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: 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: 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: 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: 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.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

“There’s always a king somewhere.”

Or so says Michner in his book, “The Source.”

I tend to agree with him.  No matter how democratic a democratic nation or organization might be, there is a person or small group of persons with undue influence on how things go.  There is a de facto person in charge.  Even if it is simply by natural selection there is that person that people will naturally turn toward as leader even if that leader is charged with making sure the democratic nature is upheld. 

I would also augment Michner’s statement to say, “There is always a pope.”  We could extend it further and say, “there is always a Tradition.”  And it seems the more a church fights against popes and tradition, the more they entrench the very ideas they wish to deny.

Take, for example, a typical non-denominational church where the very thought of having a leader acting as a universal vicar for Christ is taught as an abhorrent notion.  Where does that very notion come from?  The pastor of the church – perhaps in consultation with some form of elders.  Sounds very much like a pope in consultation with his cardinals.  There is an established hierarchy (even if there is a strong effort to deny and hide the fact) but the belief system is not left to chance.  There is a clear message with an authoritative leader.

“Ahhh,” a dissenter from this thought might say, “but that pastor or that church board is not speaking on its own but, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is only speaking the unadulterated truth of the Gospel and not adding anything to it.”  (Sola Scriptura as it is known.)  This is actually a very good retort and one that could be taken seriously if those who subscribed to such a belief did not splinter into thousands and thousands of churches on just about every point in the Bible. 

Take this example:  Baptism.  Some say that it is necessary for salvation, others do not.  Some say that it transforms who we are, others see it as a rite of passage.  Some see it as permanent, some do not.  Some see at as an assurance of heaven, some do not.  Some understand the Trinitarian formula much as the Catholic Church does, some are far from it.  If Scripture is so very clear so that all one has to do is read it and it will give you the exact instructions on what to do to be admitted into heaven, how on earth could there be so many interpretations of what it says?

And how do people of any given denomination (or so called non-denominations) know what interpretation to follow.  There is only one answer:  It is their Tradition – the very unbiblical interpretation of what they are reading and pass on from one believer to the next.  It may be voted on by a conference, a congregation, held in a writing of a founder, interpreted by a pastor, history book, or decided upon by grandma at the dining room table and passed on to her family but in any event it is a Tradition on how to interpret the Scripture being read.  (Even which version of Scripture to read is a Tradition.  The accumulation of the Bible itself is a result of Tradition.)

Every church you pass on the way to Mass has some form of pope and exercises some form of Tradition.  It is just much more transparent at your Catholic parish.

"THIS SAYING IS HARD. WHO CAN ACCEPT IT?"

As a child I asked the question, “Would I have believed in Jesus and followed Him if I were alive when He was walking the earth?” It was a serious concern for me – my personality being one of preservation rather than innovation. Would I have thought, “Here comes a guy who is just going to ruin everything!”

One day I heard a homily in which a priest tried to tackle this question. The basic gist of his proposal was that if you believe in Jesus now, you probably would have then. That eased my young conscience at the time but I knew it was a temporary fix - I didn’t entirely buy it.

More recently this thought came to mind. It is not a sure fire answer either but might give the contemplator something on which to chew. The idea developed from reading the Bread of Life discourse in the Gospel of John. Jesus is surrounded by all of His disciples (more than just the famous twelve) and He teaches rather emphatically, in fact repeats the teaching more than any other teaching in one spot in all of the Bible, that He is the Bread of Life and that we must eat His Body and drink His Blood. “If you do not eat my Body and drink my Blood, you do not have life within you.”

As a result of this many of His disciples left Him and returned to their former way of life. It was not that they did not understand what He was teaching it was, rather, that they understood and did not like it. So they left and He let them go only to turn to Peter not to correct any misperceptions (there were none) but to ask, “Are you going to leave me too?”

So here is the question to contemplate; Do you accept His teachings now? Do you at least assent to controversial, unpopular, and countercultural teachings of His Church? Some of these topics include contraception, Mass on Sunday, confession, Sex outside of marriage. . .

Can we say, “I believe in Jesus but not the teachings of His Church?” Does that make sense? If written off as a Church in error can you prove it through Scripture, Tradition, the teaching of the Church Fathers, and the 2,000 year held beliefs of His Church? Are these “sayings” too hard, “Who can believe them?” Or would you say like Peter, “Lord, where would we go? You have the words of everlasting life.”

