FRIDAY POTPOURRI: DON'T YOU FEEL BETTER FOR HAVING GONE THROUGH THIS?

I’ll say this for Vatican documents: they may be intellectually stimulating but they don’t make for fun reading.  Like Ignatius discovered in his reading, we might feel more enlivened for having read them, but at the time of the actual reading it seems a chore.  But they did try to put a grand ending on this document.  One can almost see the “The End” being projected over the final scene.  As it encourages us to keep reading the Bible it states, may “the Word of God speed on in triumph (2 Th 3:1) and the treasure of Revelation entrusted to the Church may more and more fill the hearts of men.”  (Cue swelling music)

 

But it does leave us with this great thought.  Like the Eucharist, the continual exposure to the Scriptures only aids toward fulfilling us more and making us love it more and more.  Eating more and more steak does not make us crave more steak.  We eventually tire of that computer game or hearing a song or listening to the election results analysis.  But there is such a depth to Scripture and the Eucharist that an entire life focused on studying it will only scratch the surface as it yields life unto life.

 

Well, that’s it for this document.  I don’t know what we will do next week.  Guess we’ll see.  Until then, as far as Dei Verbum is concerned this is . . .

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: HISTORY MATTERS

I was reading a book yesterday in which a mother was lamenting the fact that her child had to learn everything from scratch.  Man has been around for a debatable number of millennia but each one must start at scratch again; here’s how to walk, this is the color blue, 2 plus 2 equals 4, it is wrong to hit your sister.

 

To some extent this is true, but each generation hopefully builds on the shoulders of giants.  There are still lessons we must learn on our own, “I don’t care what you say.  He loves me and so I’ll give him my Social Security number.”  But we then can build on the greater experience of humanity.  “Now you understand why you do not hand your Social Security number over to anybody.  Here is how you can get yourself out of this jam and how to prevent it in the future.”

 

Faith is like this too.  The lived experience of 2,000 years of Christianity informs us how Scripture is to be understood.  Every generation does not have to come up with this understanding on its own.  The early Church fathers, the saints, the people of God all guided by the Holy Spirit have provided us with the glasses through which we understand Scripture.  This helps prevent tragedies like this:

 

To assist with this, bishops are charged in paragraph 25 of Dei Verbum to make sure that Scriptures in quality translations are made available, that they use of Scriptures is explained, and that Bible are produced with copious notes to assist the reader in understanding the Scriptures. 

 

Interestingly, they are also charged to create such Bibles even for non-Christians (prudently distributed) with proper notes and fitted to their purposes.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: CAN'T RUN ON EMPTY

Dei Verbum first part of paragraph 25

 

Very often people who have cooled to the faith return when they have children.  This is a good thing and a bad thing.  It’s good in that they return because they see value in the faith and want to pass it on.  It is a bad thing in that they missed years of growing in the faith and won’t have those years of developed relationship and understanding of God to pass on.  You can’t give what you don’t have.

 

In a similar manner, the Council Fathers exhort especially priests, deacons, and catechists to immerse themselves in Sacred Scripture; to draw ever more deeply from the well to nourish the faithful.  You can’t give what you don’t have – and ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ – and what do we have to offer if we don’t know Christ?

 

But clerics and catechists are not the only game in the sites of the Council’s gun.  If someone is under the impression that dust is considered a good, Catholic, protective covering for a Bible, the Fathers wish to relieve them of that misconception.  They “forcefully and specifically exhort all the Christian people . . . to learn ‘the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ.’ . . . Therefore let them go gladly to the sacred text itself.”  They don’t use much more clearer language than that.

 

We are all encouraged to engage the Scriptures at Mass, in Bible studies, and in other forms of prayer and formation.  But in a special way we are encouraged to use Scripture in prayer.  When we pray we speak, when we read the Scriptures, we listen.

 

Read the Bible.  If you think you do not have time, be creative.  Buy a read version for your car ride and play it on the car stereo system.  Keep a Bible open in your bathroom and read one paragraph a day while you brush your teeth.  Have a service send you a verse a day on your computer.  Do something. 

 

This year the Church will be exploring the Gospel of Mark in particular.  Maybe for Lent take a day and read through his Gospel.  Get to know his style, his emphasis, and his personality. 

 

In any event, engage this ancient writing that formed our culture and changed the face of the earth.  (I'm not recommending the book shown to the right - I don;t even know it - just liked the cover.)

