diocese. Ad multos annos!

Authentic Orthodoxy, II

2009-05-24T22:04:00.000-07:00

There is more to orthodoxy than "right belief." In fact, it is better translated as "right worship" or "right "glory," from the Greek adjectival ovrqw/j, meaning "rightly" or "uprightly", and do,xa, meaning "glory" or "worship." Orthodoxy, then, has more to do with right worship than right doctrine, though they are hardly mutually exclusive.

The paramount source of Christian doctrine is not a catechism or handbook of theology, but the sacred liturgy. The hymns and prayers found in the liturgical books in both the Latin rite (e.g., Roman Missal, Liturgy of the Hours) and the Byzantine rite (e.g., Horologion, Lenten Triodion, Pentecostarion) enshrine the Church's confession of faith. As St Prosper of Aquitaine reminds us, "ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi" (The Call of All the Nations, 1.12; cf. Denzinger, 246).

Perhaps the most prominent example of the appeal to the "rule of prayer" can be found in Pope Pius XII's apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus defining the dogma of the Assumption. In n. 18, Pius XII appeals to the Gallican sacramentaries as well as Byzantine liturgical books as evidence of the Mother of God's Assumption. In n. 20, he wrote, "...the liturgy does not engender the Catholic faith but rather springs from it." Here, Pius XII understands faith as the primordial source of Catholic doctrine that finds its most basic expression in the Church's liturgy: as a theological virtue, the act of faith directs the Christian soul to God, and it is only natural that such direction finds its expression in worship. When a lover loves the beloved, the instinct is to give flowers, to sing a romantic song, or to write poetry; it is only in hindsight that the lover comes to understand the meaning of his love for the beloved. Similarly, the corporate act of faith has led the Church to develop her liturgies, and only subsequently does the Church come to understand her act of faith--and here Christian belief is engendered.

"Faith" and "doctrine" are not coextensive. Faith, as a theological virtue, is necessary antecedent to doctrine; doctrine is a meaningful formulation of the content of faith.

Too often, in discerning the content of faith, the first instinct is to turn to a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Neuner and Dupuis, or Denzinger. While such instincts are laudable provided that the statements or formulations found therein are properly interpreted, it runs the risk of dichotomizing liturgy and doctrine. I take the dichotomy between liturgy and doctrine to be one of the more problematic methods of theological study in the Roman Church, because it fails to address the liturgy as a locus theologicus. Aidan Kavanagh has written what is perhaps the best treatment of this question:

Belief is always consequent upon encounter with the Source of the grace of faith. Therefore Christians do not worship because they believe. They believe because the One in whose gift faith lies is regularly met in the act of communal worship--not because the assembly conjures up God, but because the initiative lies with the God who has promised to be there always. The lex credendi is thus subordinated to the lex supplicandi because both standards exist and function only within the worshiping assembly's own subordination of itself to its ever-present Judge, Savior, and unifying Spirit.

Dom Kavanagh then turns to the example of Moses, who encountered the Burning Bush even before his faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Moses' faith was engendered by the presence of God.

Presence, faith, worship, doctrine, necessarily in that order. Because liturgy is necessary anamnesis of Divine Revelation, it follows that in liturgy we encounter the Holy Trinity, and there is born the act of faith. In the Paschal Vigil, for example, at the Exsultet the deacon sings over and over again, "This is the night....this is the night..." In the various Proper Forms of the Communicantes of the Roman Canon, we are treated as contemporaries of the mysteries of Christ being commemorated, whether it be his Transfiguration or his Ascension. The Prefaces, too, assumes that we are presently experiencing the mysteries being commemorated as though we were historically present.

[...to be continued]

Authentic Orthodoxy, I

2009-05-23T09:31:00.000-07:00

In the Roman Canon, the Church prays: "...omnibus orthodoxis atque catholicae et apostolicae fidei cultoribus", which is roughly translated "...the orthodox and catholic faith that comes to us from the Apostles." Most of us, however, are familiar with the I.C.E.L. translation, "...the catholic faith which comes to us from the Apostles." The new translation of the Order of Mass, produced by the Vox Clara Commission, unfortunately perpetuates this one-sided translation. It is not only the thirteen autocephalous Orthodox Churches who are called "orthodox", but the Catholic Church as well. Let us not forget that St John of Damascus, whom St Thomas Aquinas quotes often in his Summa theologiae, titled his major work On the Orthodox Faith.

Recently, Christopher West has come under fire for his inaccurate portrayal of the late John Paul II's "Theology of the Body." This morning, however, Dr David L. Schindler, dean and provost of the John Paul II Institute of Marriage and Family at the Catholic University of America, made the following statement:

West presents a problem for the Church, not because he lacks orthodox intentions, but because his unquestionably orthodox intentions render his theology, a priori, all the more credible.

This pretence to orthodoxy constitutes a grave danger in the life of the Church. Consider, for example, the following slogans:

Christendom College is a Catholic coeducational college institutionally committed to the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church;

Southern Catholic College is a co-educational liberal arts college committed to the authoritative teachings of the Roman Catholic Church;

In conformity with the desires of the Church as expressed in the apostolic constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae and in Canon Law, the Catholic members of the teaching faculty of Thomas Aquinas College publicly take the Oath of Fidelity and make a Profession of Faith at the beginning of their terms of office. By these, they confirm their commitment to teaching all the parts of the program in a way that leads to and aids in reaching the natural goal of all honest intellectual inquiry - the contemplation of the truth about reality whether discovered through reason or revealed by God Himself.

One website that lists Catholic colleges and universities who call themselves "orthodox" or "faithful to the magisterium," has the following wise disclaimer: "While it is believed that at least by intention the following organizations are Catholic – presenting authentic teachings of the Church – some may fail to accept a logical sequence of doctrine and authorities."

This is precisely the problem with Catholic institutions claiming "loyalty" or "faithful" to the magisterium. The very fact that such nomenclature as "faithful to the magisterium" indicates how prodoundly misunderstood the teaching authority of the Church is, because it is not the teaching office we are to be loyal or faithful to, but to the teachings of the magisterium; moreover, the various teachings of the magisterium do not require "loyalty" or "fidelity" but different kinds of assent that correspond to the nature of the teachings, i.e., to the primary or secondary objects of infallibility. There are, moreover, teachings of the Church that have not been defined but are nonetheless official teachings of the Church: these are usually found among the lex orandi of the Church's liturgy--such as the Dormition of the Mother of God.

All of this parading the badge of orthodoxy, I would suggest, shows how well conservative members of the Church play the game of Who's More Catholic. Hollow self-marketing, and nothing more. Case in point: Christopher West.

One cannot be "orthodox" by brute force. Simply because a given Catholic claims presumption in favour of the magisterium does not guarantee that he or she in fact is. Why? Because various articles of belief proposed by the magisterium require various kinds of assent. In the first place, there is an hierarchy of Church teaching: First, dogma; second, authoritative doctrine, third, prudential admonitions and provisional applications of Church teaching.

On the liberal side, these three categories of Church teaching tend to be understood in terms of "most important" (dogma), "important" (authoritative doctrine), and "dispensible" (prudential admonitions). The reality, on the other hand, is that these categories differ not by their rank of importance, but by the ground of their assent.

On the conservative side, these three categories are often blurred and given a single type of assent for all three, which is hardly any better than the liberal approach to the Church's teaching authority. To make matters worse, conservatives--as exhibited by such slogans as "faithful to the magisterium"--end up placing their assent in the wrong place, that is, in the subject of infallibility rather than in the object of infallibility.

To make matters worse, many conservatives fail to see dogma or authoritative doctrine unless it is defined. For example, in a conversation with a traditionalist priest last year, it was claimed that since the Church has never defined whether or not the Mother of God died prior to her Assumption, it follows that we are free to believe or disbelieve the Dormition. The priest here got one out of two right: indeed, the magisterium has never defined whether the Mother of God died; his error was that simply because it was not defined, it did not require assent, when in fac the lex orandi of the Church has made very clear the lex credendi of the Mother of God's death.

But there is more. There can be no blanket assent for all teachings of the magisterium, because they are categorised according to their relationship to Divine Revelation. Dogma is propoerly that teaching which is to be found in Divine Revelation, and as such requires the assent of faith. Subsequently, doctrine is properly that teaching which is "connected" to Divine Revelation and serves to safeguard it, and this requires the kind of assent called obsequium religiosum. In other words, the primary object of infallibility, which pertains to Divine Revelation, requires the "assent of faith"; the secondary object of infallibility, which is connected to Divine Revelation and thus serves to safeguard it, requires the kind of assent called obsequium religiosum. As the Code of Canon Law legislates:

Although not an assent of faith [Non quidem fidei assensus], a religious submission of the intellect and will [religiosum tamen intellectus et voluntatus obsequium praestandum] must be given to a doctrine which the Supreme Pontiff or the college of bishops declares concerning faith or morals when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim it by definitive act... (can. 752).

Such a blanket slogan as "faithful to the magisterium", then, is misleading on two accounts: (1) It wrongly shifts the assent from the object of infallibility to the subject, namely the teaching office of the Church; (2) it fails to distinguish the different kinds of assent required of different categories of Church teaching. This second point becomes all the more clearer when we take notice of the fact that "fidelity" is related to "faith" and faith is not the kind of assent owed to authoritative doctrine. Such solgans, then, attempts "orthodoxy by brute force" but misses the mark because it fails to understand properly the charism of teaching exercised by the college of bishops in communion with the Successor of Peter.

The problem of the "masque of orthodox" is really root-and-stock. We know that, prior to receiving Orders, candidates must make a profession of faith and sign the Oath of Fidelity. Unfortunately I have yet to come across a single seminary faculty that provides adequate formation in the different levels of Church teaching and the kinds of assent required. Too many private conversations with seminarians, priests, and seminary professors have left me convinced that the Oath of Fidelity has been reduced to a mere formalism. And with the Oath taken with one's right hand on the book of the gospels!

So, for those who whine about lack of "orthodoxy" in the Church, let us put the blame squarely where it belongs--on both the liberals and the conservatives.

Bibliography

DULLES, Avery. Magisterium: Teacher and Guardian of the Faith. Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007.

SULLIVAN, Francis. Creative Fidelity: Weighing and Interpreting the Documents of the Magisterium. London, UK: Wipf and Stock, 2003.

__________. Magisterium: Teaching Authority in the Catholic Church. New York, NY: Gill and MacMillan, 1984.

GAILLARDETZ, Richard. By What Authority: A Primer on Scripture, the Magisterium and the Sense of the Faithful. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2003.

__________. Teaching With Authority: A Theology of the Magisterium of the Church. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997.

