Irish,Catholic and Dangerous

The Transformative Power Of Grace

2011-07-25T17:33:00.000-05:00

“Through their mother's mediation, the sons of Zebedee press Christ as follows in the presence of their fellow apostles: ‘Command that we may sit, one at your right side and one at your left’ (cf. Mk 10,35f.)... Christ hastens to free them from their illusions, telling them they must be prepared to suffer insults, persecutions, even death. ‘You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I shall drink?’ Let no one be surprised to see the apostles displaying such imperfect dispositions. Wait until the mystery of the cross has been fulfilled and the strength of the Holy Spirit given to them. If you want to see the strength of their souls, take a look at them later on and you will see them to be above all human weakness. Christ does not conceal their pettiness so you will be able to see what they become later on by the power of the grace that will transform them... Later on you will see this same John, who here approached Christ with the petition, gave precedence always to Saint Peter... James, however, did not live long after. From the beginning he was moved with great zeal. He gave up all earthly interests and attained such an inexpressible degree of excellence that from among the apostles he was killed the first (Acts 12,2).”

-St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew

Sapientis Est Ordinare

2011-07-17T14:00:00.000-05:00

“According to the philosophical acceptation of the word stultitia, namely, the opposite of wisdom, there is nothing more foolish than Materialism or Mechanicism. …If, therefore, there were no intelligent designer directing the world, the order and intelligibility existing in things, which science reveals to us, would be the effect of an unintelligible cause, and, in addition to this, our own intelligence would originate from a blind and unintelligent cause, and again we should have to say that the greater comes from the less, which is absurd.”

-Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and HisNature, vol 1.

Thoughts About Father Corapi

2011-07-07T17:23:00.002-05:00

I have refused to comment on the whole Fr. Corapi situation on this blog. However, with the release of the statement by Corapi’s order, TheSociety of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity, and Corapi’s response to it today, I have a few thoughts that I would like to share.

1)To all appearances it seems that Corapi is indeed guilty of the accusations against him. I find it hard to believe that SOLT would make public the specific charges unless they had absolute certainty they were true.

2) A friend pointed out to me when Corapi made his announcement that he was resigning from active ministry as a priest and becoming “The Black Sheepdog”, that it was very revealing that he did not show his face in the video. He said that this is something guilty people (and poker players who are bluffing) do, because they do not want anyone to read their face. I find it very disheartening that he still has not shown his face publicly.

3) With SOLT’s affirmation that the accusations against him were true, I was hoping that Corapi would come out today and admit that he failed and ask for forgiveness (as Fr. Thomas Euteneuer did). That would have mitigated the deceit that has occurred in his continuing to deny the allegations and leading the faithful astray with his new branding of “The Black Sheepdog.” Alas, that did not happen. In his statement today he continues to deny any wrong doing. Yet, he glaringly did not respond to all of SOLT’s statement. If he is indeed guilty, as it appears, the continual deceit just makes everything worse. People want to forgive him. But they cannot do that when he claims to have nothing to be forgiven of.

4) Regardless of whether Corapi is innocent or not, SOLT has ordered him, under obedience, to return to the order:

SOLT has contemporaneously with the issuance of this press release directed Fr. John Corapi, under obedience, to return home to the Society’s regional office and take up residence there. It has also ordered him, again under obedience, to dismiss the lawsuit he has filed against his accuser.

Yet, Corapi has refused to do this in direct violation of his vow of obedience. This is not good. If he is guilty he should humble himself and return to his order in obedience. My respect for him would be restored, if in part, if he exhibited fortitude in doing so. If he is innocent, he should also humble himself and return to his order. If he is innocent, exercising obedience and returning would help to build virtue. He should do what is right in the eyes of God, not of men. Pride goes before the Fall, but unfortunately it often remains after the Fall as well. I pray that Corapi would take to heart the words of St. Josemaria Escriva: "If obedience does not give you peace, it is because you are proud."

5) These revelations are very sad. Corapi was very encouraging for me to watch when I first entered the Church five years ago. His fall and continual denial deeply saddens me and it is a reminder that we need especially to pray for all bishops, priests, and deacons because no one is exempt from temptation.

Please say a Hail Mary for Fr. Corapi and all priests, that they would exercise the virtues of humility and obedience.

Not Yet And Already

2011-06-26T09:41:00.000-05:00

“Throughout the New Testament the contrast is emphasized between our present and our final condition. Yet at the same time it is made equally clear that the powers of the age to come are already working in us. We are on the journey, it is true, but even now our citizenship is in heaven; we know only in part, but nevertheless we know; we see in a mirror, darkly, but nevertheless we see; our future state is not yet manifest, yet we are children of God. And although we are on the journey and not yet in the fatherland, we are nevertheless no more strangers and sojourners, but fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God. We have here no abiding city and we seek the city which is to come; yet we have already come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and God has made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

E.L. Mascall, Grace and Glory

My First Published Article

2011-05-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

This month's issue (June/July 2011) of Homiletic & Pastoral Review contains my first ever published article! It is on the development of the dogma of papal infallibility in light of J.H. Newman's seven notes for authentic doctrinal development.

If you don't already have a subscription to Homiletic & Pastoral Review, you should! I've been a subscriber for about five years now and haven't been disappointed by it once. I am quite pleased to have my first article in this wonderful magazine!

We Interrupt This Apocalypse To Bring You Breaking News...

2011-05-24T15:42:00.003-05:00

….there has been a miscalculation.

It seems that some people just don’t know when to give up! After his second failed prophecy of the unbiblical ‘Rapture’, Harold Camping has issued a new prophecy: The world will end on Oct. 21! The AP reports with my comments in bold, below.

By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press Garance Burke, Associated Press – Tue May 24, 3:56 am ET

( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110524/ap_on_re_us/us_apocalypse_saturday )

OAKLAND, Calif. – A California preacher who foretold of the world's end only to see the appointed day pass with no extraordinarily cataclysmic event has revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21.

A prophet in Scripture is one who speaks on behalf of God. In the Old Testament, the way you knew that a man was a false prophet was if his prophecy came true or not. Simple enough. If the prophecy happens, you have legitimate prophet. If no, then you have a liar and deceiver and the penalty for false prophecy was death by stoning (See Deut. 18:20-22).

Harold Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven Saturday before catastrophe struck the planet, apologized Monday evening for not having the dates "worked out as accurately as I could have."

If someone has a true prophecy there would be no mistakes and ‘miscalculations’! If it is from God, it will be completely accurate. Could you imagine Elijah challenging the priests of Baal, dousing the altar with water, calling down fire….and then nothing happening? He wouldn’t be able to say, “Oh! Silly me. I got my calculations wrong. Could you guys come back in five months from now?”

And how does Camping know that he is one of the 200 million?

He spoke to the media at the Oakland headquarters of his Family Radio International, which spent millions of dollars_ some of it from donations made by followers — on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the Judgment Day message.

It was not the first time Camping was forced to explain when his prediction didn't come to pass. The 89-year-old retired civil engineer also prophesied the Apocalypse would come in 1994, but said later that didn't happen then because of a mathematical error.

You would think people would have seen him for the fraud he is the first time! But to be fooled again is just plain foolish. If people go along with him the third time, they deserve what’s coming to them. In the immortal words of George W. Bush:

There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again.

Through chatting with a friend over what he acknowledged was a very difficult weekend, it dawned on him that instead of the biblical Rapture in which the faithful would be swept up to the heavens, May 21 had instead been a "spiritual" Judgment Day, which places the entire world under Christ's judgment, he said.

In other words: “While talking with a friend to try and figure out how I don’t get tarred and feathered, I decided to give May 21 a spiritual twist to it.”

The globe will be completely destroyed in five months, he said, when the apocalypse comes. But because God's judgment and salvation were completed on Saturday, there's no point in continuing to warn people about it, so his network will now just play Christian music and programs until the final end on Oct. 21.

"We've always said May 21 was the day, but we didn't understand altogether the spiritual meaning," he said. "The fact is there is only one kind of people who will ascend into heaven ... if God has saved them they're going to be caught up."

So…anyone born after 6pm on May 21, 2011 will not be saved? Gee, that’s swell!

Josh Ocasion, who works the teleprompter during Camping's live broadcasts in the group's threadbare studio sandwiched between an auto shop and a palm reader's business, said he enjoyed the production work but never fully believed the May 21 prophecy would come true.

How fitting that his studio is between an auto shop and a palm reader: two professions which are known for lying to people and swindling them out of their money!

"I thought he would show some more human decency in admitting he made a mistake," he said Monday. "We didn't really see that."

Exactly! Camping has no decency at all. People have spent their entire life savings and quit their jobs based on a fraud and all he can say is that his math was wrong.

Follower Jeff Hopkins said he spent a good deal of his own retirement savings on gas money to power his car so people would see its ominous lighted sign showcasing Camping's May 21 warning. As the appointed day drew nearer, Hopkins started making the 100-mile round trip from Long Island to New York City twice a day, spending at least $15 on gas each trip.

"I've been mocked and scoffed and cursed at and I've been through a lot with this lighted sign on top of my car," said Hopkins, 52, a former television producer who lives in Great River, NY. "I was doing what I've been instructed to do through the Bible, but now I've been stymied. It's like getting slapped in the face."

I don’t remember the Bible instructing anyone to put a lighted sign on top of their car (or camel) and claim to know when the end of the world is. I’ll have to go back and look for that.

Camping's hands shook slightly as he pinned his microphone to his lapel, and as he clutched a worn Bible he spoke in a quivery monotone about some listeners' earthly concerns after giving away possessions in expectation of the Rapture.

Family Radio would never tell anyone what they should do with their belongings, and those who had fewer would cope, Camping said.

But if you want to donate your entire life savings to Family Radio, Camping sure as heck won’t stop ya! I think the IRS needs to do an audit on this guy.

"We're not in the business of financial advice," he said. "We're in the business of telling people there's someone who you can maybe talk to, maybe pray to, and that's God."

But he also said that he wouldn't give away all his possessions ahead of Oct 21.

AND HERE IT IS, FOLKS! Camping will take your money and watch as you lose everything for his lie, but don’t expect him to do the same. How are people fooled by this con-man?

"I still have to live in a house, I still have to drive a car," he said. "What would be the value of that? If it is Judgment Day why would I give it away?"

Silly Mr. Camping! Don’t you know that you get your own chauffer in Heaven? You won’t need to drive your car there.

Apocalyptic thinking has always been part of American religious life and popular culture. Teachings about the end of the world vary dramatically — even within faith traditions — about how they will occur.

Still, the overwhelming majority of Christians reject the idea that the exact date or time of Jesus' return can be predicted.

Tim LaHaye, co-author of the best-selling "Left Behind" novels about the end times, recently called Camping's prediction "not only bizarre but 100 percent wrong!" He cited the Bible verse Matthew 24:36, "but about that day or hour no one knows" except God.

Even LaHaye knows that you can’t know when Christ will return! Now, if only someone would explain to him that the Rapture is also unbiblical.

Camping offered no clues about Family Radio's finances Monday, saying he could not estimate how much had been spent advertising his prediction nor how much money the nonprofit had taken in as a result. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities.

Harold Camping should be in jail. Plain and simple.

Associated Press writer Tom Breen in Raleigh, N.C., and Videographer Ted Shaffrey and AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll in New York, contributed to this report.