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: TRUE FRUIT

Paragraph 24 of Dei Verbum

 

If you want a good plant, start with good soil and good seeds.  If these are not in place all sorts of things could happen.  I once unknowingly used dirt filled with wild morning glory seeds.  As you might well imagine, about the only thing grown was wild morning glories.  Or thinking you’re planting cosmos and finding marigolds.  There’s a shocker.

 

In a similar way we are encouraged to harvest all of our theology, or catechesis, our preaching from the seeds of Scripture planted firmly in Sacred Tradition.  Because it is the Word of God, it constantly leads us to truth and deeper understanding of our God.  (Personal note) When one substitutes or dismisses the Word or takes the Word but dismisses its Tradition, all kinds of strange and new (compared with the 2,000 year old understanding of the faith) start popping up.  One need not look very far to see examples of this.  Step off of the Catholic front lawn and you will find people teaching just about anything you might want to hear in the name of Christianity.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: WHO IS JESUS ANYWAY AND HOW CAN WE FIND OUT?

Dei Verbum paragraph 23

 

 

Do you have Ratzinger’s (aka Pope Benedict, aka Pope Emeritus Benedict) books on the shelf entitled “Jesus of Nazareth” with the intention that “someday I will get around to reading this.”  Well, today take the first volume off of the shelf and read just the forward.  You will see echoes of today’s paragraph ringing loudly and clearly. 

 

Sacred Scripture is a living thing which we are to strive to ever more understand it that it might bring us life.  Like heat from a fire that brings us warmth, Scriptures are designed to bring us insight, freedom of mind, and hope.  But there are just so many ways to screw that up.  In that forward, Benedict rips on some of the ways that exegesis is done today that make Jesus incredibly distant, or nonexistent, or into a remarkable carbon copy of the person who is doing the exegesis. 

 

John Cardinal Newman once said, “To be steeped in history is to cease being Protestant.”  When trying to figure out what Scriptures is saying we must take into account G. K. Chesterton’s Democracy of the Dead.  What have Christians been saying since the beginning of the Church? (and not just what someone tells you it said.)  The Church Fathers of both the east and west give remarkable insight into the early Church and Scripture. 

 

Recently, the local megachurch which is also anti-Catholic (in that they teach false things about the Church and then proceed to tear those falsities down and ask those who correct their misinterpretations of the Church to kindly never come back) asked to come and take pictures of our church building for a talk they were giving.  I am sure it will involve popish comments about how we make things up and that their services are much closer to what first Christians did.  But read the early Church fathers (first, second, third centuries) and you will find us doing the exact same thing that the early Church was doing.  In case you were wondering, I let them come.  Maybe someone will see the pictures, hear something that doesn’t quite jive, and be lead to explore this interesting building and be led to the faith.  Who knows?  Say a prayer.

 

But this is also why exegesis is done “with the mind of the Church.”  It is not because the Church wants to control over everybody but because there is truth and falsity.  One can fall way off of the track and end up leading others into a ditch going nowhere. 

 

Christ is the bridegroom and we are His espoused taught by His Holy Spirit.  The Bridegroom leads His spouse into truth and freedom.  The Magisterium (at its best) makes sure that the fields of exploration are fruitful ones.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: THE PHONE COMPANY USED TO CHAIN PHONE BOOKS TO THE PHONE BOOTH TOO

There was story about the Catholic Church that it used to chain its Bibles in the back of the church so that lay people could not take them away with them and have access to the Bible in their own home.  This is absolutely true.  Although the allegation was that they were doing so in order to keep Sacred Scriptures out of the hands of the faithful and therefore have greater control over the faithful, it was actually because all books were written by hand and were exceedingly expensive, rare, and time consuming to produce.  If you remember bank pens that were chained to the table where you wrote your deposit slip, the bank wasn't trying to keep pens out of the hands of non-bank personnel, they were trying to keep pens available to everybody.

 

In today's paragraph of Dei Verbum (22) the Council Fathers state that the Scriptures ought to be open to all the Christian faithful.  Not as easy a task as you might imagine.  A friend of mine has a parish not too far from here.  Once an exclusively English speaking neighborhood (after being heavily Italian) it then turned Spanish speaking then to be overwhelmed with (I believe) Korean speaking persons.  Now, if you have a few monks writing things out by hand and you are trying to make Scriptures available and it takes a couple of years to produce a book, how do you even get one done before a whole new group speaking a new language takes over the neighborhood assuming you have someone who can translate the Bible into their language in the first place? 