The Traditionalist Movement and the Works of the Flesh

2009-05-14T12:57:00.001-07:00

As you can see on the upper right corner of my blog, I have posted an excerpt from the dogmatic constitution on the Church Lumen gentium, n. 14. Recently, at the Chrism Mass, a colleague and I were discussing the tendency of traditionalists ("Trads") and ultraconservatives to be intentionally uncharitable and purposely polarizing. We discussed specific examples. In one case, a cleric from the Archdiocese of New York wrote disparagingly of Archbishop +Annibale Bugnini, comparing him to "his namesake" Hannibal. Slander aginst Archbishop Bugnini has not abated and many Trads still accuse him of being a Freemason. One wonders whether the testimony of the conservative Silvio Cardinal Oddi to the contrary counts for anything.

Another paradigm example comes from the popular blog of an indefatigable (and apparently parishless) demagogue cleric who finds it necessary to preface any reference to the jounalist John Allen with "the nearly ubiquitous fair-minded correspondent for the dissenting [or "ultra lefty"] National Catholic Reporter." In a recent posting on an editorial by Fr John Langan in America, this blogger-cleric has shown himself incapable of dialogue, let alone decent conversation. Instead of responding with truth and charity, his ecclesiopolitical fascism spews out statements like "mournful bayings of desperation." In yet another article by Fr Richard Mc Brien, the blogger mocks the disturbed conscience of the person who is the subject of the author's reflection. In response to the comment that "people are grieving for their church," the blogger responds with "ROFL!" and suggests that the Trads' grief is more credible than those who do not identify with any clique. Curiously, the blogger-cleric adds that "People in the same camp as Pope Benedict are striving to heal that division" (emphasis original), thus perpetuating the "us-versus-them" mindset. I am not convinced that they are "striving to heal that division", especially since they find it necessary to peg each Catholic somewhere on the ecclesiopolitical spectrum, thus driving a wedge between different members of the one Church. Constantly labelling people as "lefty," "left-wing," "leftist," "liberal," and so forth only serves to create and perpetuate division, not heal it, because it calls attention to a label and not to the article of faith which is being dissented. What is most revealing is that when his opinions or ideas are called into question, or when he is treated with the same respect that he affords his ideological adversaries, I.P. number of the disagreeing party is identified and he is thus blocked from his website. So much for dialogue.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not a fan of the National Catholic Reporter, nor of Fr Richard McBrien. By conviction I adhere to the pro-life cause; I have even resolved to abstain from Holy Communion and to go to confession because I voted for President G. W. Bush during his second campaign, thus having "materially cooperated" in a war that is unjust. But I refuse to play the silly game of "Who's More Catholic" because it scarcely never avoids being reduced to creating polarization and rivalry.

St Paul the Apostle would have had a field day:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissentions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God (Gal 5:19-21).

In other words, creating and perpetuating the "us-versus-them" mindset, be it from the right against the left or vice versa, is gravely sinful, so sinful that St Paul teaches that they belong to the same group of sins as fornication, drunkenness, and licentiousness. In other words, traditionalism is a work of the flesh. Perhaps, then, we should call a spade a spade and say that the Trads are scarcely better than fornicators?

She then recited from memory the text from Lumen gentium, 14:

The bonds which bind men to the Church in a visible way are profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical government and communion. He is not saved, however, who, though part of the body of the Church, does not persevere in charity. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but, as it were, only in a "bodily" manner and not "in his heart." All the Church's children should remember that their exalted status is to be attributed not to their own merits but to the special grace of Christ. If they fail moreover to respond to that grace in thought, word and deed, not only shall they not be saved but they will be the more severely judged.

What a relief it was to discover that others, too, have reached the same conclusion. The brilliant Mark Shea in his article "Those Angry Traditionalists" had this to say:

But that is often the impression I have gotten from many (though certainly not all) Traditionalists. Like it or not, discourse among a great many Traditionalists is filled with anger and contempt for Catholics who do not share their burning interest in traditional forms of piety.

So while I've never seen a Clown Mass, I have encountered lots of angry Trads who have compared the Paul VI rite to a Black Mass, made clear that "Novus Ordo types" are second class Catholics, spent a great deal of time obsessing over Jews, sneered at John Paul II and Benedict "Novus Ordo Popes" who have compromised the Tradition, threatened people in my parish physically, smeared good priests with nasty rumor campaigns and generally made their claims to be the Guardians of True Catholicism so repellent that I wouldn't touch the Faith with a barge pole if they were the True Apostles of it they claim to be. And that experience is not just mine.

What is especially disturbing is that the Eucharist, that very Sacrament of Unity, is made to be the point of division. Since the unity of the Church is the res tantum of the Most Blessed Sacrament, I wonder whether taking the Mass as one's battleground and dividing the Church into the "TLM" and the "Novus Ordo" types is actually more blansphemous than showing desecrating the sacramentum et res.

As you know, I'm working on my postgraduate thesis; part of my research requires going through the canons of the Council of Trent. What is especially surprising--and refreshing--is how much respect the Council Fathers gave to Luther and to the other Protestant reformers. In fact, the Council tries to parse the personalities of the Protestant movement from their own views, lest the Council Fathers misinterpret their writings and thus villify their persons. If only the Trads would be so courteous.

If only the Trads could be...Christian. "Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!" (Ps 133:1).

But, as in the past, I'm sure some Trad will call me a neo-Protestant for citing the Bible.

"The Grieving Church" by Revd Dr Richard McBrien

2009-05-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

On 27 April last, the Revd Dr Richard McBrien published "The Grieving Church" in the online edition of the National Catholic Reporter. While I do not consider myself a fan of Fr McBrien, I do think he has something worthwhile to say here. Below is the text of the article, with my emphases and comments.

I received an e-mail recently from a lay pastoral associate, whose ministerial focus is on adult education and who possesses a graduate degree from a Catholic university. I have his permission to cite a portion of our exchange.

I have suppressed some of the details lest his pastor identify the source and seek to jeopardize the pastoral associate’s job. [This is most unfortunate, since the Code of Canon Law insists that the lay faithful have a right to make their opinions known to the Church's pastors; cf. canon 212.3.]

The e-mail came from a large suburban parish in which the pastor has apparently done everything that he can to remove most traces of the reforms initiated by the Second Vatican Council. [It should not be ignored that like the 'conservatives' or 'traditionalists' who intensely dislike the the Second Vatican Council, so too were the Arians who were the 'conservative' party at the First Council of Nicaea; cf. Leo Donald Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1983), 33-76. It was an 'innovation' that the non-Biblical word homoousios would be used in the Church's progressing dogmatic vocabulary.]

The pastor has done away with all contemporary music at Mass, and has restored pre-conciliar devotions along with auricular confession. He even gives the impression that confession is the greatest of the sacraments.

Perhaps there is some misunderstanding here because the Council of Trent, back in the 16th century, made clear that the greatest of the seven sacraments is the Eucharist. [Correct-it's found in the Thirteenth Session, Chapter Two; but Fr McBrien's detractors do not concede that he has maintained Orthodoxy on this point.]

Under the pastor’s control, the parish has no youth ministry [The General Directory for Catechesis, nn. 181-185 mandates that special attention is to be given to the youth of the Church. This pastor should at least get a clue from the Holy Father's affinity for evangelizing and catechizing young people.], no parish council [If the diocesan bishop has mandated that each parish have a pastoral council, then this pastor is in violation of canon 536] nor any other consultative body [I wonder whether he has a finance council, which is mandated by canon 537]. According to my correspondent, “consultative is not in his vocabulary.” He also gave vocal support to the minority of U.S. Catholic bishops who proclaimed in effect that “Catholics could burn in hell” if they voted Democratic in the recent presidential election.

My correspondent reported that other members of the parish staff are hurting “terribly.” Indeed, they share the feelings of the woman who darted out of church recently during the homily – in tears. [This happens too often. Many of our younger priests seem to be ignorant of the fact that pastoral charity is the paramount priestly virtue--cf. Directory on the Life and Ministry of Priests, nn. 13, 20, 28, and especially 30. Despite the fact that the Directory is issued by the Church's supreme authority, I wonder how many seminarians study it.]

She informed the pastoral associate that she could no longer handle the situation, and that she had to leave the parish. She said that all that she ever hears from the pulpit is what sinners the parishioners are, and why it is so necessary for them to “go to Confession.” [The sacrament of Reconciliation has been called by the Church a "tribunal of mercy." But what often seems forgotten is that Jesus' gripe was always with the religious folk who passed themselves off as better than the prostitute, the publican, or the Roman soldier. I could easily fill this blog posting with citations, but if this basic fact of the gospel narratives is questioned, then it is likely that our ultraconservative or traditionalist is Biblically illiterate. In fact, I've been called a "neo-Protestant" for citing the Bible to one such traditionalist.]

That particular Sunday, with the old-fashioned church music, all the statues covered in purple as they were before Vatican II, and the usual severe words in the homily, the pressure was simply too much for her to bear. [Hello? The Paschal Homily of St John Chrysostom, anyone?]

The woman poured out her frustrations, saying that the pastor had taken the parish back to a church that she knows nothing about and in a manner that showed no understanding of others’ feelings.

At the end of his first e-mail, my correspondent asked, “Are we expected just to get used to it?”
In my reply, I wrote: “No, you are not simply to ‘get used to it’. Parishioners need to go elsewhere, like the woman who left Mass in tears.” [I fiercely disagree. The parishioner should approach her bishop or better the vicar for clergy. The lay faithful have a right to make their needs known to their pastors; cf. canon 212.3; if the pastor in question is in fact violation of the norms of liturgical law, she can appeal to canon 214.]

I continued: “If there are no parishes or other worshipping communities in the vicinity where the pastoral leadership is healthy rather than driven by a narrow ideology, then one simply has to ‘take a vacation’ from the church until the skies finally clear and we are bathed in sunlight once again.” [Some commentators, refusing to give Fr McBrien the benefit of the doubt, assumed he meant skipping Mass and the sacraments. I think what he has in mind is a vacation from the Church as one's employer. I've done that before, and returned with even more gusto. Sound advice, Fr McBrien.]

In response, the pastoral associate noted that “the number of our parish families who are already on vacation from the church is amazing. It hurts to see it.” [This woman "hurts to see it"--a sure sign of her pastoral solicitude. If only her pastor had the same kind of pastoral solicitude!]

“It’s new territory, dealing with people grieving for their church,” he wrote. [Absolutely. All it took was a mis-reading of the Holy Father's motu proprio summorum pontificum and a hasty reading of his theology.]

The lead article in America magazine’s 100th anniversary issue (4/13/09) is by a Dominican who is justly admired the world over. It is Timothy Radcliffe’s “The Shape of the Church to Come.” [Master Timothy is a remarkable Christian, a superb pastor, and a beautiful human being. I had the honour of meeting him at the 2001 General Chapter at Providence College. No-one who works for the Church can afford to ignore him.]

What follows here is a continued commentary on the problem of the “grieving church” and not meant as a criticism of Timothy Radcliffe’s fine article in which he deplores the polarization that is “deeply wounding and inhibits the flourishing of the church.” [Stay tuned for my next posting, "Traditionalism and the Works of the Flesh." Suffice it to say that the active polarization of certain segments in the Church is lumped by St Paul into the same category as "fornication", "drunkenness", and "impurity"; see Gal 5:18-21.]