First Comes Knowledge, Then Comes Love

2011-04-30T09:13:00.001-05:00

“Knowledge must ever precede the exercise of the affections. We feel gratitude and love, we feel indignation and dislike, when we have informations actually put before us which are to kindle those several emotions. We love our parents, as our parents, when we know them to be our parents; we must know concerning God, before we can feel love, fear, hope, or trust towards Him. …The formula, which embodies a dogma for the theologian, readily suggests an object for the worshipper. It seems a truism to say, yet it is all that I have been saying, that in religion the imagination and affections should always be under the control or reason. Theology may stand as a substantive science, though it be without the life of religion; but religion cannot maintain its ground at all without theology.”

-John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of A Grammar of Assent.

Basically what Newman is saying here is that knowledge is ordered to love. You cannot love what you do not know! If you claim to love someone, you want to know as much as possible about them. It is for this reason that every Christian, in some sense, should be a theologian! We should desire to know as much as possible about God, so that our love for Him grows more and more. Faith and reason are not opposites. To know is to love.

The Truth About Opus Dei

2011-04-27T17:24:00.001-05:00

...will not be found in a Dan Brown novel or a movie based on his novels.

However, there is a new movie coming out where you can find the truth about the origins of Opus Dei and its founder, St. Josemaria Escriva. That movie is There Be Dragons, opening at select theaters on May 6. Here are some of the reactions to preview screenings (these were written to the producers of the movie):

Two Goths (who wear black, carry chains and like morbid things) were at a multiplex movie theater on Friday. Reading the list of movies they discovered There Be Dragons, and thinking that it was a movie about Merlin and swords and so on, they bought tickets. When the film ended and the theater emptied out, I saw that they were not moving from their seats. I asked them how they had liked the movie. "Too much," replied one. "We never imagined that priests were such good people."
Sean, April 13, 2011

Thank you, Roland Joffé. You have managed that a person, at the end of the film, is left with desires to be a better person and with the clear idea that it is not worth letting yourself be carried away by your passions. To behave in a decent, human way will at times lead to suffering, and acting badly perhaps has some advantages and saves you some blows in life . . . but it is not worth it. Thank you for this beautiful film.
José Ignacio, Madrid, March 30, 2011

Good morning. I am writing you because yesterday a man who comes to my parish told me that that his daughter had left home some time ago. A few months later she came back home because she had run out of money, but she came with a bad attitude. This weekend she went to a multiplex theater and, by mistake, saw There Be Dragons. When she left the movie, she went straight to a church and went to confession. At home she apologized to her parents and now she is a different girl, totally new. This gentleman asked me to write to thank you for making this film. He was excited and happy.
Rafael, Majadahonda, April 15, 2011

Gentlemen: I am writing to thank you for having made this film. A few weeks ago I called a friend of mine to tell him that my wife and I had decided to divorce. We have a daughter. This friend told me: "Before you do that, you have to watch There Be Dragons." I went to see the movie with my wife, accompanied by this friend. We left the theater crying and unable to speak. We spent all that night talking about it, because we realized that the problem was not in our relationship as husband and wife, but that we had not been able to identify and overcome our own inner dragons. The real problems were in each one of us. So we have decided to focus our struggles on that, to overcome our dragons, and not to talk about divorce any more. We have also decided to try to have a new child.
Enrique Lorenzo, Madrid, April 20, 2011

As you can tell, it looks to be a very powerful movie! The trailers look great as well:

Now, since this is an independent film, it is crucial for its success (and for wider distribution) that you go and see it on the opening weekend (May 6th is when it opens). See here for a list of theaters.

St. Josemaria Escriva, Ora Pro Nobis!

Χρίστος ἀνέστι!

2011-04-24T11:14:00.000-05:00

Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! Happy Easter to all!

I encourage everyone to read Pope Benedict XVI's Easter Vigil Homily. It is splendid!

Fifth Anniversary

2011-04-23T15:36:00.000-05:00

Five years ago today, on the Easter Vigil, I entered into communion with the Church that Christ founded upon Peter and the Apostles. One of the points of reflection that led me to Holy Mother Church was the words I said every Sunday as an Anglican in reciting the Nicene Creed: We believe in One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. By that Vigil five years ago, I was convinced that these four marks could only have their locus in one place. Today, I am more certain about that than ever!

ONE

Jesus Christ founded only one Church. In his high priestly prayer in the Gospel of John, he prayed for that Church’s unity. In the sixteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we see the institution of the source for preserving that unity: St. Peter. Christ in his wisdom knew that if his Kingdom was to survive “to the close of the age” there had to be an authoritative principle of unity. Otherwise, chaos would ensue. We see this in the splintering of Protestantism into thousands of different sects, each claiming that the individual is his own source of authority. I saw it five years ago in the Anglican Church when the Archbishop of Canterbury was powerless to discipline Anglican provinces that were sliding into moral decay because he was no more than a figurehead who could only “recommend” that they adhere to traditional Christianity. Yet, Christ gave the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven only to Peter (these keys are passed down to his successors. Cf. the OT background to Christ’s actions in Isaiah 22:15-25).

“Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia” –St. Ambrose, Commentary on Twelve Psalms of David.

Holy

The Church is made up of sinners, yes. But the Church herself, as the Bride of Christ, is pure and spotless. She is guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth. One of the most compelling arguments for the truth of the Catholic Church for me is the holiness of her saints: sinners who have perfected themselves in this life so as to conform themselves through meritorious suffering into the likeness of our Lord. No institution would produce the caliber of holy men and women that the Catholic Church has if it were not guided by God. Take a look, for example, at Sts. Ignatius, Polycarp, Augustine, Monica, Francis, Dominic, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Thomas Aquinas, Therese of Lisieux, Bl. John Paul the Great, etc. The lowest saint of the Catholic Church far surpasses the holiness found outside of her.

Catholic

“Catholic” in Latin means “universal.” That is what the Church truly is. In every corner of the world you will find the Catholic Church. The first person to describe Christ’s Church as “Catholic” was Ignatius of Antioch in his Epistle to the Smyrnaeans:

“Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church.”

As an Anglican, it would often be quickly noted that the “C” of “Catholic” in the Creed is a small-C. However, that is absurd, since when Ignatius first used the word, he did not make a distinction. He didn’t have to. There was only One Church around and that was the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Where did Ignatius say we could find this Catholic Church? Wherever the bishop was, that was where the Church was. But who was a true bishop? One who was in union with the Pontiff of Rome, the Pope.

Apostolic

The Church is Apostolic because it is founded by Christ on Peter and the Apostles. No other contender to the title of Christ’s “Church” can make this claim. All other bodies were founded by men, not on Apostles, and far removed from Apostolic times. Another aspect of the Church being Apostolic is that it has Apostolic Succession, which is the passing down of the laying on of hands in an unbroken line from the Apostles to the Bishops and priests of today. No other body has Apostolic Succession, which is necessary for the valid celebration of the sacraments (the only exception, of course, is the Eastern Orthodox Churches due to their preservation of the sacrament of holy orders when they entered into schism). In a sense it is like a spiritual family tree. If a priest or bishop wanted to, he could trace his laying on of hands all the way back to one of the Apostles and back to Christ, Himself!

As a high-church Anglican who considered the Anglican priesthood, I was unaware that the Anglican Church did not possess valid sacraments because it did not have Apostolic Succession, and therefore did not have a valid priesthood. This can be a particularly hard teaching for Anglicans (especially those who are Anglican priests) to accept. I would encourage all Anglicans to read both Sir Joseph Pope’s Why I Became A Catholic and Leo XIII’s Apostolicae Curae.

However, it wasn’t solely my reflection on the words of the Nicene Creed that caused me to see that the Catholic Church was the one Church founded by Christ. It was also due to my reading of the Church Fathers. I echo the words of Bl. John Henry Newman, fellow convert from Anglicanism:

"I...take my stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not yet an old almanac to me...The Fathers made me a Catholic."

The Lord's Vigil

2011-04-23T07:37:00.001-05:00

"Every vigil celebrated in the Lord's honor is pleasing to God and acceptable to him, but this particular vigil more than all the rest. That is why this night in particular holds the title The Lord's Vigil. Indeed, what we read is: 'All the Israelites must keep a vigil for the Lord' (Ex 12,42). And this night well merits the title since the Lord awoke in life that we might not remain asleep in death. For he suffered death's sleep for our sakes in the mystery of his Passion, yet this sleep of the Lord has become the vigil of the whole world because the death of Christ has removed the sleep of eternal death from us. He himself says it through the prophet: 'I lie down in sleep, I wake again, and my sleep was sweet to me' (Ps 3,6; Jer 31,26). This sleep of Christ's that we have called to mind, from the bitterness of death to the sweetness of life, cannot be anything but sweet.

Solomon wrote: 'I sleep but my heart is awake' (Sg 5,2). These words seemingly show the mystery of the divinity and flesh of the Lord. He slept according to the flesh but his divinity kept watch since the divinity cannot sleep...: 'He neither slumbers nor sleeps, the guardian of Israel' (Ps 121[120],4)... He slept according to the flesh but his divinity visited hell in order to draw out the man whom it had held captive. Our Lord and Savior desired to enter into every place to have mercy on everyone. He came down from heaven to the earth to visit the world, and again he descended from earth to hell to carry light to those held captive there, as spoken by the prophet: 'Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone' (Is 9,1).

Hence angels in heaven, men on earth and the souls of the faithful in the dwelling place of the dead celebrate this vigil of the Lord... If one sinner's repentance, as the Gospel says, gives joy to the angels in heaven (Lk 15,7.10), how much more the redemption of the whole world?... And so, this vigil is not just a feast for men and angels but also for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, because the world's salvation is the Trinity's happiness."

-Saint Chromatius of Aquileia, 1st Sermon for the Paschal Vigil

The Causes Of Justification

2011-04-04T19:43:00.001-05:00

Final Cause:

The glory of God and of Christ, and eternal life

Efficient Cause:

The God of mercy who, of his own free will, washes[1] and sanctifies, placing his seal and anointing[2] with the promised holy spirit who is the guarantee of our inheritance[3].

Meritorious Cause:

His most beloved and only-begotten Son, our lord Jesus Christ who, when we were at enmity with him[4], out of the great love with which he loved us[5], merited justification for us by his most holy passion on the wood of the cross, and made satisfaction to God the Father on our behalf.

Instrumental Cause:

The sacrament of baptism, which is the sacrament of faith[6], without which justification comes to no one.

Formal Cause:

The justness of God: not that by which he himself is just, but that by which he makes us just and endowed with which we are renewed in the spirit of our mind[7], and are not merely considered to be just but we are truly named and are just[8], each one of us receiving individually his own justness according to the measure which the holy Spirit apportions to each one as he wills[9], and in view of each one’s dispositions and co-operation. For though no one can be just unless the merits of the passion of our lord Jesus Christ are communicated to him; nevertheless, in the justification of a sinner this in fact takes place when, by the merit of the same most holy passion, the love of God is poured out by the agency of the holy Spirit in the hearts[10] of those who are being justified, and abides in them. Consequently, in the process of justification, together with the forgiveness of sins a person receives, through Jesus Christ into whom he is grafted, all these infused at the same time: faith, hope and charity. For faith, unless hope is added to it and charity too, neither unites him perfectly with Christ nor makes him a living member of his body. Hence it is very truly said that faith without works is dead and barren[11], and in Christ Jesus neither circumcision is of any avail nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love[12]. From apostolic tradition, catechumens seek this faith from the church before the sacrament of baptism when they ask for the faith that gives eternal life; and this, without hope and charity, faith cannot give. Consequently, they immediately hear the word of Christ: If you would enter life, keep the commandments[13]. Thus, receiving true and Christian justness in exchange for that which Adam, by his disobedience, lost for himself and for us, the reborn are immediately ordered to preserve the justice freely granted to them through Jesus Christ in a pure and spotless state like a best robe[14], so that they may carry it before the tribunal of our lord Jesus Christ and possess eternal life[15].