Easier it is today but not easy.  Who speaks Korean?  How do you have Mass and preach?  How do you find money to buy new song books and etc.?  If only we had a universal language.  But even if you do (and we do as reaffirmed by the Vatican II documents) that doesn't mean everybody understands it either.

 

Be that as it may, the Church promotes the translation of the Scriptures into all languages and even encourages, when it is possible and is deemed helpful, to translate them in cooperation with "separated brethren" so that one translation may be read by all Christians.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: SO NOW THAT WE HAVE THEM, WHAT DO WE DO WITH THEM?

This was written earlier but things got so crazy at the parish there was no time simply to post it!  Here is Friday's installment of the next chapter of Dei Verbum.

 

So a priest friend who shall remain anonymous in order to protect his reputation, brought a movie over to watch about two years ago. “Dudes,” sayeth he, “this is in my book as part of the 100 must see movies so it must be good.”

Don’t believe everything you read.

And thusly did we watch, “The Way We Were.”

What an awful film. We just kept saying, “We don’t like these selfish characters. They shouldn’t be together and in any case, we are beyond caring.” Reading the “100 Movies Book” a little more closely it was disclosed that the authors also thought it shouldn’t be on the list but because it was so popular they felt obligated. (Talk about peer pressure at its extreme.)

This summer, in contrast, we went to the Ohio Shakespeare Festival at Stan Hywet Hall. We watched a much older story and were captivated by it. The clothes, dialogue, hairstyles, and popular culture topics were similarly out of date in this one too, but it still enthralled. This is because one speaks to our humanity more universally and the other . . . it just doesn’t.

So it is with Scripture. The Church uses Sacred Scripture because it continues as a “pure and lasting font of spiritual life.” It is the voice of the Holy Spirit sounding again and again and along with Sacred Tradition, presented with the Holy Eucharist to bring life and meaning and freedom to God’s holy people. Our preaching and, in fact, everything about this Christian faith is nourished by our Scriptures. They continue to speak to us because there is something basic about our humanity which is revealed in them. They remain relevant in the same way but only more fundamentally so as does a good Shakespearean play.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: ALL TOGETHER NOW

Dei Verbum paragraph 20

 

So the last short paragraph in this section I really should have included last week but . . . but I didn’t.  It simply rounds out the whole section.  The whole thing was a lot of writing to say that all of Scripture is important.  Supreme are the Gospels, the other New Testament writings are important in that they shore up and amplify the Gospels, and the Old Testament is indispensible as it enlightens us about God’s plan which reaches fulfillment in Christ.

 

You might think, “Well, duh.”  That may be because you are more Catholic than you think.  This is not the case for everybody in the world.  Have you ever gone to a Protestant service and it is obvious that the Gospel carries no different weight than another New Testament reading?  I certainly have.  And there are those who discount the Old Testament as . . . well . . . old.  And what does one do with house guests and fish when they become old?  They throw them out (or ignore them until someone else does.)  This is, of course, heresy.  (Throwing out the Old Testament, not throwing out fish which is a good thing.)

 

It is a very large Church.  More than half of all Christians on the face of the earth are Catholic.  (Hard to believe living the U.S. no?)  We live in varying places with varying pressures.  It is one thing to be a Catholic in Akron, Oh.  It is another think to be a Catholic in China or Bagdad.  Think of the difference between going to a truly Catholic college and one that likes to throw around the Catholic name but is normally Catholic at best.  The forces of what is floating around in the culture can influence what you believe about – Scripture for example.

 

Realizing this, the fathers of the council put this (and other) teachings together so there would be no ambiguity.  (The only problem being now one has to read them.  And they throw in a bunch of flowery and thick clarifying writing, necessary I understand, which makes it time consuming to peruse - my version of all of the documents having over 1,000 pages of tiny writing.)  Of course, I do not create such padding of my writing to make it appear that I have something to say.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: THE RAIN IN SPAINLY IS SPOKEN VERY PLAINLY

Yesterday we had a new student picnic for families that are coming to St. Sebastian Parish School.  I was asked to say a few words and as part of that something similar to this was said, “This is Catholic school and at the center of that is Jesus Christ.  As such it is essential that you bring your kids to Mass on Sunday.”  After I asked a teacher if it seemed too harsh and the teacher responded, “No.  It was plain.  I like plain, clear speaking.”