However, he does identify this polarization as consisting of self-defined “traditionalist” Catholics in open conflict with self-defined “progressive” Catholics.

My experience with the worldwide Catholic church is surely much more limited than Timothy Radcliffe’s, and I would defer to his experience if indeed he has come across a significant number of Catholics who actually identify themselves as “progressive.” On the other hand, I know of countless numbers of Catholics who proudly call themselves “traditional” or “orthodox.”

The pastor in the true story above surely would regard himself as “orthodox,” but the woman who left the church in tears would never have defined herself as a “progressive” Catholic. That adjective would mean nothing to her. [Indeed. These polarizations become more acute as one moves westward in the United States.]

She and other Catholics like her grieve simply for the loss of their church, a church renewed and reformed by Vatican II.

It is not polarization but the pastor of the story and many like him who are responsible for the grieving church. [No--I think Master Timothy is right. Stay tuned for my next blog posting!]

Vacuous Blather v. Text Criticism

2009-04-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

N.B.: This post will be continuously updated in order to provide references and sources to my counterclaims of the vlog in question.

1. The vlog begins with an editorial on Carl's resistance to the Bible, "especially the King James Version" and shifts to a discussion of "St Jerome." This move we would call a non sequitur, as the second point does not follow logically from the first one. Or even historically for that matter; the "King James Version", more properly called the Authorized Version, was commissioned by King James I of England and remins essentially an Anglican-use version, despite its misuse by Fundamentalists.

Car'ls version of the history of St Jerome contains several blunders.

In the first place, the task given to St Jerome was purely one of translation. St Jerome was commissioned by Pope Damasus I (d. 384) to undertake a new translation of the Bible, as there had already been one in circulation termed the Old Latin or Italic version. Moreover, Carl fails to take into account that there were already Bibles in circulation, especially the edition ordered by Emperor Constantine I (a.k.a. "Constantine the Great"); in fact, the Codex Sinaiticus is thought to be one such example of these Constantinian Bibles (see T. C. Skeat, "The Codex Vaticanus and Constantine," in Journal of Theological Studies 50 [1999] 583–625).

If Carl had the remotest knowldege of the Bible's textual history, which he clearly does not, he would have made good use of P.R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans, ed., The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. (Oxford, UK: Oxfored University Press, 1970), especially volume 1, From the Beginnings to Jerome.

Second, Carl mentions that St Jerome edited out certain narratives of the Bible, citing for instance the lack of Mary's parentage in the narrative (he does not indicate which narrative). He also asked for the names of Mary's parents, and concludes that St Jerome must have deleted them. Again, he is incorrect; according to ancient testimony, they are named Joachim and Anne (or Anna); their names are still retained by the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Coptic Church of Alexandria, Church of England, and several other eastern churches; in point of fact, St Joachim and Anna are liturgically commemorated on 26 July in the Roman Calendar and on 9 September in the Byzantine Calendar. Thus Carl's assertion that we do not know the names of Mary's parents is neglects the evidence of (i) liturgical praxis, (ii) post-biblical writings, and (iii) the testimony of the Fathers. Most importantly, Carl neglects (or is ignorant of) the testimony that comes from the Protoevangelium of James.

2. The vlog mentioned "archives of the Catholic Church." This is a statement of ambiguity . What "archives of the Catholic Church" does he refer to? The Vatican Secret Archives? The Apostolic Library? A scriptorium in a Roman monastery? His vaguely general statement betrays a profound ignorance of the history of Late Antiquity.

3. Carl asserts that Protestants recovered the "suppressed stories" and reinstated them. However, a simple comparison a Catholic Bible with a Protestant Bible will demonstrate the exact opposite. What Carl states here is not mentioned in any reputable work of Protestant theologians or historians. For instance, Prof Dr Alister McGrath, for instance, professor of theology at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford, wrote In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture (New York, NY: Random House, 2001), makes no mention of this. Not even the fiercely Protestant but scholarly sound website www.Bible.org makes any such claim.

4. Carl also mentions that there is no historical record of the geography mentioned in the Book of Job. He is correct, but this is hardly new information. Whether or not the narrative of Job "actually happened" misses the point entirely, as the narrative serves as a parable, not an history. Carl obviously is unable to distinguish fact and truth--they are not necessarily coterminous. To take a famous example, the story of young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree and later confessing to his father has no basis in fact; yet, for all the historical fiction that it is, the story nonetheless holds an important truth about the virtue of honesty. Even if it were proven beyond all reasonable doubt that young Washington never chopped a wodden tree and--for the sake of the argument--never even existe, the "myth" still has merit, precisely because it relays values, not statistics. Ovid's Metamorphoses are pure fiction, but because they are "myth," they contain truths (consider Narcissus' entrapment in the pool of water, to take an obvious example).

5. In yet another non sequitur, Carl argues for the Bible's inaccuracy on the basis of Bush's failed economic policy. Does this mean if Bush's economic policy led to the greatest prosperity in the history of the United States, the Bible would become true? We have here a miserable instance of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.

6 "God is not a politician" is another non sequitur. But here, Carl argues for the "wall of separation" (Thomas Jefferson) because God is not a politician. On what basis is he able to determine what God is or isn't? I'm not sure who should be insulted--God, civil servants, or political science majors.

Be that as it may, the American doctrine of the separation of Church and state is wholly irrelevant to the discussion on the Bible's historical veracity.

7. "People need to respect other religions." Absolutely! In fact, the Catholic Church has institutionalized respect for other religions; the Second Vatican Council issued Nostra aetate (II Session) and Unitatis redintegratio (III Session). Not only that, the bureaucracy of the Vatican, the Roman Curia, has specific dicasteries devoted to dialogue with other religions with the aim of creating mutual respect and understanding. There is the Pontifical Council for Promoting Inter-Religious Dialogue, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as well as several distinct international committes devoted to interreligious dialogue. In point of fact, the Catholic Church has personnel devoted precisely to the cause of religious liberty, the most notable being His Eminence +Walter Cardinal Kasper.

Respect for religions must go beyond saying or signing "Respect for religions!" It must be actualized by honesty and integrity, which Carl fails to show in his inability to verify the premises in the Newsweek article he refers to repeatedly throughout his vlog.

Now, an editorial of my own.

Carl, who claims to be a professor, displays a shocking degree of academic dishonesty: Carl fails to cite his sources; he fails to verify secondhand or thirdhand information; he fails to remain within his field of expertise, instead pontificating on matters of theology, text-criticism, Late Antique history, and logic.

Since my training is in theology and Biblical hermeneutics, I will make a two specific corrections to Carl's many phantastic assertions.

First, he discipline of researching, identifying, and cataloguing fragments of the Bible is called text-criticism. Carl's nonsensical talk about "editing out" narratives, suppressing fragments of the Biblical text, and translations lands him in the court of text critics such as Prof Dr Daniel B. Wallace, Prof Dr Bart Ehrman, Prof Dr J. Harold Greenlee, and the late Prof Dr Bruce Metzger. Each of these experts have written volumously on the question of the Bible's textual history. I refer the interested reader (read: academically honest people) to their books, listed in the bibliography below.

Second [to be continued]

Bibliography

ALAND, KURT, AND BARBARA ALAND. The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, rev. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989.

BROWN, RAYMOND, and RAYMOND F. COLLINS. "Canonicity." In RAYMOND BROWN, et al., The New Jerome Bible Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.

BROWN, RAYMOND, and D. W. JOHNSON. "Text and Versions." In RAYMOND BROWN, et al., The New Jerome Bible Commentary. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990.

GREENLEE, J. HAROLD. Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, rev. ed. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.

HAYES, JOHN H. and CAROL R. HOLLADAY. "Textual Criticism: The Quest for the Original Wording." In Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook. Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1987.

METZGER, BRUCE, and BART EHRMAN. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Hae dies quam fecit Dominus: exsultemus et laetemur in ea, alleluia.

2009-04-12T21:59:00.000-07:00

Last year at Providence Centre, where I serve St Mark's Catholic Community of the Deaf, I was assisting my ministerial colleague in decorating the sisters' refectory in the late afternoon of Holy Saturday. Impulsively--perhaps even impetuously--I wrote on the community chalkboard,

Χριστός Ανέστη! Αληθώς Ανέστη!

In Greek, it reads "Christ [is] risen! Truly [He is] risen!"

By the next morning, the chalkboard was sprawling with the same Paschal Greeting in different languages:

Христос Воскрес! Воістину Воскрес! (Ukranian)

Chrystus Zmartwychwstał! Zaprawdę Zmartwychwstał! (Polish)

Le Christ est ressuscité! Vraiment Il est ressuscité! (French)

Christus ist auferstanden! Er ist wahrhaftig auferstanden! (German)

Cristo ha resucitado! Verdaderamente, ha resucitado! (Spanish)

Si Cristo ay nabuhay! Siya nga ay nabuhay! (Tagalog)

Easter--or Pascha--is one of the few liturgical commemorations in which the Catholicity of the Church truly emerges, embracing all peoples and languages. It is the very reason we are Christians.

Slowly but surely, a "political" brand of the Catholic faith has been emerging, one that reduces it to an -ism, "Catholicism"--that is marked by faith not in the Paschal Mystery but in the conviction of sociopolitical conservatism. More and more, it appears that the central conviction of Catholicism in North America is hardly the resurrection of Christ, but rather a kind of theonomy that poses as the religious counterpart to the "New Atheism." Christianity is thus reduced to a battle-front of the culture wars. Instead of proclaiming the Gospel, it seeks to legislate causistry.

It is no secret that I am a member of the G.O.P. By persuasion I am a strict constructionist; I espouse limited government and share many conservative views. But, with Dr Martin Luther King, I am convinced that the cause of human rights cannot be won at the Supreme Court, but in the hearts of people--not at the forum of the judicial branch of government, but in the forum of conscience. Dr King believed that it was necessary for ordinary Americans to be convinced in their hearts that the Black person is also a human being, equally endowed with inalienable rights inasmuch as the Caucasian is. Only after such a grassroots "conversion" could the Supreme Court, with any real conviction, legislate that the Black person is in fact as much an American as the next white person.

For those, like myself, who are engaged in the pro-life movement, we must ask: How much is our sociopolitical agenda rooted in the Paschal Mystery, if at all? Is the "pro-life" label worn as a badge of our Catholicism instead of the belief that the resurrection of Christ reveals the inherent dignity and worth of every human being? It seems to me that, more often than not, political Catholicism places more weight on the anti-abortion agenda that it does in the article of faith that proclaims "Christ is risen."

To push the question further, we might also ask: how can caustic language, cruel words, and cutting remarks against capital punishment, abortion, homosexual marriage, and the Democratic party reveal the Mystery of the Resurrection of Christ? My answer is that it does not.