-Council of Trent, Session 6

[1] See 1 Cor 6:11

[2] See 2 Cor 1:21-22

[3] Eph 1:13-14

[4] See Rm 5:10

[5] Eph 2:4

[6] See Augustine, Ep. 98 ad Bonifatium (Letter 98 to Boniface) 9

[7] See Eph 4:23

[8] See 1 Jn 3:1

[9] See 1 Cor 12:11

[10] See Rm 5:5

[11] See Jas 2:17, 20

[12] Gal 5:6

[13] Mt 19:17

[14] See Lk 15:22; Augustine, De genesi ad litt. (On the words of Genesis) VI 27

[15] See Rituale Romanum (Roman Ritual), administration of baptism

Upon the Annunciation and Passion Falling Upon One Day

2011-03-25T10:41:00.000-05:00

Tamely, frail body, abstain today; today
My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away.
She sees Him man, so like God made in this,
That of them both a circle emblem is,
Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day
Of feast or fast, Christ came and went away;
She sees Him nothing twice at once, who’s all;
She sees a Cedar plant itself and fall,
Her Maker put to making, and the head
Of life at once not yet alive yet dead;
She sees at once the virgin mother stay
Reclused at home, public at Golgotha;
Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen
At almost fifty and at scarce fifteen;
At once a Son is promised her, and gone;
Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John;
Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity,
At once receiver and the legacy;
All this, and all between, this day hath shown,
The abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of the Angels’ Ave and Consummatum est.
How well the Church, God’s court of faculties,
Deals in some times and seldom joining these!
As by the self-fixed Pole we never do
Direct our course, but the next star thereto,
Which shows where the other is and which we say
(Because it strays not far) doth never stray,
So God by His Church, nearest to Him, we know
And stand firm, if we by her motion go;
His Spirit, as His fiery pillar doth
Lead, and His Church, as cloud, to one end both.
This Church, by letting these days join, hath shown
Death and conception in mankind is one:
Or ‘twas in Him the same humility
That He would be a man and leave to be:
Or as creation He had made, as God,
With the last judgment but one period,
His imitating Spouse would join in one
Manhood’s extremes: He shall come, He is gone:
Or as though the least of His pains, deeds, or words,
Would busy a life, she all this day affords;
This treasure then, in gross, my soul uplay,
And in my life retail it every day.

– John Donne, 1608

St. Josemaria And The Fourth Commandment

2011-03-23T19:31:00.001-05:00

H/t to Kevin Clarke.

Disqus Commenting System...

2011-03-23T15:32:00.000-05:00

....is terrible. I can't get it to work in the Firefox broswer. Anyone know how to fix this?

Ambrosiaster And Sola Fide

2011-03-21T22:36:00.003-05:00

It has recently been brought to my attention that some Protestants are under the impression that the Church Father commonly called Ambrosiaster (due to his works having been mistaken for Ambrose’s up until the seventeenth century) was a proto-Lutheran in that they claim he taught the doctrine of salvation by Faith Alone (Sola Fide).

Now, did Ambrosiaster use the phrase, Sola Fide? Sure. Did he mean by the phrase, Sola Fide, what Martin Luther and these Protestants mean by Sola Fide? I would argue in the negative.

I think the best place to show this would be to examine the verse in Scripture that Luther based his whole doctrine around—Romans 3:28:

“For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart

from the works of law.”

Luther took this verse and argued that what Paul is saying here is that man is justified (saved) by Faith alone and not at all by any kind of works (including good works, which includes upholding the Moral Law, i.e. the Ten Commandments, and upholding Christ’s commandments in the Sermon on the Mount. More will be said on this later). I would argue that Ambrosiaster understands Paul correctly and Luther does not.

Ambrosiaster was a master of the Old Testament and the Jewish Laws. He had a keen insight on how the New Testament fulfills the Old, which enabled him to be an exegete of Paul that rivals the likes of Chrysostom, Augustine, and the Tyconius the Donatist. So if we want to understand how Ambrosiaster interprets Paul, we must look at the context of what Paul is saying here in and around Romans 3:28.

The context of Romans 3:28 clearly shows that Paul does not mean that we are saved by “Faith Alone” (Sola Fide). In fact, Paul never uses the word “alone” in relation to Faith (pistis in the Greek). What Paul says is that a man is justified by faith APART from the works of the law (ergon nomou in Greek). This verse comes within the context of Paul arguing that God does not make distinctions between Jews and Gentiles (Rm 3:22) when it comes to being saved. Paul is countering the notion of the Jewish Christians who thought that a person had to first enter into the Mosaic covenant (through circumcision, which compelled the circumcised to adhere to the whole of the Jewish cultic—both ritual and purity—laws) before becoming a Christian and thus achieving salvation. If this were the case, then Gentiles who did not get circumcised would be excluded from the means of salvation. The very next verse (29) shows us this: “Or is God the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of the Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also…”

So what are these ergon nomou apart from which we are saved by faith? They are the Jewish cultic practices of circumcision, observing the Jewish Feasts and the new moon, ritual purity requirements, etc. To follow these would to be to become a Jew and no longer a Gentile. But God is the God of both the Jews AND the Gentiles and both the Jews and the Gentiles are saved by Christ! This is why in the next chapter (4), Paul shows that not all who are fleshly descendants of Abraham (those who are fleshly-circumcised Jews) are true descendants of Abraham (those who are circumcised in the heart). It is baptism into Christ that makes one a true heir, not circumcision of the flesh!

Paul is in no way arguing for Sola Fide here or anywhere else. He is saying that it is Faith (the kind of the Faith that includes the doing of good works and the keeping of the moral law) which saves, not the Jewish cultic laws.

So…what about Ambrosiaster? When he read this verse, did he make the same argument as Martin Luther, that one is saved by Faith Alone? Nowhere even close!

Gentilem dicit hominem pro certo haberi, quod justificetur credens nulla faciens opera legis, id est, sine circumcisione aut neomeniis, aut veneratione Sabbati.

He says the Gentile man, to be thought for sure, is justified believing, not doing any works of the law, that is, without circumcision or new moons, or veneration of the Sabbath.

As I said above, Ambrosiaster does use the phrase, Sola Fide, but the one place that—if he was in fact a proto-Lutheran—you would expect him to, he doesn’t. Instead he explicitly links the ergon nomou (opera legis in Latin) with circumcision, new moons, and observance of the Jewish Sabbath! So does Ambrosiaster teach the Protestant doctrine of Sola Fide? Absolutely not. Does he believe, as the Roman Catholic Church has held for two thousand years, that we are saved by Grace through Faith and good works (cf. Gal. 5: 6)? Yes, indeed. Listen to what he says in his commentary on St. Paul’s letter to Titus (chapter 3):

God in his mercy has saved us through Christ, by whose grace we have been born again and now receive the Holy Spirit in abundance, so that we may excel in good works. He will help us in everything, so that by these things we may inherit the kingdom of heaven. For this reason we must follow him with all devotion and obey his commands, because if there is anything beautiful in us, he has painted it with spiritual brushstrokes. (Italics added)

He is saying that the Holy Spirit helps us in everything, which includes the good works mentioned previously! And what is the result of these good works? “So that by these things we may inherit the kingdom of heaven.” Did you hear that? By good works we will inherit the kingdom of heaven, in other words, be saved. The good works we do after the grace of baptism are meritorious for salvation. I referred to Galatians 5:6 above. What does Ambrosiaster say about that verse?

What Paul is saying is clear; the hope of justification is in faith by the Spirit and not through the works of the law. By faith we serve God spiritually, by the devotion of our minds and the purity of our hearts. This is why the Lord said to the Samaritan woman: God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth (italics in original). For this reason, neither uncircumcision nor circumcision is of any value, but faith in love (italics added) is required for justification. Faith must be accompanied by brotherly love if the believer is to be perfect (italics added). Finally, the Savior answered the scribe who asked him what the most important commandment was, as follows: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hangs the whole law and the prophets (italics in original). Everything else is excluded (i.e. works of the law) and imperfect, because perfection is contained in these commandments.

Faith must be accompanied by brotherly love, i.e. good works. Hardly sounds like a proto-Lutheran to me! That’s probably because he was a Roman Catholic.

Ambrosiaster understands what Paul is teaching. So where did Luther go wrong? Well, for starters, his belief that Paul was teaching Sola Fide led him to believe that Paul contradicted the Epistle of James. James 2:24 states: “You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Luther could not reconcile this verse of James with Romans 3:28, so he sought to have it removed from his German Bible, that is until he started losing followers and was urged to put it back in. Protestants nowadays will seek to reconcile the two verses by saying that Paul and James are speaking about different types of faith. But that is not right at all. Rather, they are speaking about different types of works. What Paul means by works we already showed above, namely circumcision and other Jewish cultic practices. What James means by works is good works—following the Moral Law of the Ten Commandments and the commandments of Christ. Luther completely missed this! You see, in his doctrine of Sola Fide, he excluded as works both the Jewish cultic laws and the Moral Law. The problem is that Paul did not mean to exclude the Moral Law. Neither did Jesus! We can see this in the Sermon on the Mount. Christ begins his statements with, “You have heard that it was said” X. Then, he doesn’t continue by saying that you don’t have to do that anymore. Rather, he says that you must uphold not only the letter, but go beyond it to the spirit (Cf. Mt 5). Also, in John 14:15 Christ says, “All you need is Faith Alone to be saved.” No? That’s not what he says? What he really says is “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” Keeping the commandments of Christ is doing good works. But it is not good works that we do alone, but rather Christ working in us.

So you see, Ambrosiaster is not teaching the Lutheran doctrine of Sola Fide. Nor for that matter is any of the other Church Fathers, as my friend Taylor Marshall pointed out a while back.

The Father Makes Known His Son

2011-03-20T08:37:00.000-05:00

'Simon Peter said: "Lord, it is good for us to be here!" What on earth are you saying, Peter? If we stay here who will bring to pass the prophecies of the prophets? Who will confirm the words of the heralds? Who will bring to completion the mysteries of the righteous? If we stay here, in whom will these words be fulfilled: "They pierced my hands and my feet"? To whom will the following be applied: "They shared my garments among them, cast lots for my robe"? (Ps 22[21], 17,19; Jn 19,24). Who will bring to pass the declaration of the Psalm: "For food they gave me poison and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink"? (69[68],22; Mt 27,34; Jn 19,29). Who will live out the statement: "Freed among the dead"? (Ps 87,6 Heb.) How will my promises be carried into effect, how will my Church be built?

And again Peter said: "Let us make here three tents : one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah". Sent to build the Church in the world, Peter wants to set up three tents on the mountain. As yet he only sees Christ as a man, he sets him on a level with Moses and Elijah. But Jesus will very soon show him he has no need of a tent. He was the one who, for forty years, set up a covering of cloud for the Fathers while they were dwelling in the wilderness (Ex 40,34).

"But while they were still speaking a bright cloud covered them with its shadow". Now, Simon, do you see this tent set up so effortlessly? This bright and shining tent dispels the heat without consisting of darkness! While the disciples still stood amazed, the Father's voice was heard from the cloud: "This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom is all my delight; listen to him!"... The Father was teaching the disciples that Moses' mission had been fulfilled: from now on they must listen to the Son . On the mountain the Father revealed to the apostles what was still hidden from them: "He who is" reveals "He who is" (Ex 3,14), the Father makes known his Son.'

-Saint Ephrem the Syrian

New Design

2011-03-19T23:26:00.000-05:00

I've given in.

I've finally decided to upgrade my blog and give it a new style. This was prompted by my old comment provider, Echo, hiking up the prices of their services. Well, thanks to free market capitalism, I went elsewhere. I now have a new comment provider (which looks to be much better, anyways, and best of all free!), Disqus.