I NEVER SAID YOU STOLE MONEY

A large portion of the Christian world believes in the theory of “Bible Alone” or Sola Scriptura. The idea in the most basic of terms is that the Bible is sort of a “How To” manual and that all that one needs to do is read the Bible (under the influence of the Holy Spirit) and that one will come to know truth. In my book the 500 year experiment has failed. The most glaring evidence for this is that there are thousands of Protestant denominations, many at odds with opposing positions on key tenants of the faith, but all claiming to be lead by the Holy Spirit and containing all truth.

There are many reasons for this but here is one given by a priest recently.

Interpret this sentence: “I never said you stole money.”

What did this sentence mean to you?

Read this sentence again out loud in with the following emphasis added:

I never said you stole money.
I never said you stole money.
I never said you stole money.
I never said you stole money.
I never said you stole money.
I never said you stole money.

Each reading completely changes the meaning of the text. What did the author have in mind when he wrote it? Well, it is helpful to have an authority that states “this is what he meant.” This is like the “international prototype of the kilogram; a cylindrical chunk of platinum-iradium kept in a safe at Sevres in France” reported today in the Plain Dealer. This chunk of metal is designed to always bring us back to the exact measurement of what a kilogram is should we go astray.

Tradition is our prototype of interpretation of Sacred Scripture. What was true today was true yesterday and will be true tomorrow. Truth cannot be determined by popular vote or current trends in our culture. The Holy Spirit cannot say one thing one day, (birth control is a sin) and something else the next (abortion is a right.)

Today the Catholic Church stands virtually alone in the teaching that was taught by St. Peter, by St. Sebastian, by St. Francis, by the Church Fathers, by Saint Scholastica, by Pope John Paul II, by (hopefully) your parish priest, and will be taught by your children. Tradition stands as a great gift and not a burden. It keeps us on track.

SOMETHING TO "MULLEN" OVER

The Catholic Church can be seen by many, including members from within her walls, as being antiquated and discriminatory in its view that the ordained priesthood should be reserved to men. I wonder how many people have left their home in the Catholic Church for another denomination based in large part on this topic.

Sunday night St. Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in the Diocese of Cleveland held their annual Mullen Lecture in which Missionary of the Blessed Sacrament Sister Sara Butler, a member of the Vatican’s International Theological Commission, discussed “The Ordination of Women and the Witness of Tradition.” Formally a strong believer in the ordination of women, Sr. Butler has come not only to accept but also to believe in the Church’s teaching that the ordained priesthood should be reserved to men and that the Church has no authority to do otherwise. There is not enough room here to report everything that she said, but allow me to give the basic argument.

In the Old Testament there is no evidence of women offering sacrifices as a mandate from God. There is a similar lack in the New Testament. Even Mary was not chosen for the priesthood for whom it would have been most fitting. Of course, priesthood is not a reward, and so we take this a step further in noting that Jesus had among his personal companions and disciples many women and he did not pick from them either. In His freedom to choose as He desired He reserved this parituclar office to men and it was not from lack of candidates who were female, worthy, and capable. So the question becomes if the quality of being male in representing Christ is essential to state of the priesthood (as opposed to looking at the mere function of the priesthood.) Is it an indispensable factor such a water being necessary for baptism or bread and wine being needed for the Eucharist? It is the constant and universal Tradition of the Church that this is so. No women were chosen to replace the apostles as bishops or priests and neither has it occurred in the history of the Church that such a thing has happened and been sanctioned. When it did happen it was immediately and universally condemned as was with the case of the two women who were “ordained to the Catholic priesthood” this past Sunday. We actually do not recognize anything as actually having taken place. The two retain the same status they had as before the ordination.

Now, the talk did not touch on the “why” of the question, just the “that”. And it is the case that the Church has consistently believed and taught that it has no authority to do differently in this regard and the strongest argument comes from that Tradition. Scripture alone cannot completely support a male only priesthood (which might show why there is such a difference in the Protestant theology.) Sacred Tradition, which testifies to the unyielding witness to this belief, plays a fundamental role and cannot be ignored in Catholic theology. All arguments to the contrary, and there are some very good arguments, will ultimately come to rest up against this obstacle and it would be dangerous to ignore the importance of Tradition for Catholics as it is one of the fundamental pillars of the Church. Destroying the pillar in this instance risks destroying it in all instances.

In the end we see the male priesthood as being instituted by Christ and that we have maintained His will from Apostolic times on, which has been testified to by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church, by Scripture, and upheld consistently by the magisterium.

If you would like to read more on the topic, you might want to pick up Sr. Butler’s book, “The Catholic Priesthood and the Ordination of Women.”