I would suggest that any action or discourse that serves to obscure the Paschal Mystery is in fact a "counter-evangelism"--we are convincing people not to become Christians because we have set ourselves up as shoddy exemplars. If we will receive an accounting for "every idle word" (Mt 12:36-37), how much more severe will our judgment be when our words, even unintentionally, actually disinvites people to share in the life of Christ! Really, who wants to be a Christian like Anne Coulter?

As the Holy Father reminded us in his Urbi et orbi address to the world this Easter morning, "Resurrectio Domini, spes nostra"--"the Resurrection of the Lord is our hope." Not, I would add, is the agenda of the Republican Party.

Being a Catholic means, first and foremost, believing in the Risen Christ, and from this act of faith is derived the belief in the dignity of all human life (and not the two, side by side, as in a non sequitur). If Christ was willing to undergo the torture of crucifixion and to rise as the Giver of Life equally for President Obama and President Bush, the least we can do is to respect their persons as recipients of Christ's self-immolation.

For us to venture whether they have accepted the offer or not is to paint ourselves as the anti-Pantakrator, because there can only be one "who will judge the living and the dead" (Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople).

Renewal Prayer for the Deaf Catholic Church

2009-03-31T13:49:00.000-07:00

The Revd Fr Michael Depcik OSFS has composed a beautiful prayer for the renewal of the Deaf Catholic Church. As he respectfully indicated at the recent National Catholic Office for the Deaf's annual Pastoral Week, the Deaf Catholic community is "in crisis" for lack of new, qualified pastoral workers and sacred ministers.

Readers are cordially invited to click here and follow the prayer he composed. Please take time out of your schedule every Friday to pray this "Renewal Prayer for the Deaf Catholic Church."

As the Director of the Mark Seven Bible Institute, I have decided that this prayer will be signed in common every morning and that the intentions of this prayer will be remembered at each celebration of the Eucharist.

Happy praying!

The Prayer of Blessed +John XXIII, P.P.

2009-03-17T22:45:00.001-07:00

Almighty God! In Thee we place all our confidence, not trusting in our own strength. Look down benignly upon these pastors of Thy Church. May the light of Thy supernal grace aid us in taking decisions and in making laws. Graciously hear the prayers which we pour forth to Thee in unanimity of faith, of voice, and of mind.

O Mary, Help of Christians, Help of Bishops, of whose love we have recently had particular proof in thy temple of Loreto, where we venerated the mystery of the Incarnation dispose all things for a happy and propitious outcome and, with thy spouse, St. Joseph, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist, intercede for us to God.

To Jesus Christ, our most amiable Redeemer, immortal King of peoples and of times, be love, power, and glory forever and ever.

Blessed +John XXIII, "Gaudet Mater Ecclesia,"

Opening Speech at the Second Vatican Council,

11 October 1962

The Sacred Liturgy and Mystagogy in the Catholic Deaf Community

2009-03-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest gifts of the Holy Spirit to the Church in our times is the restoration of the catechumenate (Sacrosanctum concilium, 64). Through three distinct steps and three distinct periods, the seeker comes to know Christ, to submit their lives to him, and ultimately to be incorporated into His Mystical Body (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, 4-8).

The culmination of the liturgical year, of course, is the Paschal Vigil. At the Exsultet, the cantor reminds us of the role played by water in the economy of salvation:

This is the night when first You saved our [ancestors]:
You freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.
...
This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean from sin
and freed from all defilement
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.
...
The power of this holy night
dispels all evil, washes guilt away... (Paschal Vigil, Missale Romanum, 18).

During the Liturgy of the Word, the Church proclaims the gift of water and its relation to the mystery of baptism (Gen 1:1-2:2; Ps 104; Exodus 14:15-15:1; Isaiah 55:1-11; Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28; Rom 6:3-11, to name but a few).

Imagine, if you will, the candidates for baptism being attentive to the words of the Exsultet and the proclamation of the Scriptures; when the celebration reaches the Liturgy of Baptism, the presider recites an astonishingly beautiful prayer of consecration over the waters, one that again summarises the role of water in the economy of salvation (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, 222). And, after the mighty reminders of water as bearers of sanctifying grace, the candidate submits to a baptism of a few drops of water on the forehead! Instead of being the culmination of the symbol of water throughout the Paschal Vigil, the rite of baptism is reduced to an anticlimatic moment. As Fr Dennis Smolarski SJ, professor at Santa Clara Univeristy's School of Pastoral Ministry explains,

It is often overlooked that the rubrics show a preference for baptism by immersion. The General Introduction of Christian Initiation states that immersion "is more suitable as a symbol of participation in the death and resurrection of Christ." Baptism by immersion has been in use for centuries by Eastern Catholics, by Orthodox Christians, as well as by various Protestant denominations. When someone enters the waters of teh font and becomes completely covered with water, the truth that baptism is an entry into the tomb with Christ as well as a bath for cleansing is conveyed quite dramatically to all present (Dennis Smolarski, Sacred Mysteries [New York, NY: Paulist Press, 1995], 39).

Yet most of us are content to do the least amount of work in the celebration of the sacraments. In the long run, our mystagogical catechesis becomes impoverished; tactile expressions of the faith, which finds a unique home in Deaf culture, is suppressed, and yet another opportunity to catechize the Deaf is tragically lost.

Liturgical minimalism has been the historic disease infecting the Roman Rite. The post-Tridentine Scholastics, in discovering necessary and sufficient conditions for each sacrament, unwittingly became accomplices in the reduction of the sacramental symbols to their absolutely minimal requirements. For baptism, at least water on the forehead and the canonical form became the standard. For Eucharist, at least a piece of unleavened bread and wine mixed with water and consumption of both species by the presider alone became the standard for Holy Communion. As a result, liturgy and catechesis gradually became estranged from each other; during the Tridentine period, handing on the faith was reduced to the propositional model of Revelation, with little if any "hindsight" of the sacraments and their catechetical weight. I am convinced that because the Eastern Church has resisted the tendency towards minimalism, they have been able to easily retain sacramental catechesis. (Cf. Maxwell Johnson, The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation [Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2007], 189f.)

It would be helpful to recall a significant shift in St Thomas Aquinas' sacramental theology. Whereas earlier in his Sentences, Peter Lombard thought that the necessity of sacramental symbolism was due to the obscurity of human reason by sin and concupiscence, St Thomas argued that the symbolism carried an intentional pedagogical value. His famous sacramental dictum, "The sacraments effect what they signify" should remind us that the value of the sacramental signification should not be reduced to merely the effects. In other words, indeed there is the sanctifying grace communicated through the sacraments, but there is also the grace that enlightens our understanding of the Mystery of Christ highlighted by the sacramental celebration itself. As the supreme magisterium teaches:

The purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify men, to build up the body of Christ, and, finally, to give worship to God; because they are signs they also instruct. They not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it; that is why they are called "sacraments of faith" (Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum concilium, 59).

But can we admit of an instructional value when the sacramental signs are minimzed and reduced to their absolute minimum? Of course not.

When I began ministry with the Deaf, a senior colleague, herself a religious sister, gave me the feedback more than once, and always with a derisive tone: "Words, words, words," as though what I said was completely missed by a Deaf audience whose culture was more narrative than literary. Though I was too young to appreciate it at the time, I now understand that she was perhaps more right than she realised!

Recall, for example, St Mark the Evangelist's penchant for details: Jesus "stretched out his hand and touched" the untouchable leper (1:41); his use of spittle and soil, then "groaning" before healing the deaf man (7:34); taking the blind man "by the hand" out of the village (8:23); taking "a little child and put it among [the disciples]; and taking it in his arms" (9:36). Each of these teachings by Jesus was prefaced by a symbol that was palpable and self-explanatory. These moments must have been so profound so as to remain vivid in the memory of St Peter, who according to tradition was the source of Mark's narrative.

Jesus' example of using symbols and gestures is the paradigm of sacramental celebration.

It is precisely for this reason that, in the celebration of the sacraments, the sacred ministers and pastoral workers who serve the Deaf be allowed to make gratuitious use of the symbols in the celebration of the sacred liturgy. It is difficult to understand Christ as the Living Bread when, contrary to the Church's laws, the Sacred Body is served under the appearance of paper-thin sheets of carbohydrates (cf. General Instruction on the Roman Missal, 321). The outpouring of the Holy Spirit is better symbolized by the pouring of the Sacred Chrism rather than tracing a dab of oil on the forehead. Most importantly, catechesis on being "buried with Christ" makes far more sense in the context of one's experience of baptism by submersion rather than infusion (cf. Rom 6:3-6). The gratuitious use of symbols--being tactile expressions of the faith--addresses Christ within the peculiarly Deaf milieu of visual communication.

The neophytes are, as the term "mystagogy" suggests, introduced into a fuller and more effective understanding of mysteries through the Gospel message they have learned and above all through their experience of the sacraments they have received. For they have truly been renewed in mind, tasted more deeply the sweetness of God's word, received the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and grown to know the goodness o the Lord. Out of this experience, which belongs to Christians and increases as it is lived, they derive a new perception of the faith, of the Church, and of the world (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, 245).

Dr Edward Peters notes that "[a]s a rule of thumb, 90% of Catholics receive 90% of their exposure to things Catholic at Mass on Sunday." When one factors in the small number of Deaf Catholics, most of whom attend Mass only during Christmas and Easter, the urgency of going "all out" with liturgical maximalism becomes even more imperative. It is surprising how the most frequent symbols at Mass become drowned in a sea of words and movements--numerous times Deaf Catholics have asked me about "that white round thing I ate"! How can we expect to catechize members of the Catholic Deaf community if their experience of the sacraments have been minimal?

Indeed, celebrating liturgies with symbols that are allowed to speak for themselves requires work. But given Dr Peter's rule of thumb (above), we cannot afford to do any less. I know for a fact that Holy Angels Church of the Deaf in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles holds weekly meetings with its entire pastoral staff in order to plan the next Sunday's liturgies--they often run up to three hours or "As long as it takes" as the pastor, Fr Thomas Schweitzer once told me. It is not sufficient to ride on the momentum of the pre-established Ordinary and Propers of Mass--any pastoral team needs to plan and implement the inculturation of the liturgy in the Deaf community. How many Catholic Deaf parishes can rival Holy Angels Church's liturgical and sacramental diligence, if at all?

Ecclesial life is essentially liturgical. Our Catholic identity does not rely upon memorization of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit or the eight Beatitudes; rather, our Catholic identity is rooted in the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. Our awareness of Catholic doctrine, then, arises from a double anamnesis: the anamnesis of the Paschal Mystery and the anamnesis of our own celebration of the sacraments. Can we honestly say that our experience of the Sacraments of Initiation or of other liturgical celebrations are truly palpable enough to become the stuff of catechesis? If not, then how will we proclaim the faith to the Deaf without using "words, words, words"?

Not "words," but beauty that breaks through sacramental symbols. Dostoyevsky was right when he said that "beauty will save the world," and beauty will indeed save Catholic Deaf ministry. Our liturgies should inspire Deaf people the same way that it inspired the envoys of Prince Vladimir when they entered the Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom in Constantinople: "We did not know whether we were in heaven or on earth, but we know that God dwells here among his people, for we cannot forget that beauty." Yet how many of us can describe our Deaf liturgies as beautiful?