In the process of changing the design, I've also discovered that my blog roll provider is no longer in service! So, it is going to be a while before I have that back up and running.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of the design. And yes, to my three readers, I hope to be blogging more frequently in the near future.

Judas And Social Justice

2011-03-12T08:35:00.000-05:00

“What our Lord says to Judas, he says to the world today: You seemingly are very interested in social justice. Why are you not concerned about individual justice? You love your neighbor, why do you not love God? This is the attitude of the world today. We have swung away from a period in which we were concerned with individual sanctification to the neglect of the social order. Now we have gone to the extreme of being immersed with social justice, civil rights, and so forth, and we are not the least bit concerned about individual justice and the duty of paying honor and glory to God. If you march with a banner, if you protest, then your individual life may be impure, alcoholic, anything you please. That does not matter. Judas is the patron saint of those who divide that universal law of God: Love God and love neighbor.”

-Fulton J. Sheen

Blessings And Curses

2011-03-06T13:27:00.000-05:00

Dr. John Bergsma over at The Sacred Page has a great post on today's readings about how the Sermon on the Mount resembles Old Testament covenant documents, such as the book of Deuteronomy. Go check it out!

Why We Need Augustine

2011-02-25T18:22:00.000-05:00

“If we need Aristotle, I think, we need Augustine more. Augustine was human enough, brilliant enough to realize that Plato’s search for a true public order, which corresponded to our inner order and to the good, was not an unworthy one. Augustine freed us, moreover, by insisting that this search that, if we be human, we discover in our restless hearts, after we have met both Ramiro de Lorqua and the pursuit of happiness in this world, has its proper and final answer as a gift from God, after the completion of our very lives among the existing cities. Augustine remains someone to whom we can turn. We are probably lucky if, in our studies, in our workings, we learned not to reject prayer and fasting, let alone Augustine.”

-James V. Schall, Another Sort of Learning

When Was The First Epistle Of Clement Written?

2011-02-09T22:47:00.001-05:00

I hold in my hands a book whose publication I have been waiting for in anxious anticipation for some time now. That book is Clement and the Early Church of Rome: On the Dating of Clement’s First Epistle to the Corinthians by Msgr. Thomas J. Herron. Msgr. Herron, who worked in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, originally wrote this book as his doctoral dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome back in 1988. This book is truly groundbreaking as Herron persuasively argues for a pre-70 A.D. dating of First Clement. One of the key arguments is the polemic against the Jerusalem Temple, which Clement speaks against as though it were still standing. Had the Temple already been destroyed (which it would have been based on the traditional 96 A.D. dating), that would have furthered Clement’s argument for the superiority of Christianity over and against Judaism. Yet, Clement never even alludes to the destruction of the Temple. Herron’s thesis has many theological and ecclesiastical implications, most notably: the early existence of a normative presbyterate (priesthood) and Roman primacy. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the Apostolic Fathers or Church History in general.

A Tertullian Resolution For The New Year

2011-01-02T18:46:00.000-05:00

The New Year of 2011 is well on its way! For those who are still searching for a New Year’s resolution, you may consider a suggestion from the Father of the Church, Tertullian: Patience.

Why not? Patience IS indeed a virtue and an important one at that. Certainly we all could use a little bit more of it in our lives (especially those, like myself, with two children (soon to be three) at the age of three and under!) to help us grow in our spiritual life. Here’s what Tertullian has to say about the subject:

“Patience outfits faith, guides peace, assists love, equips humility, waits for penitence, seals confession, keeps the flesh in check, preserves the spirit, bridles the tongue, restrains the hands, tramples temptation underfoot, removes what causes us to stumble, brings martyrdom to perfection; it lightens the care of the poor, teaches moderation to the rich, lifts the burdens of the sick, delights the believer, welcomes the unbeliever, commends the servant to his master and his master to God, adorns the women and gives grace to men; patience is loved in children, praised in youth, admired in the elderly. It is beautiful in either sex and at every age of life…Her countenance is tranquil and peaceful, her brow serene…Patience sits on the throne of the most gentle and peaceful Spirit…For where God is there is his progeny, patience. When God’s Spirit descends patience is always at his side.”

-On Patience

Another great idea for the New Year would be to spend each day with the Fathers of the Church. I know of a perfect way to do such a thing!

And Now A Lesson In Eisegesis

2010-12-29T09:34:00.000-05:00

A New Testament scholar is proposing the idea that one (or more) of the Magi was a woman!

This just goes to show that you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to. Hence the necessity for an authoritative guide in its interpretation. The irony is that the scholar advancing the theory is a Catholic (not that the Magisterium has spoken authoritatively on the gender of the Magi--who would have thought it would need to?!) The last line of the article suggests that the scholar's ex-(eis)-egesis is influenced by ecumenism. I didn't know that women were a separate denomination!

Christian Truth

2010-12-18T18:29:00.000-05:00

As this season of Advent draws near to a close and we eagerly await the coming of Truth Incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ, I give to you this beautiful quote of St. Augustine:

"Incomparably more lovely than the Grecian Helen is Christian truth. In her defense, our martyrs have fought against Sodom with more courage than the heroes of Greece displayed against Troy for Helen's sake."

-St. Augustine, Epistula 40.7

Something To Think About This Advent

2010-12-05T13:33:00.000-05:00

Contradictions In Scripture?

2010-10-31T13:35:00.001-05:00

Many people who like to deny the truthfulness of Sacred Scripture point to Genesis 2:7-9 as being a screaming contradiction of Scripture. For it says:

“then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food”

The denier would exclaim, “See! Scripture has to be false. In Gen. 2:7, it says that man is created. THEN after that in Gen. 2:9, God causes vegetation to grow. BUT THIS CAN’T BE TRUE, for Genesis 1 says that land and vegetation was created on the THIRD day and man was created on the SIXTH day! Therefore, Scripture is false.”

On the surface, it seems that the denier is correct. Scripture contradicts itself. How are we who hold that Scripture is inspired by God, and therefore inerrant (for God is not the author of error), to answer?

By following St. Augustine, of course!

St. Augustine, following Tyconius’ sixth rule of recapitulation (from his Book of Rules), provides the solution in Book III, Chapter 36 of his De doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine):

The sixth rule Tichonius calls the recapitulation, which, with sufficient watchfulness, is discovered in difficult parts of Scripture. For certain occurrences are so related, that the narrative appears to be following the order of time, or the continuity of events, when it really goes back without mentioning it to previous occurrences, which had been passed over in their proper place. And we make mistakes if we do not understand this, from applying the rule here spoken of. For example, in the book of Genesis we read, "And the Lord God planted a garden eastwards in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food." Now here it seems to be indicated that the events last mentioned took place after God had formed man and put him in the garden; whereas the fact is, that the two events having been briefly mentioned, viz., that God planted a garden, and there put the man whom He had formed, the narrative goes back, by way of recapitulation, to tell what had before been omitted, the way in which the garden was planted: that out of the ground God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food. Here there follows "The tree of life also was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." Next the river is mentioned which watered the garden, and which was parted into four heads, the sources of four streams; and all this has reference to the arrangements of the garden. And when this is finished, there is a repetition of the fact which had been already told, but which in the strict order of events came after all this: "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden." For it was after all these other things were done that man was put in the garden, as now appears from the order of the narrative itself: it was not after man was put there that the other things were done, as the previous statement might be thought to imply, did we not accurately mark and understand the recapitulation by which the narrative reverts to what had previously been passed over.

Now, the question that arises is, “Why would God make Scripture to be written in such a way as this?” The answer is so that you won’t rush through Sacred Scripture, but rather read it diligently and with extreme care, savoring every word the Sacred Author has written. Also, in order for you to dig deeper into Scripture and probe the depths of “the riches of the glory of this mystery” communicated by the Holy Spirit. Then you will “have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

The Text In Its Final Form

2010-10-22T18:23:00.001-05:00

“Contrary to what I have heard said, it is perfectly possible to understand a text without knowing whether it is E or whatever. If I insist on a documentary setting, or an historical setting in which the text was composed, I am often, even usually, tied to pure hypothesis: the connection with a source is dubious, the existence of the source (E) is in question. In any case the historical setting of the passage’s composition is largely a guess. And still the text itself in its most important setting, its actual place in scripture, lies before me to study as a grammatical and literary structure that I can analyze with some confidence without beginning with a chancy guess about origins.”

-D.J. McCarthy, “Exodus 3:14: History, Philology and Theology,” CBQ 40 (1978).

The Difference Between Formal And Material Heresy

2010-10-17T08:03:00.000-05:00

“The Church expressly distinguishes between ‘formal’ and ‘material’ heretics. A ‘formal’ heretic rejects the Church and its teaching absolutely and with full deliberation; a ‘material’ heretic rejects the Church from lack of knowledge, being influenced by false prejudice or by an anti-Catholic upbringing. St. Augustine forbids us to blame a man for being a heretic because he was born of heretical parents, provided that he does not with obstinate self-assurance shut out all better knowledge, but seeks the truth simply and loyally. Whenever the Church has such honest enquirers before her, she remembers that our Lord condemned Pharisaism but not the individual Pharisee, that He held deep and loving intercourse with Nicodemus, and allowed Himself to be invited by Simon. The spirit of the Church in her dealings with souls may be stated in St. Augustine’s words: ‘Love men, slay error!’”

-Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism.

The Moral Duty Of Dogmatic Intolerance

2010-10-16T17:14:00.002-05:00

“When ideas are in conflict, when truth is fighting against error, and revelation against human ingenuity, then there can be no compromise and no indulgence. If our Lord had exercised such indulgence, He would not have been crucified. When He called the Pharisees whited sepulchers and a brood of vipers, and Herod a fox, He was not inspired by any sort of hatred against individuals, but by the tremendous earnestness of truth. It was His defiant and vivid conviction of responsibility for eternal truth that caused Him to use such strong words towards error and its representatives. And if we do not fight thus for the truth, then we lose all moral and spiritual power, we become characterless, we disown God. Dogmatic intolerance is therefore a moral duty, a duty to the infinite truth and to truthfulness.”

-Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism.

Book Review: Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period

2010-10-14T18:42:00.002-05:00

Length: 528 pages
Size: 6 x 9 inches
Binding: paperback
Publisher: IVP Academic (July 2002)
ISBN: 0-8308-2678-5
IVP Order Code: 2678

The Second Temple Period, spanning from 586 B.C.- A.D. 135, was a fascinating time of joy (due to the return from exile in Babylon) and hope (of a future return of the ten northern tribes who had been scattered by Assyria). Mixed with the joy and hope are themes of tribulation, restoration, nationalistic identification, liturgical purification, and eschatological and messianic expectation which all help to further our understanding of the New Testament. With Larry Helyer’s Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period: A Guide for New Testament Students, he takes on an ambitious task...and succeeds. In 528 pages he surveys over 35 documents from the Second Temple Period, from the Babylonian Exile to the rise of Rabbinical Judaism and the Apostolic Fathers.

For each document, Helyer provides an introduction (discussing authorship, dating, purpose, and structure), outline, and analysis. Concluding each analysis is a section pointing out each Second Temple document’s significance for the New Testament. What really makes this book worth its weight in gold for students of the New Testament, however, is the discussion questions, the recommended readings for further study, and the advice concerning which texts to use for each document. These resources make the book perfect for independent study with Helyer as the guide. With the Second Temple documents in one hand and Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period in another, the student is well equipped to dive into these sources and bear much fruit for understanding the New Testament.