 

Paragraph 19 is the Church speaking clearly and plainly concerning what she believes about the four Gospels.  She “unhesitatingly affirms” that what they faithfully relay to us what Jesus said and taught concerning our salvation until the day of His ascension.  After His ascension, what is written is true but is a further reflection on what they witnessed, learned, and contemplated in the Holy Spirit.  The purpose of their writing is that we might know truth.

 

This is not mentioned specifically but it points toward the development of the Bible also.  Firstly all these things had to be witnessed.  There are obviously things in Scripture that took place after Jesus ascended.  Hence Jesus did not hand the Church a completed Bible.  The disciples then went about teaching and preaching.  Only then did they write anything down and they were not all together when they wrote.  In fact, it would be centuries before an official Bible took form as the writings are brought together, used, studied, debated, with the Catholic Church, relying on sacred Tradition, declaring a definitive version of the Bible, which remained in place until Martin Luther.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: NUMBER ONE AMONG NUMBER ONES

Among super important things, there are some things that are super-duper important.

 

There are four painting hanging in the rectory.  They are not great paintings.  They are probably mass produced by the square inch type paintings.  They are also not in tip top shape.  In fact, they were slated to be burned.  As parishes were closed in the diocese these paintings ended up in a warehouse and they were deemed so damaged as to be worthless.  Ever the good Slovenian I said, “I’ll take them and hang them in my dining room where it is so dark nobody will notice they are not in great shape.”

Score!  And so there they hang; one painting each of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are in the dining room and John, after whom I was named, hangs in my office across the hall.  The synoptic are hanging out together eating and John is doing his own thing in exile.  Seems fitting somehow. 

 

If you haven’t figured it out by now, the Vatican II documents want to hold up the inspiration and importance of all the Scriptures, Old as well as New.  (Kind of ironic to call something 2000 years old new isn’t it?)  But as important as all of Scripture is, the four Gospels have place of pride, are the crowning jewel, are the heart of it all, for in them those who lived with Christ, who were charged by him to preach, did then, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, write those things down.  (Jesus did not hand the disciples a book before His ascension into heaven.)  By this they are our primary source of knowledge of the life and teaching of our Savior.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: TO POST OR NOT TO POST? POST? WHAT IS POST?

We are in a new chapter of Dei Verbum called “The New Testament”.  What follows are some of my thoughts and then a look at paragraph 17.

 

Some events last forever.  Mount Sinai has been remembered and celebrated for millennia but who, other than historians and those who live in Texas, really remembers and celebrates the Alamo?  It is the same thing with writing.  The stories of Shakespeare are still in our cultural memory but how many plays, books, and poems that were once celebrated and predicted to be icons of our culture were never to be heard of again?

 

Shakespearean lines permeate our sub consciousness.  Some lines invoke certain plays everyone knows.  “To be or not be?  That is the question.”  So many of his phrases are so much a part of our everyday language we do not even know we owe Shakespeare for them:

 

Wild goose chase

Too much of a good thing

Mum’s the word

 

(Just to name a few)

 

It is much the same with Scripture.  Certain lines evoke scenes from the life of Christ.  “Truth?  What is truth?”  And our language is so permeated with Biblical references that even those who don’t know Christ use them.  For example:

 

A broken heart

A drop in the bucket

A sign of the times

A thorn in the side

 

The New Testament is a seminal work.  (I bet God is glad I approve.)   It changed everything.  It took culture in an entirely new direction.  Shakespeare named our culture well, Scripture formed it.  For those “with ears to hear” it is the revelation of things once hidden.  It is unveiling of who God is though his life, death, and resurrection, His ascension and sending of His Holy Spirit to complete His work of drawing all people together into unity and pointing them toward their heavenly Father. 

 

This was entirely novel.  Things were revealed that were never known before.  We have the opportunity to know truths that were not able to be known by those before this time nor by those whose hearts are not open to it.  “The writings of the New Testament stand as a perpetual and divine witness to these realities.”

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: BOTH EYES WIDE OPEN

Dei Verbum paragraph 16

 

Once, when I was a kid, a person joined our parish with the declaration, “I am here to save the parish!”  It was seen by some that we had to stop being who we were and be made in some new model of the 1970s.  The music had to change.  The way Mass was celebrated had to change.  The was CCD (now PSR) was taught had to change.  And in many ways they were correct.  In one crucial way they were wrong.  We couldn’t stop being who we were.  It should have been a fulfillment of who we were.  Instead, it appeared to be a mentality of “old is bad” and “new is good.”  It was not a development of who we were, it was an instant  and complete makeover.