What might be some specific suggestions? I can think of five to start with:

The Paschal Vigil should really be the culmination of the liturgical year (General Norms for the Liturgical Year, 18). Thus diligent planning should prepare for the celebration of the Sacraments of Initiation: baptism by submersion, generous pouring of the Sacred Chrism for Confirmation, and liturgically correct Eucharistic Bread that resembles food. Not only that, but other symbols should be palpable enough to be self-explanatory: a vigorous Paschal fire, a beautiful, perhaps home-made, Paschal Candle that remains lit until the conclusion of Great Paschal Vespers (General Norms for the Liturgical Year 19).
As "windows into heaven" and "theology in colour", icons corresponding to the mystery in Christ's life being celebrated should be displayed and venerated, especially during the Lenten/Paschal cycle. In particular, PowerPoint slides of various icons corresponding to each article in the Creed would help the participant in worship to identify the story or narrative being proclaimed.
A "running commentary" on the sacramental celebration should be avoided, except by way of reminding the congregation to be "on the lookout" for certain symbols and gestures. Then each gesture and symbol ought to be made with the greatest deliberation and articulation so as to be easily identified in one's memory when the catechist (or mystagogue) recalls them in a session of teaching the faith.
Liturgical environment, especially that of cathedrals, provides a rich source of mystagogy. The symbols associated with the episcopal office such as the cathedra and the presbyterium serves to proclaim priests as "co-workers with the bishop" (Presbyterorum ordinis, 2); the mitre, crozier, ring, pallium (if the bishop is a metropolitan), and pectoral cross, expresses the meaning of "local Church" and its relation to the "universal" Church (Ceremonial of Bishops, 1-17).
It is indeed an impoverished mystagogy of the Scriptures when they are proclaimed from a sheet of paper as is often the case in Deaf parishes. St Benedict's Parish for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing in San Francisco, to cite one example, uses a beautiful leather binder with a Celtic cross on the cover for inserting loose-leaf lectionary readings. The liturgical law is specific when it discusses the dignity of the book from which the Scriptures are proclaimed: "In a special way, care must be taken that the liturgical books, particularly the Book of the Gospels and the Lectionary, which are intended for the proclamation of the word of God and hence enjoy special veneration, really serve in a liturgical action as signs and symbols of heavenly realities and hence are truly worthy, dignified, and beautiful" (General Instruction on the Roman Missal, 349).

Again, this requires work, much work indeed. But we are not pastoral workers in order to retain the title "Pastoral Worker." We are pastoral workers in order to ensure the full inclusion of Deaf Catholics in the sacramental and liturgical life of the Church. Moreover, our pastoral work presupposes and requires the work of liturgical planning because liturgy is not the "work of the rubrics" upon whose momentum we can ride, but "work of the people" as Christ's "other Self" worshipping the Father. It is precisely as liturgizing that we "do Church", and it is only as Church that we are Catholics.

And Now, A Gripe...

2009-03-13T13:55:00.000-07:00

I need to pick a bone.

But first, a story. A dear friend of mine, himself a canon lawyer and a consultant on liturgical law, shared with me an experience of his at a meeting of English-speaking liturgists and canonists with the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome. Representatives of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia were present.

At the meeting--there were twenty-five or so present--one of the officials of the Congregation was rattling off a list of liturgical abuses he'd heard of. Once, such-and-such happened. Again, this-and-that took place. He was visibly upset. And he should have been.

One of the participants raised his hand, "Excellency, this is all very terrible! But, where is this happening? We've never even seen such things!"

The laundry-list of liturgical abuses continued. A second participant raised his hand, "Your Excellency--we really don't understand. We've never heard of such things happening in our province."

The official of the Congregation pressed on with his denunciations. Finally, a third participant intervened, "Excellency, we really don't know what to say. None of this happens in my diocese. Where are these awful things taking place?"

The official was visibly annoyed, but the point was clear: When it comes to liturgical abuses, it's more urban legend than documented fact.

Another colleague of mine, the Director of Liturgy for a bishop at a major See in the western United States, has recounted innumerable stories of being sent by the bishop to investigate an alleged liturgical abuse, only to report that none was taking place, or at least admit a rather minor infraction. And this one chastised me for ranking Peter Elliot's Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite over the Ceremonial of Bishops! It's a burn I'm still recovering from...

This isn't to say that liturgical abuses do in fact take place. I've seen silly stuff happening at the Call to Action services. But I've also seen major infractions of the GIRM on Eternal Word Television Network's televised Masses. And believe me, Deaf people have an eye for detail, and it is difficult for even minor variations to escape my attention.

We should not glibly assume there aren't liturgical abuses taking place in the celebration of the 1962 Missal as well. I see them all the time. Catholics who attend the Extraordinary Form of Mass unwittingly talk of them.

But, my friends, abusus non tollit usum. That there are abuses in the celebration of Mass according to the Missal of Paul VI does not warrant either (a) an abandonment of said Missal or (b) a return to the Missal of John XXIII. Attendance at either of these Forms of Mass should arise from nobler reasons.

Anyone who reads the history of the Roman Liturgy can learn very easily that there have been abuses in the celebration of Mass since time immemorial. A history of the Reformation will often show, for instance, that presiders recited the Ave Maria at the Consecration rather than the Words of Institution. Moreover, there would not have been a "liturgical revival" in the decades up to the Second Vatican Council if there were no abuses taking place. For example, Gregorian chant was already in decline until the superb and excellent works of Dom Prosper Gueranger.

Now here's my gripe. Why should those who are partial to the Missal of Paul VI, especially when it is celebrated worthily and in accordance of the Church's laws, be made to feel responsile for liturgical abuses when they do take place? To be sure, Call to Action does a lot of silly things. But so does Eternal Word Television Network. But I won't be held accountable for their actions. Nor will the Missal of Paul VI be held accountable, any more than the Missal of John XXII or the Missal of Pius V be held accountable for the liturgical decline in the period before the Second Vatican Council

It seems to me that the eighties of the twentieth century was the worst time for liturgical abuses. But consider who may have been guilty of such abuse: priests who were formed in the decades prior to the period 1962-1965. Therefore it is precisely a pre-Vatican II formation that was responsible for liturgical havoc, not only formation subsequent to the Council.

And when abuses do take place, it is not the result of the Church's laws and the teachings of the Second Vatican Council; it is because of an ignorance of them. So the Council and the subsequent Consilium cannot be held accountable, only those who fail to assume their own responsibilities in familiarizing themselves with the documents and the legislation.

Again and again: abusus non tollit usum.

The Divine Right of Bishops and the Ordinary Executive Power to Dispense from Law

2009-03-07T11:13:00.000-08:00

Elsewhere in the blogosphere (I decline to indicate where), a debate has ensued regarding the power of a local bishop ("Ordinary"; see can. 134.1) to dispense from a merely ecclesiastical law. The particular debate surrounds the viri selecti rubric of the Rite of Mandatum (Lotio pedum) on Holy Thursday, whether the local bishop is able to override the rubric which restricts the gender of those whose feet are washed to men (see Missale Romanum, "Missa in cena Domini", n. 6; cf. Paschales Solemnitatis, n. 51).

Does a diocesan bishop have the right to dispense from a merely ecclesiastical law?

In 1962, Karl Rahner and Josef Ratzinger co-authored a volume of the Quaestiones disputatae (vol. 4), titled The Episcopate and the Primacy, a study on the extent and limits of both papal and episcopal power. In the first section, "The Episcopate and the Primacy", Rahner asks whether the constitution of the Church which holds simultaneously that the pope has "supreme and full power of jurisdiction" that is "truly episcopal, ordinary, and immediate both over each and every church and over each and every pastor and faithful..." is internally inconsistent (16; cf. 1917 CIC, can. 218 and 329.1). Does not pontifical power encroach upon the individual bishop who possesses his episcopal office "by divine right"?

We cannot forget the doctrine of the bishop's power "by divine right"--it has been taught solemnly by the Council of Trent (Session 23, Chapter 4; Denzinger 1767) and again at the First Vatican Council:

The power of the Supreme Pontiff is far from standing in the way of the power of ordinary and immedite episcopal jurisdiction by which the bishops who, under appointment of the Holy Spirit, succeeded in the place of the apostles, feed and rule individually, as true shepherds, the particular flock assigned to them. Rather this latter power is asserted, confirmed and vindicated by this same supreme and universal shepherd, as in the words of St. Gregory the Great: "My honour is the honour of the whole church [sic]. My honour is the firm strength of my brothers. I am truly honoured when due honour is paid to each and every one" (Neuner and Dupuis 827; Denzinger 3061).

Ratzinger then calls attention to a pastoral letter issued by the German episcopate shortly after the close of Vatican I, the "Collective Statement of the German Episcopate Concerning the the Circular of the German Imperial Chancellor in Respect to the Coming Papal Election" in 1875. Among the theses of the "Collective Statement" identified by Dom Olivier Rousseau ("La vraie Valeur de l'Episcopat dans l'Eglise d'apres d'importants documents de 1875", in Irenikon 29 [1956], 121-150) is that "The pope cannot arrogate to himself the episcopal rights, nor substitute his power for that of bishops" and "the episcopal jurisdiction has not been absorbed in the papal jurisdiction." Ratzinger then points out that the "Collective Statement" received "the express and unqualified endorsement of Pius IX" (40). Thanks to the suggestion of then-Father Ratzinger, the "Collective Statement" has been installed in Denzinger (nn. 3112-3116). It reads thus in English:

It is in virtue of the same divine institution upon which the papacy rests that the episcopate also exists. It, too, has its rights and duties, because of the ordinance of God himself, and the Pope has neither the right nor the power to change them. Thus it is a complete misunderstanding of the Vatican decrees [e.g. Aeterni Patris] to believe that because of them "episcopal jurisdiction has been absorbed into the papal", that the Pope has "in principle taken the place of each individual bishop", that the bishops are now "no more than tools of the Pope, his officials, without responsibility of their own." According to the constant teaching of the Catholic Church, expressly declared at the [First] Vatican Council itself, the bishops are not mere tools of the Pope, nor papal officials without responsibility of their own, but, "under appointment of the Holy Spirit, they succeeded in the place of the apostles, and feed and rule individually as true shepherds, the particular flock assigned to them" (Neuner and Dupuis 841; cf. Denzinger 3115).