While I did enjoy the book and would recommend it to all, I do so with a few caveats for Catholic readers. Being a Protestant, there are issues with Helyer’s understanding of the Old Testament Canon. Although his rejection of the seven books of the Old Testament that the Church has always held as canonical do not prevent the book from being profitable (for more on the Old Testament Canon, see my review of Walter Kaiser’s The Old Testament Documents). What is more of a concern is Helyer’s Calvinistic presuppositions that influence his understanding of the texts. For example, he seems to suggest that the Qumranites are proto-Calvinits:

“The doctrine of the two spirits actually attributes the evil impulse to God. Though accountable for their sin, the wicked, by virtue of God’s eternal plan, have no recourse but to succumb to the evil angel and the resultant misdeeds.” (256)

Did the Qumran community really believe in double predestination? That is highly debatable, which is why it is startling to see him state immediately after, “This theological problem is never raised or discussed in the Qumran literature; it is simply assumed as a fact.” If the problem is never raised or discussed, who is assuming it as a fact? The Qumranites or Helyer? His search for a proto-Calvin doesn’t end with the Qumranites, however. A couple of pages later in discussing how the Qumran literature is significant for the New Testament, Helyer states that Paul believes in the predestination of the elect. I have no problem with that. But, then he goes on to say, “Paul does not, however, explicitly state the contrary, namely, that the wicked are predestined to damnation” (259). The problem is that Paul nowhere, even implicitly, argues for double predestination! Yet, Helyer seems to think that Paul comes close in the following quote from Romans:

‘What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience the objects of wrath that are made for destruction; and what if he has done so in order to make known the riches of his glory for the objects of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—including us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?’ (Romans 9:22-23)

Is Paul saying that God has predestined some here for damnation? By no means! God is patient with the all. If the evil doer fails to repent of his ways, it is he himself who is responsible for his damnation, not God. St. John Chrysostom explains:

“Why are some people vessels of wrath and others vessels of mercy? It is by their own free choice. God, being very good, shows the same kindness to both. For it was not only to those who were saved that God showed kindness but to Pharaoh also, as far as he deserved. For both Pharaoh and God’s people had the advantage of God’s patience. And if Pharaoh was not saved it was because of his own will, since God had done as much for him as he had done for those who were saved.” (Homilies on Romans 16)

Elsewhere in the context of the churches established by Paul, he suggests that they “appear to have been autonomous” (224). To his credit, however, he adds in a footnote, “This statement, of course, will not go unchallenged by many who are convinced that the NT displays more of a hierarchical structure than I have allowed. I own up to my Baptistic presupposition on this point!”

Aside from the above mentioned issues, I think Helyer does a fantastic job surveying such a wide breadth of literature in one book and should be commended for his effort. Anyone who wishes to do a serious study of both Second Temple Literature and the New Testament should get this book!

Many thanks once again to Adrianna Wright and the good folks at InterVarsity Press who have provided me with a review copy of Exploring Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period: A Guide for New Testament Students.

Modern Exgesis

2010-10-05T15:05:00.001-05:00

The other day I posted about the Church Fathers' exegesis of the Good Samaritan parable in Luke 10. A friend of mine sent me a note on how this passage would be interpreted using modern exegetical methods:

"Wisdom from [a liberal college soaked in modern scriptural interpretation] concerning this passage: Obviously what we have here is an author mired in the 'pre-Enlightenment' mindset, otherwise he would have known that there's no such thing as the devil. From the reference to the Levite and priest ...one can see that this is an early Christian polemic against the Jews written to strengthen the sectarian mindset of the Early Church. It's a good thing we have 'evolved' since then and can now focus exclusively on the most important and central concerns of theology: social justice and tolerance. In fact it's a good thing that everything evolves, especially our moral law!"

For a good article on "tolerance," click here.

The Patristic Interpretation Of The Good Samaritan

2010-10-04T11:36:00.002-05:00

“Many Fathers of the Church and early Christian writers have identified Christ himself as the Good Samaritan. The man who falls into the hands of thieves is a symbol of humanity wounded by original sin and personal sin. St. Augustine has commented: ‘These offenses robbed mankind of immortality. They covered him with wounds and made him susceptible to sin.’ St. Bede has written that sins are called wounds because they destroy the integrity of human nature. The thieves represent the devil, unrestrained human passions, scandal… The Levite and the priest symbolize the Old Covenant, which cannot cure these wounds. The inn is a symbol of the Church. ‘What would have happened to this poor Jew if the Samaritan had stayed at home? What would have happened to our souls if the Son of God had not undertaken his journey?’ (R.A. Knox) Jesus is moved with compassion for man and heals his wounds, making them his own. St. John wrote to the early Christians: ‘In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him… Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.’”

-Fr. Francis Fernandez

Who's Dwelling In Shem's Tent?

2010-09-29T20:51:00.001-05:00

"The structure of Genesis 9:25-27 is a heptastich which is divided into three parts by the repeated refrain of Canaan’s servitude, a son of guilty Ham:

And he said,

Cursed be Canaan;

A servant of servants will he be to his brother.

-Verse 25

And he said,

Blessed be the Lord God of Shem;

Let Canaan be a slave to him.

-Verse 26

God will enlarge Japhet,

But He will dwell in the tents of Shem;

Let Canaan be a slave to him

-Verse 27

Now the key issue is this: Who is the subject of the verb ‘he will dwell’ in Genesis 9:27? We concur with the judgment of the Targum of Onkelos, Philo, Maimonides, Rashi, Aben Ezra, Theodoret, Baumgarten, and Delitzsch that the subject is 'God.' Our reasons are these: (1) the subject of the previous clause is presumed to continue into the next clause where the subject is unexpressed; (2) the use of the indirect object of the previous line as subject (‘Japhet’) would require strong contextual reasons for doing so; (3) the context of the next several chapters designates Shem as the first in honor of blessing; and (4) the Hebrew phrase weyiškōn be’oh°lê šēm, ‘and he will dwell in the tents of Shem,’ hardly makes sense if attributed to Japhet, for Japhet had already been granted the blessing of expansion.

The plan of the whole prophecy appears to devote the first strophe only to Canaan, the second to Shem and Canaan, and the third to all three brothers. On the balance, then, the best option is to regard God as promising to Shem a special blessing. He would dwell with the Semitic peoples. The word for ‘dwell’ is related to the later concept of Mosaic theology of the Shekinah glory of God wherein the presence of God over the tabernacle was evidenced by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. Hence, the man Shem would be the one through whom the ‘seed’ promised earlier would now come. Had not God said, 'Blessed be the Lord God of Shem’ (Gen. 9:26)? And why did He use this distinctive form of address? Could it not be that the blessing and indwelling were linked? And could it be that they were God’s next provision to earth’s latest crisis?"

-Walter Kaiser, Toward An Old Testament Theology

A Daily Dose Of The Fathers

2010-09-18T07:44:00.003-05:00

"A Year With the Church Fathers: Patristic Wisdom for Daily Living" by Mike Aquilina. Order yours today!

The Most Holy Name Of Mary

2010-09-12T12:27:00.001-05:00

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary. It commemorates the victory of the Christian forces led by John Sobieski at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, and thus preventing the Muslims from conquering all of Europe.

Our Lady Exterminatrix of Heresies, Ora Pro Nobis!

The Feast Of Blessed John Henry Newman

2010-09-10T17:08:00.000-05:00

John Henry Newman was instrumental to my conversion to Catholicism. He was also very influential in leading others during his lifetime to Holy Mother Church. Here are his stats:

636 English Nobleman.

700 British Clergyman.

1100 of their wives and children.

700 professionals.

612 of these young men became priests.

164 of the women became nuns.

For this reason, it brings me great joy to find out that Newman's feast day will not be celebrated on the date of his death, but rather on the date of his conversion to the Catholic Church, October 9!

Bl. John Henry Newman, the Great Converter, Ora Pro Nobis!

Quote Of The Century

2010-09-01T17:31:00.001-05:00

‎"The first duty of every Catholic father to the public school is to keep his children out of it."

-Paul L. Blakely, S.J.

Mary Guides Us To Truth

2010-08-24T01:00:00.000-05:00

“Fides et ratio…desires to recover the face of truth. In Christ, ‘the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden in the part, God takes on a human face” (§12). Thus while the eternal face of Christ is the answer, Mary’s is our guide. The human search for meaning does have a face, a human face. It is not the face of a monk or a scholar, it is not even the face of an angelic doctor; it is the face of a mother, the Virgin of Nazareth. Mary beckons all humans to know the truth of things: to open themselves up to what is, to give themselves to the direction of the Divine, and to rest in the loving knowledge of God. In this, Mary becomes, for all who yearn to know, the perfect model of created wisdom.”

-David Vincent Meconi, S.J., “Philosophari in Maria: Fides et ratio And Mary As The Model Of Created Wisdom” in The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays On Fides et ratio.

Industrialized Sex Rejected

2010-08-23T19:16:00.000-05:00

"We should continuously point out that the term pre-marital sex is an oxymoron. Because sex and marriage both perform the function of uniting a man and a woman into one-flesh, engaging in sexual relations is ontologically indistinguishable from marriage."

That is just one of the gems from Joe Carter's excellent article over at the First Things blog.

The Importance Of Nature In A Theology Of Grace

2010-08-23T16:41:00.001-05:00

I love it when Pope Benedict XVI agrees with me! I've long stressed the importance of a proper understanding of nature in order to safeguard a proper understanding of grace. If you allow nature to be swallowed up into grace and say that everything is grace, then you actually cheapen grace. If everything is grace, then nothing is. I feel that this is the mistake of de Lubac, Gilson, et al. Below, Pope Benedict elaborates on the consequences of not having a firm foundational concept of nature for grace to build upon, elevate, and perfect:

“There is...a theological concealment of the concept of creation…[where] nature is undermined for the sake of grace; it is robbed of its belongings and gives way, so to speak, before grace. Here we should recall the crucial text of 1 Corinthians 15:46: ‘It is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual’ (RSV). There is a series of stages that must not be absorbed into a monism of grace. I believe that we must develop a Christian pedagogy that accepts creation and gives concrete expression to these two poles of the one faith. We must never try to take the second step before the first: first the physical, then the spiritual. If we skip this sequence, creation is denied, and grace is deprived of its foundation.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning…’

The Ten Commandments: An Echo Of The Creation

2010-08-22T14:41:00.001-05:00

“The words ‘God said’ appear ten times in the creation account. In this way the creation narrative anticipates the Ten Commandments. This makes us realize that the Ten Commandments are, as it were, an echo of the creation; they are not arbitrary inventions for the purpose of erecting barriers to human freedom but signs pointing to the spirit, the language, and the meaning of creation; they are a translation of the language of the universe.”

-Joseph Ratzinger, ‘In the Beginning…’

Hermeneutics Of Biblical Theology

2010-08-20T14:47:00.001-05:00

“Biblical theology will always remain an endangered species until the heavy-handed methodology of imaginary source criticism, history of tradition, and certain types of form criticism are arrested. …Consequently, the suddenness of the description of the Creation, the Fall of the first human couple, the universal extent of the Abrahamic promise, the priesthood of all Israel, or Isaiah’s depiction of the new heaven and the new earth ought not to startle us and be judged as impossible. Only the embarrassment of an overly refined spirit of modernity would feel obliged by some prior commitment to a philosophical principle or to a sociology of knowledge to adjudge such textual claims as impossible even before they were found guilty on the grounds of accepted canons of evidence.”

-Walter Kaiser, Toward an Old Testament Theology.

Did Paul Invent Christianity?