 

The advent of the New Testament paid for with the Blood of Christ is not an inhalation of the Old Testament, it is a fulfillment.  The Old Testament is a building up to the NT and something that helps us understand it better.  Conversely the NT helps us understand the OT better by enlightening us further as to what God was trying to say through the law and prophets.  With both lenses of the binoculars we see better.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?

Dei Verbum paragraph 15

 

What other founder of a religion was foretold by prophets?  It is a common theme of stories now, in everything from Star Wars to Game of Thrones, but where historically has it happened?  With Jesus Christ.  (There are some who believe the prophet Mohamed was thusly foretold, but not without controversy.)  The place we look to see Jesus’ birth and reign, of course, is the Old Testament.  It is one of the reasons the Old Testament is so important for us.  Though the writings may contain matters that are “imperfect and provisional” for the Christian, they “never-the-less show us divine and authentic teaching.”  It is like understanding how your parents grew up before they met, married, moved, and had kids.  It explains a lot!  Therefore we are to hold dear these writings with their sublime teachings on God, wisdom, human life, as well as its “wonderful treasury of prayers.”  But so too is the mystery of our redemption hidden.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: TO KNOW WHO WE ARE

HAPPY 4^TH of JULY TOMORROW

 

There will be no post tomorrow so Friday’s post is being moved to today.  We move into a new section of Dei Verbum entitled, “The Old Testament” in paragraph 14.

 

There has been several skirmishes over the past few decades about the politically correct way to refer to Scared Scripture before the advent of Christ.  “Old Testament” was seen as divisive and dismissive as in, “What do you do with old newspapers?  Throw them out.”  So also there was introduced the term “common era” and “before the common era” or CE and BCE.  Then there were the titles “Hebrew Scriptures” and “Christian Scriptures.”  All of them have their problems and not being one who likes to exchange problems simply to get a different set of problems, I stick with Old and New.

 

That being said, one of the problems with both “Old” and “Hebrew” is that they can be misleading.  To the uniformed they can make the first part of Sacred Scripture seem irrelevant to Christians, which is, in fact, a heresy.  They are extremely important to the Christian Church.  It is our heritage and through it we understand the New Testament better.

 

Since the fall of Adam and Eve, there had been a steady distancing between God and man.  God had to work hard to breach that gap.  So, as at the parish, when we want to start a new program we often begin with a select group of people on which to build something, God chooses a people and then sets out to form them into His family through which He will eventually capture the world.  These Old Testament Scriptures is God courting humanity (not without difficulties, breakups, reunitings, tears, and joy – the whole 9 yards) until the wedding feast of the Lamb.  If we fully want to understand ourselves, we must know our history for, “whatever was writing in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” (Rom 15:4)

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: MY WORD!

Dei Verbum paragraph 13

 

One of my university classes (before seminary) was a class in which we were told we would learn how to communicate with anybody in the world.  That sounds intriguing does it not?  Although some of the class was extremely interesting, one of the first days when we were learning how to ask people around the globe where the bathroom was by placing our hands in the afflicted area and crouching with a pained expression on our faces, and the standing up with our arms out, palms up, indicating, “Where?” I remember thinking, “If my father ever found out how much money I paid to learn this he would go through the roof.”

 

But communication is important and how does one communicate with one who does not speak the same language?  What if you are God and want to speak to men?  What if you want them to write something down?  Yet God finds ways to get His message to us.  His words become human words in the Scriptures just as His Son took on flesh and became man.  They are, in every way, His words but they are in our language just as the Son is in every way THE Son from all eternity, but He took on a human nature and entered our world physically so that we could see Him, talk with Him, hear Him, relate to Him, be healed by Him, and know Him.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: FREEZE FRAME

Dei Verbum paragraph 12

 

A mother, seeing her son make an ugly face at one of his friends pulled him aside and said, “Son, I want to tell you a story about a little boy who always made faces like the one you made.  One day his face froze that way and he was looked on as ugly by everybody.  Do you understand what I am trying to tell you?”

 

The little boy thought about it for a moment and said, “Okay, I’ll go play with him for a while if he doesn’t have any friends because of his face.”

 

Writings, stories, and the like are subject to interpretation and occasionally we can divine the wrong message; the author intends one thing, the listener receives another.  (Just ask a priest how often that happens with his homilies.)  Scripture is no less susceptible to this.  Though it is God speaking to us, He is speaking to us through human authors.  If we want to understand what Scripture is really saying we must first determine the medium that the author is using.  The Bible is not a book.  It is a collection of books – a small library containing books on poetry, history, stories, parables, music, and the whole lot.  A parable cannot be read in the same way that a book on history is read.  And sometimes history was recorded in a different (but no less accurate way) than modern history is recorded.

 

That being said, even though the Bible is many books, there must be unity among them.  The message must be consistent from beginning to end.  And interpretation of the Scripture (held firmly in check by Sacred Tradition among Catholics) must be consistent from first century to last.  This is where the Church plays a vital role in interpreting Scripture.  And by “Church” we do not mean three old men in Rome as the common fancy makes it out to be.  Chesterton would refer to it as the democracy of the dead.  It is the understood experience of the faith beginning with Apostles, the early Church Fathers, the lived faith of 2,000 years of Catholics, and how Catholics live the faith around the world.  It will not be the case that Holy Spirit will suddenly tell the pope that it’s now Okay to have same sex marriage or that baptism should only be performed on adults.  That is not the experience of the Church going back 2,000 years.  To be able to do that as many Churches do, would be to say what was truth in 1592 is not true in 2004.  It would be just as logical to say what is true at 2:00PM on Wednesday is not true on Thursday at 6:24AM.  Truth is either truth or it is not.  Modern culture says truth is subjective.  (But then is it truth?)  The Catholic Church holds that truth is always truth and it is universal (or it is not truth.)

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

Dei Verbum Chapter III paragraph 11

 

Have you ever been in a situation to give someone advice and in the middle of it came up with some brilliant insight after which you thought, “Where the get out did THAT come from?”  Maybe it was what God wanted that person to hear and you were the instrument.

 

In a somewhat similar way (only much more dramatically so) we affirm that, although humans put hand to pen and paper and went through the action of doing the actual writing, it was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that caused to be written what was written as Scripture.  Not so much that they were simply enlightened but that the Holy Spirit flowed through them and on to the paper so to speak far beyond simply being a muse.  Therefore we emphatically state that the author of the Scriptures was ultimately God Who caused to be written what is needed, no more and no less.

 

As such we recognize the entire canon of Scripture which was brought together (ironically for Protestants) by the Catholic Church using Sacred Tradition.  There was no single canon of the Old Testament at the time of Jesus.  The Christian Old Testament canon came to form in the fourth century and the New Testament canon after that.  It remains unchanged in the Catholic Church to this day though 500 years ago certain books were removed from the Old Testament by Martin Luther for Protestant Catholics.  It should also be noted that he wished to remove some of the New Testament books also (such as James) but was persuaded against such action.

 

Interestingly there are some things in your Bible that are NOT considered inspired.  Some of the more obvious ones are the verse numbers and such.  There are other things, however, that are less obvious.  For example, the titles of the books are not necessarily inspired.  Who the authors are of the Gospels or the Acts of the Apostles is not inspired and in some circles debated.  In another twist of irony, it is Catholic Tradition that states the actual authors of the Gospels to be Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

 

To be steeped in history is to cease being Protestant.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: IS THIS TITLE TRUE OR MERELY CLEVER?

Dei Verbum paragraph 10

 

What do you say when someone says that they no longer believe in the doctrines of the Church?  How do you respond when someone says that they are Catholic but they don’t believe in what “those bishops” say? 

 

Gee, that’s too bad?

 

Good for thinking for yourself?

 

The question is, “What are doctrines anyway?”  They are not the rules that club leaders get to make.  They are the result of two millennia of the study of Scripture and Tradition.  The magisterium may make binding pronouncements that are binding on the whole Church, but they may make up nothing.  They are at the service of, they are the slaves of Scripture and Tradition.  They have a limited set of tools and may make a limited set of products (doctrines.)  In this, though they may get all dressed up in fancy clothes and stand in the sanctuary, they are truly servants to the greater Church.  They may (in their official capacity) only pass on truth to those willing to listen.

 

Granted, they are sometimes better at stating it than at others, but it is their job as servant leaders.

 

So here’s how it works:  We have Sacred Scripture.  We have Sacred Tradition.  These two pillars support the Church.  They inform, strengthen, and guide each other.  They are the jewels from which crowns are woven.  They began to take clearer shape in the first centuries of the Church through the practice and teachings of the Church Fathers.  Nothing that Scripture and Tradition has taught us and held as truth may change.  What was taught definitively in the year 200 is still taught in the year 2000.  Over the course of centuries these truths may be defined more clearly, but they may never contradict what went before.  As Chesterton was fond of pointing out, if we say that truth changes, that what was true in the Middle Ages is not true today, we might as well say what is true today may not be true on Tuesday next at 3:15PM. 

 

So doctrine is a result of the study of that which is true.  For Catholics, doctrine is truth defined.  It is in this Truth that bishop, priest, deacon, religious, and lay persons are united.  That is the hallmark of Catholic Christianity and should not be discarded casually.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: SACRED AMNESIA

The Internet being down in the rectory was the only damage we sustained from the storms the past week.  That prevented a post (and a lot of work getting done) yesterday.

 

Dei Verbum paragraph 9

 

Scripture says that you must be baptized.

 

But what does baptism mean?  Who may be baptized?  At what age does it occur?  Who may do it?  How is it done?  Can it be re-done? 

 

The answers to these questions are not necessarily found in Scripture.  One could extrapolate some answers from Scripture and in fact many do and proclaim what they have come up with as the Truth of Scripture.  Look at the tens of thousands of Protestant denominations that exist; each following the Bible and each certain it holds the truth to these questions as is clearly stated in Scripture and told to them under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  So we have churches that say baptism is regenerative and others simply symbolic, it is only for adults or infants may be admitted, anyone may do it or only clergy, using a Trinitarian formula or only in the name of Jesus, rebaptizing or having the idea of once baptized always baptized.  The whole Christian Church held together in its teaching would look like a very frayed rope, the ends splaying out like a frozen explosion.

 

How does a Church keep on track?  For the Catholic Church it is not only Scripture but also Tradition.  (We’ve talked about Tradition before – this is not the “we always have Christmas trees at Christmas” kind of tradition but the teachings of Christ that comes down to us from the Apostles through the ages to this day.  It is the teachings of Christ and the practice of the early Church in the first centuries of Christianity.)  So the question is asked, “Should the Church baptize infants?  We look and see that there is no moratorium on this in Scripture and in fact it says to go out and baptize all nations and that entire households were baptized.  Secondly we look at the practice of the Church in the first, second, and third centuries and find that they indeed baptized infants.  And thus Tradition acts as a corrective to our interpretation of Sacred Scripture and Scripture acts as a corrective to our understanding of Sacred Tradition.  They are two rails on a track that keep us in the right direction. 

 

In an age when we see most Churches changing their teachings at a dizzying pace to keep up with culture, we understand more than ever the necessity of Sacred Tradition to keep us firmly planted.  Go back 100 years and most Churches would be virtually unrecognizable to what they teach today.  Go back 2,000 years and the teachings of the Catholic Church remain the same.  That is the gift of Sacred Tradition.

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: JESUS LOVES ME THIS I KNOW CUZ THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO

Dei Verbum Paragraph 8

 

It seems the Episcopal Church is going through what the Catholic Church did a couple of decades ago.  Speaking with broad strokes, we stopped teaching rules and dogma and focused on “Jesus loves you,” which is great, but knowing Jesus loves you and knowing what that means are two different things.  We need both or we run into trouble.

 

The latest marketing slogan from the Episcopal Church that is found on signs, bumper stickers, and marquees is, “God loves you.  No exceptions.”  Which, once again, is great.  As Catholics we thoroughly believe this.  God cannot not love you or He wouldn’t be the source of all love.  But what the bumper sticker doesn’t say is, “And that love requires something of you.”

 

That something is expressed in the teachings handed on to the Apostles by Jesus.  Those teachings, Paul stresses, given by word of mouth (Tradition) or by letter (2 Th. 2:15), are to be jealously guarded and fought for.  This revelation of God and His will are handed down in Scripture and Tradition and is safeguarded by the Church in its entirety (including you) for every generation.

 

This is aided and spearheaded by the Holy Spirit Who, though there will be no new revelation, continues to lead the Church into all truth by allowing her to fall more deeply into the truths already revealed to her.  (Think of the teachings of St. John Paul II on the Theology of the Body.  Everything he taught us was already there, but he brought it together and explained it in a new and exciting way.)  Thus the Father continues to speak to the bride of His only begotten Son and through her to the world.