When we come to the Second Vatican Council, the teaching of Vatican I and the German episcopate are conjoined, first in Lumen gentium 27: "The bishops govern the churches entrusted to them as vicars and legates of Christ... This power which they exercise personally in the name of Christ is proper,ordinary and immediate, although its exercise is ultimately controlled by the supreme authority of the Church... " The decree continues, "By virtue of this power, bishops have the sacred right and duty before the Lord of making laws for their subjects, of passing judment on them and of directing everything that concerns the ordering of worship and the apostolate." In the decree Christus Dominus, 6, the supreme authority teaches: "As the legitimate successors of the apostles and members of the episcopal college, bishops should ever be conscious that they stand together and they should let it been seen that they are solicitious for the good of all the churches." In article 8a, the decree reads, "As successors of the apostles, the bishops in dioceses entrusted to them possess as of right the ordinary power necessary for the exercise of their pastoral office. This power belongs to them as bishops and rests in their own hands, always without prejudice to the universal power which, in virtue of his office, the Roman pontiff possesses of reserving cases to himself or to some other authority."

The supreme authority is clear on its teaching of the bishop's divine right. In fact, this is precisely what we mean by "bishop"--the Greek noun episkopos means "overseer" or "superintendent", which has unmistakable connotations of authority and jurisdiction (cf. B.D.A.G. 379-380). This is precisely why the cathedra is the primary symbol of the bishop's exercise of his office, since it is from the chair that he governs his see.

Then, with respect to the power of dispensing from an ecclesiastical law, the Council teaches: "By the general law of the Church all diocesan bishops are given the power of granting dispensations in particular cases to the faithful over whom they hold canonical authority, whenever they judge it to be for their spiritual good. This power does not extend to cases which have been specially reserved byt he supreme authority fo the Church" (Christus Dominus, 8b).

This authoritative doctrine on the divine right of bishops, as well as his power to dispense from a merely ecclesiastical law, is legislated in the 1983 Code of Canon Law which naturally follows the Second Vatican Council (cf. Sacra disciplinae leges).

In order to understand ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the three powers of governance must be distinguished, "legislative" power as the power to legislate laws; "executive" power as the power to execute laws, and "judicial" power as the power to judge (can. 135.1, 2, 3).

An Ordinary, being the diocesan bishop having "competant ecclesiastical authority" over his territory, possesses executive power (can. 134.1) as we have already seen from the Council of Trent, the "Circular Letter" of the German episcopate, and the Second Vatican Council. As such, the Ordinary, having this "ordinary executive power" thus has the power to dispense from a merely ecclesiastical law (can. 85). Even those laws issued by the supreme authority can be dispensed by the Ordinary (can. 87.1) insofar as it is not a procedural or penal law. Such a dispensation must have a "just and reasonable cause."

As Eduardo Baura, extraordinary professor of general canon law at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross explains, "The power of a diocesan bishop to dispense universal laws is executive, ordinary and proper..." (A. Marzoa, J. Miras, and R. Rodriguez-Ocana, Exegetical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, vol. 1 [Chicago, IL: Midwest Theological Forum, 2004], 656.) More specifically:

Since the CIC views dispensation as something proper to the administrative function, it establishes that it is conceded by an authority whith executive power (c. 85), without the obligation to identify himself with the author of the law. "Therefore, it can be affirmed that the power of the diocesan bishop to dispense universal laws--that are goverened by the rules of the executive power--is a part of the proper and immediate ordinary power that comes witht he government of the diocese" (656, emphasis added).

With respect to liturgical law, insofar as it is a merely ecclesiastical law, Pope Paul VI in his Apostolic Letter Sacram Liturgiam issued motu propio wrote,

Finally we wish to emphasize that—beyond what we in this apostolic letter on liturgical matters have either changed or have ordered carried out at the established time—regulation of the liturgy comes solely within the authority of the Church: that is, of this Apostolic See and, in accordance with the law, of the bishop. Consequently, absolutely no one else, not even a priest, can on his own initiative add or subtract or change anything in liturgical matter (art. 11, emphasis added).

Can a diocesan bishop who is an Ordinary dispense from a liturgical law in his own territory? Yes, insofar as it is a merely ecclesiastical law. Divine law remains intact; no bishop--not even the Bishop of Rome--for example, can change the Words of Institution, since that has been established by Divine Revelation. He can, however, change a law that is purely human--such as the size of sacramental bread, whether certain liturgical texts can be sung, and the derestriction of the Mandatum to men alone. The burden of proof lies with those who insist that the "viri selecti" rubric is a matter of positive divine law (cf. Summa theologiae, Ia IIae, q. 91). Father John Huels JCD, the incontestable English-speaking expert in canon law and professor of the same at Saint Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario:

The diocesan bishop is the principal authority for the oversight and regulation of the liturgyin his diocese (canons 381; 391; 391; 835.1; 838.4). He has authority over the public exercise of the liturgy by all, including members of pontifical religious institutes (canon 678.1). He can enact liturgical laws, provided they are not contrary to universal laws (canon 135.2). He can grant dispensations from universal law, including dispensations from universal liturgical laws (canon 87). The universal law entrusts to the bishop authority to decide whether it is appropriate to use certain approved rites or practices, such as general absolution (canon 961.2) and eucharistic processions (canon 944). He also regulates non-liturgical prayers and devotions (canon 839.2). (More Disputed Questions in the Liturgy [Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 1996] 11).

Therefore, with reference to the bishop's divine right, the teaching of Trent, Vatican I, the German Episcopate (and approved by Pius IX), and Vatican II, as well as the Code of Canon Law, a bishop can dispense from a universal law, including a universal liturgical law.

Returning to our earlier discussion on the joint work of Rahner and Ratzinger, it is important to point out that not only is "episcopalism" an heresy--the notion that each bishop can exercise his authority freely without reference to the College of Bishops--but also "papalism" is likewise an heretical notion. As Ratzinger wrote, "In fact, according to the [First] Vatican Council, not only episcopalism but also papalism in the narrower sense must be regarded as a condemned doctrine, must be impressed much more efficaciously on the Christian consciousness than has been done to date" (44, emphasis added). Thus the attitude of "papalism," more popularly known as Ultramontanism, carries with it the attitude that bishops are not able to exercise their divine right--including the right to grant dispensations from a merely ecclesiastical law--and that only the Bishop of Rome can exercise the executive power of governance as a bishop. The blogger in question (cf. above) appears to espouse the heresy of papalism. As we have shown, the decrees of the ecumenical Councils and the Code of Canon Law fails to support his position.

In closing, I would like to share a story told twice by my professor of canon law, first in a course "Introduction to Church Law" and again in "Liturgical Law and Pastoral Practise." It deals precisely with the diocesan bishop's right to dispense from law.

When the late John Paul II came to Canada for his Apostolic Journey in 1984, he joined one of the bishops in an aerial trip across one of the northernmost dioceses. Northern Canada is desolate and often trips have to be made via helicopter or a small airplane.

The Ordinary who was accompanying the Holy Father was proudly "bragging" about the dedication of his presbyterate--how busy they are, how many of the faithful they serve, and how much they give without complaining. "Holy Father," the Ordinary said, "sometimes our priests celebrate four, even five Masses a day!"

"No, no, no" John Paul II interrupted, with his thick Slavic accent. "Canon law says a priest may celebrate Mass only at most twice a day," he corrected, referring to the law of bination (can. 905.2)

"But..." the Holy Father continued, tipping his white zucchetto to the Ordinary, "you are the bishop!"

This anecdote, our canon law professor said, serves to show that even the Bishop of Rome and the Pastor of the universal Church recognised and accepted the divine right of bishops to govern his own diocese and to dispense from a merely ecclesiastical law.

This posting is dedicated to His Eminence Cardinal +Roger MAHONY, Metropolitan Archbishop of Los Angeles. Ad multos annos!

Sources:

Aquinas, St Thomas. Summa theologiae, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. New York, NY: Benzinger Brothers, Inc., 1947.

Catholic Church. Code of Canon Law, Latin-English Edition: New English Translation, trans. Canon Law Society of America. Washington, D.C: Canon Law Society of America, 1998.

Danker, Frederick William, ed. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Denzinger, Henrici. Enchiridion symbolorum definitonum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 38th Ed. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2001.

Huels, John M. Liturgy and Law: Liturgical Law in the System of Roman Catholic Canon Law. Woodridge, IL: Midwest Theological Forum, 2006.

__________. More Disputed Questions in the Liturgy. Chicago, IL: Liturgy Training Publications, 1996.

Neuner, Jacques, and Jacques Dupuis. The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, 7th rev. ed. Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 2001.

Paul VI, P.P. Apostolic Letter motu proprio "Sacram Liturgiam." Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1964.

Peters, Edward. The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2001.

Tanner, Norman. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990.

Rahner, Karl, and Josef Ratzinger. The Episcopacy and the Primacy. Montreal, QC: Palm Publishers, 1962.

"Mystery of Faith" in ASL

2009-03-05T21:43:00.000-08:00

Here I would like to begin a series of ASL commentaries on the Ordinary of Mass, especially giving attention to certain liturgical texts which, in my opinion, fail to be conveyed in its original intent by way of commonly-used signs in the Deaf Catholic community. I would like to begin with the "Memorial Acclamation", that point immediately following the Words of Institution in which the presider says "Let us proclaim the mystery of faith" (or in the new translation, "The mystery of faith").

The Latin text simply reads mysterium fidei, "[the] mystery of-faith." What does it mean? From the way it is usually conveyed in ASL, one might guess that it means that object of faith which is incomprehensible, puzzling, secret, or supra-intellectual. This is the impression given by E. Costello, Religious Signing (New York, NY: Bantam, 1986), 122.

In point of fact, the English word "mystery" used here is wholly unrelated to the sort of mystery one finds in Murder She Wrote or Matlock. The Latin mysterium is actually a Grecanism, a noun borrowed from the Greek language, having nothing to do with 'mystery' in the conventional English sense (cf. Warren C. Trenchard, A Concise Dictionary of New Testament Greek [New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 104). Allow me to quote from Edward Foley's recently-reprinted From Age to Age: How Christians Have Celebrated the Eucharist (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2008), 74:

One of the ways this "Latinizing" process will affect Christian thought is through the translation and adaptation of Greek texts, like the New Testament. For example, the Greek New Testament does not speak about "sacrament" but about musterion. Musterion, which occurs twenty-seven times in the New Testament, is a difficult word to translate. It was a term that was employed in Greek philosophy and ancient mystery cults to designate rites in which devotees of a god celebrated and participated in the god's fate. In the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint the word appears nine times, and it takes on the sense of a divine mystery in the process of being fully revealed in the future. In the New Testament the term occurs when Jesus explains the purpose of the parables (e.g., Mark 4:11) or when Paul speaks of Christ as the "mystery of God" (Col 2:2), but it is never used to describe or explain worship.

One of the more common translations of the Greek musterion was the Latin sacramentum. As used by Romans, the word sacramentum had numerous legal meanings. For example, it could designate a sum of money that the parties to a lawsuit had to deposit with a magistrate before the suit would go forward. The "sacred"connotation of the word (Latin sacra = holy) comes from the practice of turning the money of the losing party over to the state for religious purposes. [...] More important for the history of Christian sacramentality, however, was the borrowing of the word sacramentum by Latin writers like Tertullian--the son of a soldier who understood the range of legal and political meanings of the word. By borrowing such a word, Tertullian inadvertently introduces legal connotations into a Christian understanding of worship that did not exist with the Greek musterion.