2010-08-16T17:40:00.001-05:00

“Paul is the most luminous personality in the history of primitive Christianity, and yet opinions differ widely as to his true significance. Only a few years ago we had a leading Protestant theologian asserting that Paul’s rabbinical theology led him to corrupt the Christian religion. Others, conversely, have called him the real founder of that religion. But in the opinion of the great majority of those who have studied him, the true view is that he was the one who understood the Master and continued his work. This opinion is borne out by the facts…As we cannot want to be wiser than history, which knows him only as Christ’s missionary, and as his own words clearly attest what his aims were and what he was, we regard him as Christ’s disciple, as the apostle who not only worked harder but also accomplished more than all the rest put together.”

-Adolf Von Harnack, What Is Christianity?

Scheeben On The Theological Principles Of The Assumption Of Mary Premised By The Sacred Scriptures

2010-08-15T19:33:00.001-05:00

“Mary’s special participation with Christ in the resurrection and glorification of the body is guaranteed by a series of theological factors, based either directly or indirectly on her divine motherhood. Their meaning can be strengthened still further by the application of various general principles premised by the Sacred Scriptures:

1. In the Mother of God, precisely because she is such only through and in her body, a permanent separation of body and soul is unthinkable, just as in Christ the separation of His body and soul from His divinity would be inconceivable on account of the hypostatic union.

2. Mary’s quality as motherly bride of Christ requires a permanent and complete unity of life which could be dissolved only temporarily in view of the ends of that union. To this the teaching of St. Paul must be applied concerning the love of a man for his wife as his flesh, which was ideally realized in Christ’s love for His Church; and this the more so since Mary, in a singular way, is the flesh of Christ and the principal member of His Church. Accordingly, the power of Christ’s love for His Church had to be revealed in Mary in a specific and complete manner.

3. To this can be added the principles of the Sacred Scriptures concerning the honor due to father and mother, and also concerning the participation in Christ’s glory, promised to those who share in His sufferings and death. The honor of the mother requires the complete safeguarding of her entire existence. The material service performed by Mary, whereby she used the substance of her body for the formation and sustenance of Christ, demands the glorification of her body in a distinctive manner. Furthermore, Mary’s singular, intimate, and absolute union with Christ in His sufferings and death requires the perfect participation with Him in His life of glory.

4. As instrument and cooperator in the work of redemption, Mary must most perfectly experience in herself the fruits of that sublime work; and this fruit so much the more, since only in a risen and glorified body could she, in union with Christ, effectively continue her office as mediatrix, and be the perfect surety of the efficacy of the act of redemption for the rest of mankind. In this respect it may be said that, without Mary’s resurrection and glorification, there would have been not only a weakening of that union with Christ, in virtue of which as the new Eve, she belongs at the side of the heavenly Adam for the complete possession of life, but the guaranty for our redemption would also be lacking precisely where, apart from Christ, the evidence of the efficacy of redemption should be most sought and expected. Moreover, in the economy of redemption, the peculiar type of the indefectibility and eternal vitality of the Church would be lacking.”

-Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Mariology, vol. 2.

A Night Of Irish Music

2010-08-14T09:19:00.001-05:00

For all my readers in the Pittsburgh area, here is a chance to listen to some great Irish music and participate in a very worthy cause:

You may know Chris Bailey as Mike Aquilina's co-author on several books (The Grail Code, A Doubter's Novena, Praying the Psalms). You may also know him as the comedy blogger Dr. H. Albertus Boli. Or you may know him as the Pittsburgh photoblogger Father Pitt. Or you may know him as husband to Teresa Bailey, who is herself an author (of a great book on childbirth).

Chris and Teresa are pursuing an international adoption through Catholic Charities. A night of Irish music is being hosted to help them raise the funds. You'll love the music. They’ve lined up the best Pittsburgh has to offer. And the food and libations at Mullaney's are quite good. Take several friends to dinner. You'll be very glad you did. And please spread the word!

When: 7-10 PM, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2010

Where: Mullaney's Harp & Fiddle, 2329 Penn Ave. (The Strip District)

What: Gala Adoption Fundraiser for Chris and Teresa Bailey

Live Music: Guaranteed Irish, Mike Gallagher, Bob Pegritz, and surprises!

What to bring: $15 per person cover charge

Same-Sex "Marriage" And Proposition 8

2010-08-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

With the activist judge Walker’s overruling of Prop. 8 in California, the debate over the definition of “marriage” once again rages on. Yet, the same reason that women cannot be priests is the reason why same sex couples cannot be married. St. Paul touches on this in Ephesians 5 when he discusses the roles of a husband and wife in relation to each other. He concludes by quoting Genesis 2:24:

"For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."

He then adds:

“This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”

So how does what St. Paul says here in Ephesians 5 exclude women from the priesthood and same sex couples from marriage? Because St. Paul informs us that the mystery of marriage refers to Christ and the Church. This means that the imagery of Christ in relation to the Church is not modeled on the human institution of marriage, but vice versa! From all eternity it was in the will of God that Christ, the Bridegroom, should be united to His Bride, the Church. From all eternity there was intended a complementarity of the masculine with the feminine. This eternal nuptial between Christ and His Bride is what marriage is modeled upon. Therefore, any talk of marriage being between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is nonsense. There is no complementarity between two of the same sex, so no matter what one wishes to call it, it will never be a marriage.

But how does Ephesians 5 exclude women from the priesthood? Precisely because a priest acts in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. Christ as a person on earth was/is a man. And as Christ is married to His Bride, the Church, so too, a man who is ordained as a priest has the Church for His Bride (consequently, this is also an argument for the celibate priesthood, since Christ was not a polygamist, neither should a priest be by having two wives; earthly and heavenly). Now if a woman were to be a priest, there would be two feminine elements instead of the complementarity of masculine and feminine. As explained above, this cannot happen.

Do Ghosts Exist?

2010-08-05T14:09:00.001-05:00

Every year teaching high school, the students always ask whether ghosts exist or not. I have always answered that I don't know of any official teaching of the Church on this matter, but there is an account in Scripture where Samuel's ghost appears to Saul. It appears, however, that in some Jewish traditions there is room for belief in ghosts. The following is a summary of midrashic and talmudic teaching from the Jewish Virtual Library:

When a man dies his soul leaves his body, but for the first 12 months it retains a temporary relationship to it, coming and going until the body has disintegrated. Thus the prophet Samuel was able to be raised from the dead within the first year of his demise. This year remains a purgatorial period for the soul, or according to another view only for the wicked soul, after which the righteous go to paradise, Gan Eden, and the wicked to hell, Geihinnom (Gehinnom; Shab. 152b–153a; Tanh. Va-Yikra 8).

UPDATE: Hat tip to Nick Hardesty of Phat Catholic Apologetics for pointing out this great article on Seven Kinds of Ghosts.

A Brief History Of The Liberal Corruption Of The Bible

2010-08-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

“The roots of the Liberal Protestant attitude towards the Gospels may be traced back to the Renaissance and the Reformation. The student who is interested may study this historical background in the first volume of Carelton J. Hayes’ splendid work, Political and Cultural History of Modern Europe. Without doubt, the Renaissance brought about a change in man’s point of view. In the Middle Ages, men were conscious of this all-important truth that material creation is subordinate to man and man is subordinate to God. The Renaissance dimmed this consciousness by centering man’s attention upon himself through the art forms of pagan culture. The beauty of the art and the fine literary forms made men unaware of the errors which they clothed. Without directly opposing the faith, the Renaissance promoted a growing spirit of pride and individualism. In the sixteenth century, the Protestant revolt from the Church fostered this spirit. After Luther rejected the authority of the Church, subsequent reformers denied the authority of Luther and ultimately all authority.

In the eighteenth century, the Deists presumed as true the hypothesis that any supernatural intervention of God is impossible. They spoke as if they knew exactly what God can and cannot do; as if God were unable to change in any way the world he had created. Eventually, innumerable attempts were made to bring the traditional faith in Christ into harmony with this false hypothesis. In other words, the first attacks on the Gospels, after seventeen hundred years of universal acceptance, did not spring from a scientific and historical examination of them but from philosophical prejudices. These futile attacks agreed only in so far as they denied the supernatural character of Christ. Often they were contradictory and cancelled out one another. This is evident if you glance at a few of them.

Hermann Reimarus and Gotthold Lessius, for example, proposed a ‘deception theory.’ According to them, Christ was merely a man. The Gospels were deliberate fabrications written by Christians in the second century. Some years later David Strauss changed this theory. According to him, the authors of the Gospels actually believed what they wrote for the followers of Christ had unconsciously accepted more and more myths about him. Because it would take a long time for these myths to grow and be accepted as true, Strauss concluded the Gospels were written in the second or third century. He admitted, however, that his hypothesis would collapse if any Gospel was proved to belong to the first century. Today all scholars agree that at least the first three Gospels were written in the first century.

Some moderns who follow in the footsteps of Strauss make Christ the product of Oriental, Babylonian, Egyptian, Syrian, or Greek myths. Needless to say, no two of them agree. Another group of ‘critics’ attempted to find a natural explanation for everything supernatural in the life of Christ. The miracle at Cana, for example, was described as a wedding prank. When Jesus seemed to be walking on the water, he was really walking on a rock just beneath the surface. Countless cures were due to fortunate coincidences following mistaken medical analysis. When Christ fed five thousand men, he merely hypnotized them into believing they ate and were filled. Even when men permitted them to alter the Gospel text, it required unlimited faith to accept their far-fetched suppositions.

Even in recent years, many Liberal Protestants have tried to explain away everything supernatural about Christ by distinguishing between the Christ of faith and the Christ of history. The latter was merely a man who did not rise from the dead. In the beginning, he did not even claim to be divine. The Christ of faith is the product of the imaginations of the early Christians who clothed the human Christ with supernatural qualities. Though the Christ of faith never existed, he is the dynamic source of the Christian life.

The so-called Critical School aimed to prove by means of literary and historical criticism that all miracles and mysteries recorded in the Gospels were not genuine or were interpolations. Most of its members judged the origin, integrity, and trustworthiness of the Gospels from internal evidence alone. But like their predecessors, they endeavored to make the Gospel picture of Christ fit into their preconceived notions. In the beginning their show of scholarship confused and almost routed the conservative Protestants.

All the critics believed the hypothesis that nothing exists outside of the natural order. This dogma of their ‘faith’ compelled them to deny the possibility of miracles and the divinity of Christ. Since the New Testament contains miracles, many critics decided it was genuine. Others declared the miracles and mysteries were interpolations. No two critics agreed on the authors and dates of the Gospels.”

-Joseph H. Cavanaugh, Evidence For Our Faith

Loving God

2010-08-04T18:44:00.000-05:00

“A man may claim he loves his wife. His wife will want to see the evidence. In like manner, we can talk about God all we please, but God will not be fooled. Jesus told the story of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) for a reason. Saying we’re Catholic does not mean we are, except in the thinnest sense. Relationships have consequences in actions. Otherwise, they’re just empty words. Our relationship with God is no exception. When Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love me?” and Peter answers yes, it’s no surprise that Jesus immediately follows up with: “Then feed my sheep” (John 21:17). God loves us always. We can choose to ignore that. All of the damned do. But if we claim to love him, it’s an “if/then” kind of deal, with obligations of conduct and personal honesty just like any good marriage or friendship.

The twist in loving God is that it’s not a standard “I, Thou” affair. It turns out to be an “I, Thou—and everybody else” kind of arrangement. Christian faith is not just vertical. It’s also horizontal. Since God created all human persons and guarantees their dignity by his Fatherhood, we have family duties to one another. That applies especially within the ekklesia—the community of believers we call the church—but it extends to the whole world. This means our faith has social as well as personal implications. And those social implications include the civil dimension of our shared life; in other words, the content of our politics.”

-Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Render Unto Caesar

A New Encyclical...AND A Book!