Obviously, the Latin sacramentum was used as the Roman inculturation of the Greek musterion. It means, primarily, a religious or cultic ceremony, and secondarily one such ceremony that was "secret" or "private", i.e., available only to the initiated. Liturgists would immediately recognise the custom of the disciplini arcana, the "discipline of the secret", in which only those who experienced the Sacraments of Initiation knew what "Eucharist" was all about.

Given this, then, it follows that the Mysterium fidei is a cultic rite pertaining to faith. The Scholastics were fond of speaking of the sacraments as precisely the "sacraments of faith" (e.g. Summa theologiae IIIa, q. 64, art. 2, ad 3). They were keen on maintaning the connexion between the sacraments and the theological virtue of faith (a connexion that was lost to juridical concerns by the Manualists and Neo-Scholastics).

This is why, for example, the post-baptismal catechesis is called mystagogy: it is a discourse for those who have been initiated into the sacred mysteries, namely the rites of baptism, chrismation/confirmation, and Eucharist. And of course, the introduction to the Penitential Rite at Mass begins, Fratres, agnosticamus peccata nostra, ut apti simus ad sacra mysteria celebranda--we are invited to acknowledge our sins before the "sacred mysteries" are celebrated. We do not mean something primarily baffling or that which makes us clueless; we mean a ceremony, ritual, or rite of sorts.

In the context of the Eucharistic Liturgy, the more specific meaning of Mysterium fidei, following the Memorial Acclamation, presents itself at the Anamnesis: "Calling to mind the death your Son endured for our salvation, his glorious Resurrection and Ascension..." The Anamnesis in the Eucharistic Prayer recalls precisely the Paschal Mystery! The event of Chist's Passion, Death, and Resurrection is the ultimate worship given to God; the Eucharist, according to the Council of Trent, is the re-presentation of this event (Denzinger 1741; cf. 3848). The Eucharist, in a way unique to itself, is the sacrament that proclaims precisely the Lord's Pasch (1 Cor 11:26). This "event", this "cultic rite", this musterion is the action which proclaims this Pasch which forms the foundation of Christian faith. It was no mere poetry when the supreme magisterium taught that the Eucharist is the "source and summit" of the Christian life (Lumen gentium, 11), because our life of faith is founded on both the tragedy of Good Friday and the Triumph of Easter Sunday. It is precisely for this reason we respond to the Mysterium fidei with the Memorial Acclamation--of the the three succint statements of the Easter event: "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again", "Dying you destroyed our death; rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus, come in glory", "When we eat this Bread and drink this Cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come in glory." Each of these acclamations stress the event of Christ's Death and Resurrection in articulation of the "mystery of faith." The liturgy is its own best interpreter.

It was common, especially since Pope Innocent III, to think that Mysterium fidei meant the incomprehensibility of transubstantiation. St Thomas Aquinas certainly picked up on this. Not that Pope Innocent is entirely wrong, but the incomprehensibility of the change from bread and wine into the Sacred Body and Precious Blood of Christ is to be subsumed into the events of that first Paschal Triduum, which was the ultimate worship given to God by Christ, the ultimate musterion. We cannot drive a wedge between the Real Presence and Easter; rather, the Real Presence is true because of Easter, and therefore the primary focus of our attention is indeed Easter, the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ.

As I hope it is obvious by now, Mysterium fidei is not a religious or liturgical way of saying "Huh? But I'll take it on faith." Rather, as an acclamation, it calls attention to the central, defining event of Christianity--the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ--which in turn defines our faith or belief.

I would therefore propose that in conveying Mysterium fidei in ASL, we retain the linguistic and theological overtones of the Greek noun musterion. Two signs can be proposed:

SACRAMENT [OF] BELIEF or FAITH (formal equivalency)

CELEBRATION [OF] BELIEF or FAITH (dynamic equivalency)

Since catechesis and liturgy are interrelated and symbiotic, we cannot expect to thrust a new way of signing the Mysterium fidei without any proper introductory catechesis. It would be, I think, a golden opportunity to re-introduce certain elements of the Ordinary of Mass to our Deaf congregations in hopes of enhancing that "full, conscious, active participation" in the sacred liturgy mandated by the Second Vatican Council (Sacrosanctum concilium, n. 14).

Readers are invited to post possible ASL signs for communicating Mysterium fidei.

The Eucharistic Consecration in Sign Language

2009-03-03T16:36:00.000-08:00

Some of my colleagues are well aware that I am in the middle of my M.Th. thesis, The Sacramental Validity of the Eucharistic Form in Sign Language. Even though I am a systematician by training, I've decided to approach a question of sacramental theology from the perspective of systematics, or more precisely, systematics and dogmatics.

My basic question is this: Would the Words of Institution, a.k.a. the "Consecration", be efficacious if they are proclaimed in sign language rather than spoken language?

When I studed canon law last year, my professor invited me to investigate whether the Code of Canon Law considers hearing loss to be an impediment to Holy Orders. In a classroom discussion that ensued when the professor raised the question, one student insisted that the voice of the consecration was necessary, and that the breath emanating from the celebrant saying the Words of Institution touching the bread and wine were in and of themselves efficacious. There seems to be a general assumption among many Catholics that this is the case.

This notion seems to arise from a reductionist understanding of "matter" and "form" in the sacraments. If the "form" is requisite for a valid celebration of the sacraments, it follows that the form can only take place audibly and vocally. The implication is that speaking audibly the sacramental form is an imperative of positive divine law.

I disagree.

Here, I would like to outline a few specific arguments in favour of the sacramental validity of the Eucharistic Form in sign langauge.

The hylomorphic theory of the sacraments, i.e., that each sacrament consists of both "matter" and "form," has never been taught infallibly by the magisterium. As magisterium, only the Synod of Rome (1059, 1071) and the Council of Trent, Session XIII (1551) come close to defining the range of the Eucharistic Form; in the case of the Synod of Rome, the consecration is said to be effected by "the mystery of the sacred prayer and the words of the Redeemer" (Denzinger 700); the Council of Trent speaks of the words of Christ, i.e., the "Words of Institution" as being efficacious (Denzinger 1637, 1642). According to Yves Congar, Francis Sullivan, Richard Gaillardetz, Joseph De Guille, and other experts in the area of magisterium, the "Decree to the Armenians" Exsultate Deo (Denzinger 1320) is in fact not an act of an infallible magisterium, and so it cannot be recruited to argue that the hylomorphic theory has been defined as either a dogma or definitive doctrine. At most, it remains a probable theological opinion and one that should not necessarily be dismissed but examined rather more closely.

St Thomas Aquinas, following St Augustine (Tractaus LXX super Ioannem, 3) states specifically: "the word operates in the sacraments 'not because it is spoken,' i.e. not by the outward sound of the voice, 'but because it is believed' in accordance with the sense of the words which is held by faith. And this sense is indeed the same for all, though the same words as to their sound be not used by all. Consequently no matter in what language this sense is expressed, the sacrament is complete" (Summa theologiae IIIa, q. 60, art. 7, ad 1). The Angelic Doctor thus informs us that the power of the words is not inhered by the voice or the sound it makes, but rather to the belief they convey. Hence the intention of the minister.

The locus of the efficaciousness of the Words of Institution is not, as St Thomas says, in the audible or vocal quality, but rather in the ministerial intention they manifest. St Thomas makes this explicit connexion between the "form" and the "intention": "[...] the sacraments require the intention of the minister" (S.th. IIIa, q. 60, art. 8, sed contra). Subsequently, he says: "When a thing is indifferent to many uses, it must needs be determined to one, if that one has to be effected. Now those things which are done in the sacraments, can be done with various intent; for instance, washing with water, which is done in baptism, may be ordained to bodily cleanliness, to the health of the body, to amusement, and many other similar things. Consequently, it needs to be determined to one purpose, i.e. the sacramental effect, by the intention of him who washes. And this intention is expressed by the words which are pronounced in the sacraments; for instance the words, 'I baptize thee in the name of the Father,' etc" (respondeo).

Though there is an intrinsic connexion between the sacramental forms in general and the Eucharistic Form in particular, the connexion between the form and the effect of the form is purely analogous. The forms do not bear a causality to the effect of the Eucharistic Mystery, but speak analogously of the Mystery taking place. For example, when one staning next to a tree says, "This is a tree," that person is speaking of the analogy between the word "tree" and the referential tree itself. Whereas in six out of seven sacraments, the form begins with a verb, sometimes in the active voice (e.g. "I baptize you..."), sometimes in the passive voice (e.g. "Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit). In the case of the Eucharist, we have the only sacrament whose form begins with a demonstrative pronoun: "This is my Body; This is my Blood." It appears that the notion of analogous language takes place in a unique way in the celebration of the Eucharistic Mystery, because whereas the sacramental action of baptism or absolution offers a grace that is momentary, the Eucharistic Form indicates a grace that remains even after the rite is complete--namely the Real Presence. Again, any efficacy to the sacramental forms, and especially to the Eucharistic Form, cannot be assigned to a physical causality but rather to an analogous causality. This is especially the case when one considers God to be the principal cause of the sacraments.

The sacramental economy is sharply distinguished from magic or superstition in that the forms do not physically cause but rather proclaim. Hence there is a seamlessness between the Church's munera sanctificandi and the munera docendi. The forms, including the Eucharistic Form, proclaims the faith fo the Church. As such, whether they are spoken or signed is besides the point, because they serve to proclaim the Church's faith.

Beginning with Fr Thomas Coughlin in 1977, the Holy See has generously offered its support for Deaf candidates to the presbyterate. When the late H.Em. +John Cardinal O'Connor sought permission from the Congregation for Catholic Education to establish a priestly formation programme for Deaf seminarians, the question of not being able to voice the Words of Institution was never raised. To this day, the prospects of a silent but signed Consecration is considered by the Holy See to be a non-issue.

These are my basic arguments for the sacramental validity of the Eucharistic Form in sign langauge. In constructing my argument, however, I will be dividing my thesis into two major parts, the "Dogmatic Way" and the "Systematic Way." The dogmatic part will trace the evolution of the theology of the Consecration from Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church through the acts of the magisterium, especially the Council of Trent and the Eleventh Ordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops. The systematic way will attempt to reconstruct, in logical order rather than historical sequence, the constituent parts of the theology of Consecration, especially by re-visiting parts of Scripture often not taken into consideration in Eucharistic theology, and to engage the more speculative questions of analogy, intention, and language.

Your prayers on behalf of this research project would be much apprecaited. And your comments/feedback are encouraged so as to stimulate discussion.

For those interested, there are two excellent articles by the incomparable Dr Edward Peters on the question of ASL in the liturgy here and here.

The Extraordinary Form of Mass and Immunity from the Church's Supreme Authority

2009-03-02T08:36:00.000-08:00

First, a disclaimer. I really have no bias against the Extraordinary Form of Mass, otherwise known as the "Traditional Latin Mass" or the "Mass of Blessed John XXIII." Once, a number of years ago, I attended one such Mass at an indult parish under the pastoral care of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter in eastern Pennsylvania. And, of course, there are plenty of opportunities to experience them on YouTube.

I do, however, have a bias against the attitudes that many of the faithful carry with themselves when participating in such Masses. It is no secret that many members of indult parishes emit an odour of being "more Catholic" than the rest of the Church, particularly more than those who attend the Mass of Paul VI or the "Ordinary Form".

With this in mind, I would like to call attention to the question of "Catholic identity" and membership in the so-called "Traditionalist movement." It is not my intention to address members of schismatic groups of various strains of sedevacanism; I am interested in those Catholics who are in communion with the Successor of Peter and, incidentally, are bound by the 1983 Code of Canon Law.

Under the heading of "The Supreme Authority of the Church," the Code of Canon Law lists the authority of an ecumenical council (can. 336, 337.1).

However, according to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum concilium, specific measures of liturgical reform were issued, among which (to name but a few) are:

a simplification of the Roman Liturgy to reflect the principle of "noble simplicity" (no. 34);

"a more ample, more varied, and more suitable selection of readings from sacred scripture should be restored" (no. 35, 1);

recognition of the sermon which "is part of the liturgical action" (no. 35, 2);

proclamation of the Scriptures in the vernacular (no. 36, 2);

In what way can the celebrants of the Extraordinary Form of Mass, even since the establishment of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, be said to have implemented the reforms of the Council? Can it be honestly said that the Extraordinary Form exhibits a "noble simplicity"--with cluttered altars, servers kissing the cruets and censers, meticulus attention to the ductus of the incensation, and gestures that have lost their practicality?

What about the Lectionary? The proclamation of the Scriptures according to the Extraordinary Form still retains a limited repertoire of readings, with an extremely limited selection for the Commons. The Lectionary for Mass according to the Ordinary Form fill four bound volumes according to the Latin typical edition, spread across a three-year cycle; no-one who attends daily Mass according to the Ordinary Form can pretend ignorance of the Scriptures.

An oddity of the Extraordinary Form is the custom of repeating the proclamation of the Scriptures, first in Latin, and again in the vernacular. Not only does this appear to contradict the norm of "noble simplicity", but shows forth the Roman liturgical faux-pas of duplication and thus disrupts the unity of the Liturgy of the Word, not to mention a strong resistance towards the Second Vatican Council's express wish of having the Scriptures proclaimed in the langauge of the assembly.

Worse, there remains the custom of removing certain vestments for the homily or the sermon, and enclosing the same with a sign of the cross. This gives the impression that the Church's munera docendi is truncated from the munera sanctificandi, and that those who assist at a Traditional Latin Mass "step out" of the liturgy to hear the sermon, and then "resume" Mass at the Creed. The Council expressly teaches that the homily is a liturgical function; it seems only appropriate to retain the dignity of liturgical vesture during the exercise of the Church's ministry of preaching. "The homily is strongly recommended since it forms part of the liturgy itself..." (Sacrosanctum concilium, no. 52). The 1983 Code of Canon Law legislates that "Among the forms of preaching, the homily, which is part of the liturgy itself and is reserved to a priest or deacon, is preeminent..." (can. 767.1).

Another problem is to be found in the readings for the Sundays of Lent according to the Extraordinary Form. The Missal of Paul VI restored the older reading of the Lenten gospels; Sacrosanctum concilium 64 ordered the restoration of the catechumenate, which the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Sundays of Lent celebrates in a special way in the "Period of Purification and Enlightenment." However, with the cycle of readings still retained by the Extraordinary Form, there is no way of making use of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, since it was designed to synchronize with the readings and propers of the Lenten cycle as celebrated by Rome long before the Missal of 1570 was issued. Not only do we have a dissynchronicity between the Extraordinary Form of Mass and the restored catechumenate, but also a persistent resistance to the Church's mandate that a thorough and liturgically-oriented catechesis for those seeking the Sacraments of Initiation. This, of course, is not the fault of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass. But where is the effort to celebrate the same Extraordinary Form in compliance with the Council's order to restore the catechumenate? Here I wish to call attention to the words of then-Cardinal Ratzinger:

The Council did not itself reform the liturgical books, but it ordered their revision, and to this end, it established certain fundamental rules. Before anything else, the Council gave a definition of what liturgy is, and this definition gives a valuable yardstick for every liturgical celebration. Were one to shun these essential rules and put to one side the normae generales which one finds in numbers 34-36 of the Constitution De Sacra Liturgia (SL), in that case one would indeed be guilty of disobedience to the Council! ("Ten Years of the Motu Proprio," 24 October 1998).

"Disobedience to the Council." No-one is at liberty to reform the 1962 Missale Romanum on his own initiative without a mandate from the Holy See. The issue here is, rather, that the conversation being carried regarding the usus antiquior strongly indicates that the Council's order for the reform of the liturgy is being ignored. Where, among the Indult communities such as the FSSP and the Institute of Christ the King have we any discussion among professional liturgists about bringing the 1962 Missale Romanum to the supreme authority of the Church?

It has not been my intention to criticize the Extraordinary Form of Mass. Rather, my intention is to challenge those who insist on retaining the Extraordinary Form and to ask: In what sense is submission given to the Church's supreme authority? An ecumenical council, convoked by Pope +John XXIII and adjourned by Pope +Paul VI, has issued specific teachings on the sacred liturgy and mandated specific reforms. Are we to expect that people who retain the Extraordinary Form of Mass are immune from the Church's supreme authority, ignoring those stipulations outlined in Sacrosanctum concilium? I would hope not.

The S.S.P.X. and Episcopi vagantes

2009-03-01T18:29:00.000-08:00

Everybody's got an opinion about the withdrawal of the latae sententiae excommunications of the bishops consecrated by Marcel Lefebvre, founder of the Society of St Pius X. None of these opinions, however, seem to draw attention to the fact that not a single one of these bishops possess a legitimate episcopal chair. This is precisely why, I would submit, the press is wrong when they describe Pope Benedict XVI's lifting the excommunications as "rehabilitation"--the bishops, including especially Richard Williamson, have not been rehabilitated, precisely because of an irregularity in the episcopal consecration that can probably be stabilized only by granting a titular see. Allow me to explain.

The sign of the episcopal rank is not the mitre, crozier, or pectoral cross--even an abbot has the right to wear these insignia. The sign of the episcopal rank, rather, is the ring, which symbolizes the bishops "marriage" to his diocese. Thus a dioceseless bishop is a contradiction in terms. Presumably the bishops of the S.S.P.X.--Bernard Fellay, Bernard Tissier de Mallerais, Richard Williamson, and Alfonso de Gallaretta--each have an episcopal ring. But to which dicoese are they married? In other words, which sees are they in possession of?

The other, no less significant, symbol of the episcopal rank is the cathedra, which is actually the physical manifestion of the see, from the Latin sedes, meaning "seat" (and roughly synonymous with "diocese"). We get the word "cathedral" from cathedra, which is the church that houses the bishop's chair, and thus it is the mother-church of the diocese or see. By rights, only the bishop can be seated on his own cathedra, as well as a papal legate or the pope himself. It reflects the bishop in his role as governing the Local Church. In other words, the ring symbolizes the bishop's marriage to the Local Church which he governs from the cathedra. The episcopal ring and the episcopal chair are, therefore, mutually referential.

The Church is serious about the business of episcopal consecrations. An auxiliary bishop is just that, the auxiliary of the ordinary bishop of a diocese (hence "Ordinary"). Not even the auxiliary bishop of New York has the right to sit on the cathedra in St Patrick's Cathedral. Does he, then, have a see? Indeed he does. For a bishop who is consecrated as an auxiliary or, in some cases, a rector of a seminary (such as H.G. +Edwin O'Brien, now Archbishop of Baltimore, who was once the rector of St Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie, New York). In such instances, these bishops are given a titular see or a see by "title" (hence titular; cf. can. 376). So Bishop +Robert Brucato, although he assists the Archbishop of New York as his auxiliary, is in possession of the Diocese of Temuniana. The ring worn by H.E. +Robert Brucato means that he is married to the Diocese of Temuniana, although he actually lives and serves the People of God in the Archdiocese of New York. This way, the Church preserves the true function of the episcopal rank--an authority which is geared towards the service of the local Church.

Back to question of bishops of the Econe Consecrations: None of these bishops have a proper see. They are without a diocese, and the Holy See has never given any indication that it will regularize their illicit consecrations by giving them one.

Marcel Lefebvre, in his limited ecclesiological vision, probably thought of the episcopal rank only in terms of apostolic succession: it is well-known that the Econe Consecrations took place to perpetuate priestly ordinations in the face of what he considered to be an erroneous course taken by the Church after the Second Vatican Council. But he probably also forgot that the bishop's task is not only to sanctify the People of God (hence the possibility of ordaining priests), but also of teaching and of governing (can. 375; Lumen gentium no. 21). Since the episcopal chair or cathedra is a sign of the bishop's task of governing the Local Church or diocese entrusted to him (cf. Ceremonial of Bishops, no. 42), the bishops of the Econe Consecrations emerged with only one, possibly two, legs of the stool remaining. Without a diocese to govern, without the exercise of his jurisdiction that is intrinsically proper to the episcopal rank, we are left with what the Fathers of the Church called an episcopi vagantes, "wandering bishops." If the bishops of the Econe Consecrations do in fact wear an episcopal ring, it is mere formality: they are married to no diocese. They do not govern a Local Church. Their rings are only a testimony to an absent cathedra. The exercise of their episcopal office is irregular and without stability.

It is precisely on these terms that we could--until the remission of their excommunications--understand the S.S.P.X. as schismatic, because between four bishops, the entire lay community under the care of the S.S.P.X. effectively created a parallel church. As such the Econe Consecrations have been nothing less than an ecclesiological fiasco.

Why, then, in the face of such disturbance of the Church's peace, would the Holy Father withdraw their excommunications? The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, states very clearly that "The Roman Pontiff, as the successor of Peter, is the perpetual and visible principle and foundation of unity of both the bishops and of the faithful" (no. 23). It is the pope's job, essentially, to ensure the Church's unity and oneness; Pope +Benedict XVI, in remitting the excommunications, is simply being obedient to his vocation as Pastor of the universal Church. It would be wrong, I think, to interpret his decision to remit these excommunications as instances of his reactionary tendencies. (There are no reactionary tendencies to speak of.) Rather, seeing that the penalty of excommunication did not achieve its desired end, namely repentance (cf. 1 Tim 1:20), Pope +Benedict XVI now tries the medicine of mercy, not so much for the benefit of the illicitly-consecrated bishops, but the Catholic faithful who have been mislead by the leadership of the S.S.P.X. It is in this context, too, that I suggest we interpret his decision to issue the motu propio Summorum Pontificum: Yes, indeed, the "hermeneutic of continuity," but also the unity and peace of the Church.