2010-07-08T13:42:00.001-05:00

Catholic News Agency is reporting that Pope Benedict XVI is planning to write a new encyclical, most likely on Faith, and begin writing a new book while on vacation this summer. The book is going to be "on the Gospels of the infancy of Jesus." Does this mean that the second volume of Jesus of Nazareth will not cover the infancy narratives? Either way, I am eagerly anticipating the publication of all of the above. Let us keep the Holy Father in our prayers for a swift completion of these works (and for continued health)!

The Ethics And Psychology Of Neo-Malthusian Birth-Control

2010-07-07T19:09:00.001-05:00

By the Rev. Fr. Vincent McNabb, O. Pr., S. T. M.

We have deliberately used the phrase, “Neo-Malthusian Birth-Control,” because the simple phrase “Birth-Control” is likely to mislead. It is not accurate to say that the Church condemns birth-control. What the Church condemns, or rather what the Church has no power to allow, is not birth-control, but birth-control by sinful methods. The Church has always had a most efficient method of birth-control, by conjugal and virginal chastity. She has never urged what Neo-Malthusians say she has urged: “reckless propagation.” Indeed, her normal action seems everywhere to have resulted, not in such an increase of population as this island has seen since the industrial revolution, but in a steady maintenance of a high level of population largely dwelling on the land. It is a matter of sociological interest that, if England can be taken as typical, the mediæval Church developed cloistered and vowed chastity even more among men than among women. It comes as a surprise to students of mediæval England that the religious men largely outnumber the religious women. It will easily be seen how great would be the effect of this cloistered chastity on the birth-rate of the country.

Accuracy, therefore, makes us speak, not against birth-control, which the Church has always had her own chaste methods of advocating, but against neo-malthusian birth-control which the Church has no power from her divine Founder to allow.

The Ethics of Neo-Malthusian Birth-Control

Only for the sake of using phrases in common use do we say neo-malthusian “birth-control.” If names should signify, not general likeness, but specific differences, then what we are asked to accept is not even birth-control, but Lust-un-control. As there are many methods of lowering the birth-rate, some lawful and some sinful, the various methods should be named not from their agreements but from their differences. Now the precise difference between the methods we are discussing and all others, is that these neo-malthusian methods allow their users full sexual pleasure without fear of procreation. Therefore the specific motive for refusing other methods and accepting this method, is sexual satisfaction.

It is urged that those who use these methods practice self-control. Agreed. But this self-control proves the intensity of their sexual desires; because the control is not exercised over the sexual desires and pleasures, but over the natural effect of these desires and pleasures. An analogy may make this clearer. X is a would-be-thief. In preparation for this theft he practices total abstinence from intoxicants, and he denies himself hours of sleep in order to work out his plan, he stints his food in order to have money to offer bribes, he learns how to walk without noise, and so on. In other words, he exercises self-control. Yet this self-control is merely for the purpose of preventing all ill effects from this attempted theft. No one would say that X was an advocate of “theft-control.” Indeed all his minute control is but a sign of his intense will to theft. In the same way, all the control, all the minute preparations advocated by the neo-malthusians, are but a proof of the intense will to lust, which is the essence of their control.

If we consider neo-malthusian practices between a man and a woman as such, and not between a husband and wife, these practices are merely a very deliberate and shameless form of mutual masturbation. Ethically speaking, the solitary sin is not so sinful in the individual nor so harmful to the community, as this masturbation within marriage. But as we are discussing the ethics of these acts in the married life, it may be asked whether they, like the normal sex acts, do not lose their sinfulness by the sanction of the wedlock? To this we reply that wedlock, instead of voiding the sinfulness of these acts, increases their sinfulness. Over and above the sinfulness which they have from their opposition to nature, there is the sinfulness they have from their opposition to: (1) a contractual obligation, and (2) a Christian sacrament.

To explain. Christian marriage as such is a contractual, sacramental, and indissoluble society of one man and one woman for the begetting and bringing up of offspring. The essence (and primary perfection) of marriage is the “indissoluble society” of one man and one woman. The primary end (and secondary perfection) is the begetting and bringing up of offspring. Secondary ends are (a) the strength and comfort of home life, and (b) the allaying of lust.

“The primary end of marriage is the begetting and bringing up of offspring; the secondary, mutual help and the allaying of lust.” (Codex Juris Canonici, 1013, ¶1.) The marriage service of the Church of England still retains this traditional doctrine: “First, it (Matrimony) was ordained for the procreation of children, to be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord. . . . Secondly, it was ordained for a remedy against sin and to avoid fornication. . . .Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help and comfort that one ought to have of the other. . . .” (Book of Common Prayer: The Form and Solemnization of Matrimony).

According to the Codex Juris Cononici, marriage is invalid if one or both of the contracting parties by a positive act of the will excludes either: (1) the marriage itself, or (2) all right to the conjugal act, or (3) any essential property of marriage. (Can. 1086, ¶2.) The essential properties of marriage are Unity and Indissolubility (Can. 1013). Acts which would invalidate the contracting of a marriage would be sinful when performed in a marriage already contracted. As the procreation of children is the primary end of marriage, and as venereal pleasure is attached to the sex act in order to induce men and women to the altruistic procreation of offspring, it is clear that the venereal pleasure cannot be sought or procured except in relation to the procreation of offspring. Robbed of this end it becomes but a form of masturbation. Inside the married state it may be called mutual marital masturbation. The sin as such is equal whether the preventative means taken are physical or artificial. But this sin committed in wedlock is greater than if committed outside wedlock, because it is against the contract of marriage which God has raised to the dignity of a sacrament.

So clearly is neo-malthusian birth-control against the primary end of marriage, that the question of the validity of many marriages is now difficult to decide. A common agreement to accept marriage and to use it only with neo-malthusian birth-control would manifestly annul the marriage. But short of this there are cases where, without making a common and explicit agreement, there is an understanding that it should be used with neo-malthusian birth-control; such cases are not easy to settle on the principles of marriage.

When this deliberate or decisive interference with the primary end of marriage is joined to an almost explicit intention to obtain divorce in case of difficulties, the present state of the institution of monogamous marriage becomes more than uncertain.

No doctor has the right to say to a married couple: “You ought not to have any children at all; or, if at all, then, only after a long interval.” All that may be said is a bare statement of the medical fact, in such words as: “In my opinion, if you have another pregnancy at any time, or soon, you will die, or be ill, or risk the life of the child, etc., etc.” “Ought” is an ethical category which should not be used by a doctor, who, professionally speaking, is consulted on the physiological and pathological effects of the case. Still less should the word “ought” be used, say, by a lawyer or an economist who is consulted on the mere economics of the case. If this categorical imperative “ought” is to be used at all, then only by the spiritual physician, the priests, to whom is commissioned the care of the soul. Yet, speaking as a theologian and as a priest of wide experience, I should find it hard to determine the circumstances under which it should be said to a married couple: “You ought not to have children. If you perform the procreative act you will commit sin.”

Again, a doctor cannot advise a contraceptive as such. Great misuse is made of the principle “We can advise the lesser of two evils.” This principle rarely applies; and only when it is a question of two moral evils that hurt no one but the doer. It does not apply to the physical evils. Indeed when physical evil is coupled with moral evil, our advising the use of the principle may be a sin. Thus, if a man is contemplating murder, we cannot use the principle of “two evils” by advising the use of a safe method of killing! We cannot say, “Well, if you will kill, I as an expert on homicide, advise the use of a slow poison which cannot be detected.” In the same way no doctor and no priest can say, and especially cannot accept a fee for saying, “Well, as you are bent on neo-malthusian practice, I advise this or that method as being less dangerous to your health.” This would be to co-operate in the sin.

The Psychology of Birth-Control

This subject is so vast that a cursory treatment of it must be in the nature of an outline.

1. We may quote from an unbiased if not an unwilling authority, Arthus C. Buch, M.I.H. Writing as a convinced neo-malthusian for whom “Birth-Control knowledge has to fulfill its very high moral purpose,” he adds: “Birth-Control – a science and an art – which should be a weapon for the alleviation of human misery and for the improvement of the human race, will become, unless we are very watchful, a mere excuse for indulgence, a conspiracy of wedded people to avoid natural responsibilities (parentage), even if it does not end in the national overthrow of moral restraint, universal nerves, and the premature end of the civilized world.

“For there is no denying that in the present craze stage of Birth-Control. . . it acts as direct opposition to the good of the race.” (The New Generation, April 1923, p. 50).

2. The psychology of neo-malthusian birth-control demands the psychology of the large family in contrast with the small family. It is clear that in the large family as such, the child is brought up in a most stimulating atmosphere of poverty, chastity, and obedience – the three foundations of all stable society. Many of the reasons urged for birth-control, if carried out, would develop a race so selfish as not to be worthy of being born.

As to chastity in the large family, the common life of the two sexes united by the sacred bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood are a training in chastity which has no rival in the world. Catholics have always found that it is the large family as such, with its subtle training in sexual restraint, which is a novitiate for novitiates. As to obedience, no institution in the world offers the same complicated and efficient training.

3. But the psychology of neo-malthusian birth-control demands some account of its effect on the normal parent. Here, again, we must form our judgment by referring to the psychology of the larger family on the parent. It seems almost axiomatic that the parents of the large family are far removed from the sexual uncontrol so commonly attributed to them by modern Neo-Malthusians, and, I regret to add, by many modern “Social Uplifters.” The present writer can only state as his experience that no class of adults has been found by him so averse to discuss Race Suicide as the parents of large families! Psychologically speaking, this delicate chastity of the parent of a large family is not a miracle, but a law of nature. The care of a large family demands so much intellectual and volitional activity that sex-relations as such cease to be central and become peripheral. A father finding food and raiment for his family – or a mother suckling her little one, has a thousand interests above that of procuring sexual satisfaction with the safeguards of an educated neo-malthusianism.

On the other hand, the parents whose marital relations have to give the maximum pleasure with the minimum risk, find their attention fixed on a motive which tends to assume mastery. No one could habitually practice the strategies of the Neo-Malthusians without being sooner or later overcome by an idée fixe. To the present writer it has always seemed that some, if not many, of the leaders of the neo-malthusian birth-control present the pathological features of erotic mania. This erotic mania tends to be a collective obsession. If there is such a psychological phenomenon as mob mania, it is time for us to ask if the present avalanche of sexual activities is not an example of this phenomenon. Psychologically speaking, the neo-malthusian birth-control has effects which tend to be themselves causes of their causes. In other words, it is true psychology to say that sin tends both to feed itself and to feed upon itself. Thus, where there is an exact science and art of procuring sexual pleasures without offspring, facilities are afforded for dissolving marriage. It is the childless marriages that lead to divorce; and, again, it is divorce that leads to childless marriages. Hence, psychologically speaking, neo-malthusian birth-control tends to loosen the marriage tie, and the loosened marriage tie tends to develop neo-malthusian birth-control.

An Additional Task

It is only right to add that, psychologically speaking, and in so far as economic or social states condition mental states, the spread of neo-malthusian birth-control is mainly dependent on the present urban and industrial civilization. It is probably true that this industrialization with its wage basis, and therefore money basis, cannot give the normal family wage to the wage-earner of the normal family.

Now if conjugal abstinence is, objectively speaking, heroic virtue, we must conclude that many of our people are faced with the alternative of the heroic virtue of conjugal abstinence or of sinful neo-malthusian birth-control. We clergy, on whom to a large extent the future of the country depends, must do more than we are perhaps doing to change this urban industrialized civilization which is now giving the Neo-Malthusian the opportunity of posing as the only sane social reformer.

-First published in the Catholic Medical Guardian, Vol. II, No. 5, January 1924

A big thanks to Christine Smith for typing this up and sharing!

Manuscript Evidence And The Pauline Authorship Of Hebrews

2010-07-06T20:35:00.001-05:00

“Opening our modern edition of the New Testament, we find that Hebrews occupies the leaves between Philemon and James, that is between the thirteenth Pauline and the first Catholic Epistle. Does this collocation separate it from the Corpus Paulinum? Manuscript evidence shows that it does not. In the oldest uncials (S A B C) it follows second Thessalonians and precedes the Pastorals. This is also the position which it occupies in most MSS of the Bohairic Version and in the commentary of St. Ephraem… In the archetype or predecessors of Codex B, it stood between Galatians and Ephesians, as the series of sectional numbers on the margin of that Codex shows. In the Sahidic Version, it even preceded Galatians. The Syriac Versions, the later Greek MSS and the Latin MSS assign Hebrews the order to which we are accustomed, namely, fourteenth place at the end of the Paulines. That it earlier found a place tenth after the nine Letters to the Seven Churches, or after the four great Epistles, or within these in the fourth place is a strong testimony of its ascription to St. Paul. Still more eloquent is the order of the Chester-Beatty papyrus Codex of the early third century. Here Hebrews comes immediately after Romans.”

-William Leonard, Authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews.

The Nicene Creed And The Refutation Of Heresies

2010-06-28T07:30:00.001-05:00

We recite the Nicene Creed, which was formulated at the Council of Nicaea (325) and the Council of Constantinople (381), every Sunday at Mass. But do we really take into account all that we are saying? Many people do not know that not only are we professing what we believe, but in the Creed, we are also condemning heretical notions of Christianity. The reason for this is that the Nicene Creed arose out of ancient baptismal interrogations. Before being immersed into water three times, the catechumen was asked if they believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When the fathers of Nicaea wished to condemn Arius, they couldn’t merely have him recite the old formulations, because they were just vague enough to allow for Arianism. So the fathers inserted phrases which would be odious to Arius. They also inserted phrases that would be problematic for other forms of heresy. See below:

We believe in one God, (Against Gnostics)
the Father, the Almighty, (Against Gnostics)
maker of heaven and earth, (Against Gnostics)
and of all that is, seen and unseen. (Against Gnostics)

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God, (Against Gnostics)
eternally begotten of the Father, (Against Arians and Adoptionism)
God from God, Light from Light, (Against Arians)
true God from true God, (Against Arians)
begotten, not made, (Against Arians)
one in Being with the Father. (Against Arians)
Through him all things were made. (Against Gnostics and Arians)
For us men and for our salvation,
he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. (Against Docetism and Ebionism)

For our sake he was crucified
under Pontius Pilate; he suffered died and was buried. (Against Docetism)
On the third day he rose again
in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father. (Against Modalism)
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end. (Against Modalism)

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the Lord, the giver of life, (Against the Pneumatomachians [The Spirit Fighters])
who proceeds from the Father (Against the Pneumatomachians [The Spirit Fighters])

and the Son. (Against the Greeks. Originally against the Arians)
With the Father and the Son (Against the Pneumatomachians [The Spirit Fighters])
he is worshipped and glorified. (Against the Pneumatomachians [The Spirit Fighters])
He has spoken through the Prophets. (Against the Pneumatomachians [The Spirit Fighters])
We believe in one holy
catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one
baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come.
Amen.

Book Review: The Old Testament Documents

2010-06-19T21:00:00.008-05:00

Length: 239 pages
Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches
Binding: paperback
Publisher: IVP Academic (August 2001)
ISBN: 978-0-8308-1975-1
IVP Order Code: 1975

With the wasteland of scholarship that exists in modern biblical studies, it is refreshing to find a scholar who approaches the Old Testament texts as the Word of God. That scholar is Walter C. Kaiser Jr., president emeritus and Colman M. Mockler Distinguished Professor of Old Testament at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Kaiser envisions his The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable & Relevant? as a companion volume to the classic work by F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

Kaiser’s book serves as a refreshing introduction to the Old Testament. The books are judged on their own merit and based on their own claims—which are to be the revelation of God given to His people. He lays great importance in discovering what the texts, as they stand, mean to us. The several books are united by virtue of being the Word of God and so they should be read as a unity, each individual book having its place in the wider narrative of salvation history. With this hermeneutic in mind, he brings to light evidence against the tendency to break up individual books (specifically the Pentateuch) into little pieces in hopes of finding supposed sources, such as the Wellhausenian J, E, P, and D.

The greatest treasure of this book is the copious amounts of archeological corroboration Kaiser uses to show that the Old Testament documents are indeed reliable. One such example is of the walls at Jericho, which in the biblical account fell after Joshua led his army around while blowing trumpets. Many modern scholars doubt that this evident ever happened, or at least not as is told in the book of Joshua. Yet, Kaiser explains that the archeological excavations done at Jericho show that the walls fell outward supporting Joshua’s description that the walls “fell down flat” (Josh. 6:20) making it so that every man could charge straight into the city. Also, the mass amounts of grain found in the city support the biblical account of a swift fall of Jericho, rather than a long siege in which the attackers waited for the inhabitants to starve.

Kaiser also talks about the Old Testament Canon and here is where I, as a Catholic, disagree with the eminent Protestant. Kaiser and other Protestants affirm only 39 books of the Old Testament as Canonical (they leave out Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus [also known as Sirach], Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees), whereas Catholics hold that there are 46 books. Kaiser asks the question, “Who…made the decision as to what books were to be included in the canon and what were the criteria that were used?” He answers his question by stating, “The answer we could give is that there is no evidence that any group, council, or any other religious or nonreligious body made such as decision, much less left a clue as to what their criteria were.” This is simply false.

The Christian Canon of the Old Testament was established first in 382 at the Council of Rome which was held under Pope Damasus. Here is what is has to say:

“Likewise it has been said: Now indeed we must treat of the divine Scriptures, what the universal Catholic Church accepts and what she ought to shun.

The order of the Old Testament begins here: Genesis one book, Exodus one book, Leviticus one book, Numbers one book, Deuteronomy one book, Josue Nave one book, Judges one book, Ruth one book, Kings four books (meaning 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings), Paralipomenon two books (1 and 2 Chronicles), Psalms one book, Solomon three books, Proverbs one book, Ecclesiastes one book, Canticle of Canticles one book, likewise Wisdom one book, Ecclesiasticus (Sirach) one book.

Likewise the order of the Prophets. Isaias one book, Jeremias one book (Baruch is included here), with Ginoth, that is, with his lamentations, Ezechiel one book, Daniel one book, Osee (Hosea) one book, Amos one book, Micheas (Micah) one book, Joel one book, Abdias (Obadiah) one book, Jonas (Jonah) one book, Nahum one book, Habacuc one book, Sophonias (Zephaniah) one book, Aggeus (Haggai) one book, Zacharias one book, Malachias one book.

Likewise the order of the histories. Job one book, Tobias one book, Esdras two books (Ezra and Nehemiah), Esther one book, Judith one book, Machabees two books.

Notice that there isn’t any talk of a “second-canon” or “deuterocanonical” books. There was only ONE canon of Sacred Scripture. The seven books that the Protestants reject never had a secondary status! The later councils of Hippo and Carthage (393 and 397) both affirmed the same books as being canonical. Then in 405, Pope Innocent I in his epistle “Consulenti tibi” to Exuperius, Bishop of Toulouse, enumerates the same books that were listed at Rome, Hippo, and Carthage as being canonical. From here on until 1442 there is no more talk of the canon amongst the Popes or councils of the Church. The Council of Florence in 1442 lists the same as has been listed previously, again with no mention of a second canon. There has always only been ONE canon, and one alone. Then in 1546, at the Council of Trent, the Church reaffirms the list found at Florence in reaction against the Protestants taking out of the seven books mentioned previously. Thus, history witnesses against Kaiser’s claim that “At the Council of Trent (A.D. 1546), the Roman Catholic Church also added as canonical [the seven books]…though always with a secondary or deuterocanonical status.” Although, to Kaiser’s credit, he does not try to invoke the oft used myth that a council of rabbis took place at Jamnia which settled the Hebrew canon in 90 A.D. Instead, he firmly rejects the notion and states that all that took place at Jamnia was a discussion on how to interpret the books of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. There was no mention of their canonical status. On top of all that, if Jamnia did settle the Jewish canon, which it did not, why would the Church be bound to accept it? It wouldn’t and any notion that it should is to be rejected as ludicrous.

Canon issues aside, the book on a whole is a great introduction to the Old Testament. Are the texts reliable and relevant? Walter Kaiser is no Marcionite and the answer is a definite “Yes!” I highly recommend this book to all and praise IVP Academic for publishing it. It is books like this that makes Intervarsity Press one of my favorite publishers! Many thanks once again to Heather Mascarello and the good folks at InterVarsity Press who have provided me with a review copy of The Old Testament Documents by Walter Kaiser.

My Greatest Love: A Jew

2010-06-18T16:47:00.004-05:00

St. Josemaria Escriva participates in interreligious dialogue.

Two Creation Accounts?

2010-06-16T20:09:00.005-05:00

Here is a good summary of the reasons to reject the Documentary Hypothesis concerning Genesis 1-2.

Another point concerning the two names for God found in Gen. 1 and 2, that the author of the article did not mention, is that since Gen. 1 describes a broad view of creation, the generic name for God ("Elohim") is used. Whereas in the more intimate account of creation in Gen. 2 focusing on man, the covenant name for God ("Yahweh") is used, which is entirely fitting.

The Righteousness Of God

2010-05-22T16:08:00.001-05:00

“The problem of the proper interpretation of dikaiosyne theou in Romans has been one of the hotly debated issues in New Testament studies over the past generation, but rare is the critic who even considers the possibility of interpreting Paul’s ‘righteousness of God’ language against the background of the LXX. Learned scholars have argued bitterly whether dikaiosyne theou was a technical term in Jewish apocalyptic thought, as attested especially in the Qumran texts, or whether it was a new creation of Paul’s theological genius, without ever observing that the very Old Testament texts quoted by Paul in Romans 3 already introduce the idea of God’s righteousness. This remarkable oversight illustrates the power of hermeneutical conventions in shaping a community’s reading of its canonical texts. The Reformation theme of justification by faith has so obsessed generations of readers (Protestant readers, at least) that they have set Law and gospel in simplistic antithesis, ignoring the internal signs of coherence in Rom. 3:1-26; consequently, they have failed to see that Paul’s argument is primarily an argument about theodicy, not about soteriology. The driving question in Romans is not ‘How can I find a gracious God?’ but ‘How can we trust in this allegedly gracious God if he abandons his promises to Israel?’ Christian caricatures of the Old Testament have made it difficult for belated generations of Gentile readers to grasp Paul’s passion for asserting the continuity of his gospel with the message of the Law and the Prophets. By following the echoes of Psalm 143, however, we can rediscover the scriptural idea of God’s saving justice at the foundation of Paul’s argument in Romans.

That is why Paul insists (Rom. 3:31) that his gospel does not annihilate the Law but establishes it. How so? First of all, Paul’s proclamation presents the righteousness of God not as some unheard-of soteriological novelty but as the manifestation of a truth attested by Scripture from the first. When he says that his message confirms the Law, he refers not to the specific commandments of the Pentateuch but to the witness of Scripture, read as a narrative about God’s gracious election of a people. That is why the Abraham story becomes for Paul the crucial test case. If he can show, as he sets out to do in Romans 4, that the story of Abraham supports his reading of God’s Gentile-embracing grace, then he will have demonstrated, to his own satisfaction at least, the unity of gospel and Law.”

-Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul