iacobusm Faith and Culture, The Church

This Is No Time to Despair

 No Time to Despair

     This is no time to despair. Lord knows, it’s a temptation.  It’s a great temptation. The last couple of years particularly have forced even the naive among us to face up to the corruption in our society.  Government institutions and private institutions alike (and very often, in concert) have abandoned their responsibilities in pursuit of raw power.  Even the institutional Church seemed to abandon us. Christianity itself is declining, both in it’s social influence, and in the number of believers.  Increasingly fewer people see the need for Jesus in their lives.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair;  persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;  always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 

(2 Corinthians 4:8-10)

     And yet it’s not the time for despair, if we really trust in the promises of Christ.  None of the things I mention above should surprise us.  It’s the way of worldly institutions to be driven by worldly concerns.  As regards the Church, it’s far from the first time her institutional side has followed its worldly counterparts instead of the Sermon on the Mount. The downturn in Christian belief is more a cause of concern, but that, too, we have known about for a long time.  One of the most well known predictions of the decline came in a radio talk on Christmas Day, 1969. The speaker was a young Catholic priest and university professor named Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI).  Fr. Ratzinger famously foretold that “the Church of tomorrow”  would be “a Church that has lost much.”

 

Edifices Built in Prosperity

Fr. Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)

    I discuss Fr. Ratzinger’s radio address at length in another post (“A Smaller, Purer Church?“).  I’m just touching on it today because of what follows the line I quote above. Fr. Ratzinger starts to flesh out some of the implications of what it means to have lost much:

 

She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges.

 

     So, what happens to those “edifices she built in prosperity” which she can no longer inhabit?  A church is no ordinary edifice.  In my recent post on the Basilica of St.s Peter and Paul in Lewiston, Maine, I said:

 

Churches are much more than just buildings.  They are enormous sacramentals, consecrated objects that can help connect us to the Grace of a God who is pure Spirit. Churches are iconic representations that teach us at an unconscious level about an ordered Universe with God at the apex.

 

When A Church Is No Longer A Church

    Once one of these buildings no longer serves as a church, it still communicates something of its sacramental character.  The Pontifical Council of Culture, in the document Decommissioning and Ecclesial Reuse of Churches, says of these formerly sacred buildings:

 

 Their evangelizing readability remains even if they lose their liturgical functionality. A church building, in fact, cannot be valued only in terms of functional use . . . So the cessation of the liturgical use of a space in no way automatically brings about its reduction to a building devoid of meaning and freely transformable into anything different; the significance it has acquired over time and its real presence within the community are not, in fact, reducible to technical or financial statistics.

 

Preferred Reuses

     For this reason the Church has developed guidelines that govern what happens to a church building once it is no longer a church.  This is less of a problem if the building remains Church property.  But what if it’s to be sold?  According to the Council on Culture document on decommisioning and reuse:

 

As far as possible and compatibly with the original intention of the building, it is desirable that when it can no longer be maintained as a religious building as such, an effort be made to ensure a new use, whether religious (for example, entrusting it to other Christian communities), cultural or charitable. Commercial for-profit reuses seem to be excluded, while social enterprise usage may be considered. What should be preferred are reuses with cultural aims (museums, conference halls, bookshops, libraries, archives, artistic workshops etc.), or social aims (meeting places, charity centers, healthcare clinics, foodbanks for the poor etc.).  

Caveat Vendor

     Of course, once the Church has sold the property, no matter how careful the vetting process, she has no control over what subsequent owners may do.  I do know of some former Catholic churches that serve as places of worship for other Christian communities. That’s the best outcome under the circumstances.

     Not all former churches fare as well. I’m familiar with another retired church building which is home to a youth theater group, which seems to correspond to the guidelines above.  But there’s a complication. They have recently painted a very large and bright mural across the entire back wall of the structure.  I certainly understand their desire to decorate their premises.  And they have every right to do so, since they own the property.  The problem is, the building still looks in other respects very much like a place of worship. There’s something jarring about this mural in this location. Even worse, it looks disrespectful to those of us who remember the formerly sacred character of the building.

     Sometimes worse things than that happen once a church becomes somebody’s personal property. I know of one that is now a dining and entertainment venue, which definitely falls outside the guidelines for proper use.  I got the idea for this post when I saw a picture online of yet another former Catholic church that is now a Masonic hall (you can read the sad story of this particular former church at The Pillar).

Signs of the Sacred

     Sometimes, thankfully, a former church finds a happier fate.  I wrote about the Basilica of St.s Peter and Paul in Lewiston, Maine, last week.  Today I’d like to talk about another building in Lewiston.  I attended a meeting a few years ago at a place called the Franco Center, formerly the Franco American Heritage Center. I was a little surprised when I arrived because it looked just like a church. As a matter of fact, for most of its existence it went by the name of St. Mary’s Church.  There’s always something sad about a former Catholic church building converted to secular use.  This one, however, has retained an unusual number of churchy details.

     Its new name, Franco Center, is in part a reflection of its new function as a community center for the large French Canadian community in central Maine. It also serves as a museum celebrating the history of that community. That’s the reason why so much of its formerly sacred function is still on display. It’s commemorating the huge part Catholicism has played in the lives of French Canadians in New England.

     It’s quite an impressive display for an ostensibly secular building. There’s a large crucifix, for instance, in a glass case in the lobby.  Inside what used to be the nave of the church displays contain, among other historical artifacts, vestments and prayer books.  In regard to the structure itself very few of the sacred architectural details have been removed or hidden.

The Gates of Hell Will Not Prevail

     As unusual as those things are in a secular building, there is something else that took me by surprise when I first visited the Franco Center. In order to accommodate theater-style seating in the central nave, a new floor had been built that sloped up from front to back, until it reached the pointed tops of the Gothic arches that had towered over worshipers in years past (see photo above).  When I climbed atop this structure to my seat an unexpected sight greeted me: although the high altar itself was gone, its towering wooden reredos remained (or better yet, this having been a French-speaking parish, it’s retable).  The niche for the tabernacle was still visible, the red Alpha and Omega still stood out prominently, and above all, a big beautiful Madonna holding the Baby Jesus.

     It was a wonderful sight, but it prompted thoughts both negative and positive.  On the negative side, I was struck with the realization that this secular hall still looked more like a Catholic Church than many recent church buildings still being used for that purpose. The ugliness of so much modern church design is deplorable in itself, but also a sign of much that has gone wrong, both in the Church and in society. It’s a tangible embodiment of all those things (see the first paragraph above) that tempt us to despair.

No Time to Despair, Now or Ever

     On the plus side, however, it’s a sign that, however difficult things may look along the way, the Gates of Hell will not prevail (see Matthew 16:17).  The Christian roots of our culture have a way of showing up in all sorts of places. The evangelizing readability, as the Council for Culture inelegantly but truly put it, remains. Whenever the Church looks to be in danger of losing her way, God raises up a St. Benedict or a St. Francis of Assisi.  Our Lord  not abandoned us.

     This is no time for despair. A baptized Christian may lose his or her faith, but will always retain the mark of baptism. A one-time church, once desacralized, never completely loses its sacred character. A formerly Christian culture will never, however hard it tries, completely forget Christ.  Every time you see an apartment building with a steeple, or the outline of a cross on the side of a recreation center, let it remind you: now is not the time to despair.  Christ will come again.

Featured image top of page: Church for sale in Christchurch, NZ (stuff.co.nz)

iacobusm The Church

A Hand Slap to the Traditional Latin Mass

Introibo ad altare Dei ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam. “I will go up to the altar of God, to God who makes joyful my youth” – Psalm 43:4

There is a well-known story about Canute, King of England and much of Scandinavia in the 11th century, who wanted to illustrate insignificance of human authority:

When he was at the height of his ascendancy, [Canute] ordered his chair to be placed on the sea-shore as the tide was coming in. Then he said to the rising tide, “You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.” But the sea came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins. So jumping back, the king cried, “Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws.” (from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum)

If only all princes were equally aware of the limits of their power.

You have probably already heard that the rumored blow against the Traditonal Latin Mass (TLM) has finally fallen in the form of Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. It is actually harsher than what the rumors anticipated.  The fear was that Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu propio Summorum Pontificum would be revoked, which would return the TLM to the somewhat more restricted status that existed under Pope St. John Paul II.  Traditionis Custodes goes much further, revoking every papal intervention favorable to the traditional Mass over the past half century.  As Francis explains in the letter that accompanies the document:

I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II [i.e., the post Vatican II Mass], in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.

The Pope also makes it clear that when he says the new Mass should “constitute the unique expression”, he means that the end result he envisions is that the TLM should eventually cease altogether (my bold):

St. Paul VI, recalling that the work of adaptation of the Roman Missal had already been initiated by Pius XII, declared that the revision of the Roman Missal, carried out in the light of ancient liturgical sources, had the goal of permitting the Church to raise up, in the variety of languages, “a single and identical prayer,” that expressed her unity. This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.

     I’ll leave it to those more competent than myself to examine the document in detail (here are  a few I’ve seen so far:  a good explanation of its provisions here at Life Site News, another here at The Pillar, and an informative ongoing discussion on Fr. Z’s blog). It will be helpful, however, to look at a few of the main takeaways. Summorum Pontificum had allowed priests to offer the TLM without asking permission, and had encouraged local ordinaries to provide the Latin Mass to “stable” groups of the faithful who desired it.  The new promulgation requires priests to obtain permission from their bishop (and newly ordained priests to receive permission from the Vatican itself). Another new provision is that parish churches should no longer be used; bishops should establish “one or more locations” for the celebration of the TLM in their dioceses (numerous commentators have wondered where these locations will be if parish churches are off the table).  Traditionis Custodes does not provide any transitional period for implementing these and other changes, but stipulates that they come into force “immediately”, a provision  Fr. John Zuhlsdorf justly describes as “cruel”.

Cardinal Robert Sarah celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass (image from Gloria.tv)

     As sweeping as the changes in Traditionis Custodes seem to be, however, it is not at all clear how much impact the motu proprio will actually have.  The implementation is being left up to each bishop in his own diocese:

It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum.

Pope Francis cited the results of a survey of bishops in his letter.  It’s unclear how many urged him to move against the TLM, but we know that some bishops are hostile (very often the same ones who resist confronting Catholics who publicly defy Church teaching: see here and here). At the same time, I find it very hard to believe that a majority of bishops favor this scheme. No doubt the hostile bishops will make the most of the new restrictions, but little will change for the present in many, maybe most, dioceses.  Fr. Z has already posted letters from several bishops to the effect that, for now, the TLM will continue as it has been.

     Of more immediate concern is the deleterious effect on the morale of the troops in the Church Militant.  When I first heard the news about Traditionis Custodes I immediately thought of Justice Byron White’s description of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which instantly wiped away all abortion laws in all 50 states.  White famously referred to the notorious ruling as “an exercise in raw judicial power.” Pope Francis’s motu proprio is no less an exercise in raw papal power, and, like Roe v. Wade, can’t help but deepen and inflame the divisions it purports to heal.  It’s likely that one immediate effect will be to drive more Catholics into the Society of St. Pius X which, although it has never been in actual schism, continues to enjoy an irregular relationship with the Universal Church.  That is hardly the way to bring about the “unity” the Pope claims to be aiming for.

     Despite that, I remain convinced that the long-term goal of shutting down the TLM completely is out of reach.  In fact, this move may have the opposite effect of making it even more attractive to the most committed Catholics. In a previous post (“Finding the Future in the Past: Why The Latin Mass is not Going Away”) I compared the then-rumored revocation of Summorum Pontificum to World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, a last-ditch effort by an already beaten power that could hope only to forestall inevitable defeat. The losing army in this case is the “Spirit” of Vatican II, whose advocates enjoy outsized influence in chanceries and in structures like the USCCB bureaucracy, but have much less (and dwindling) support among Catholics who are young or devout, and among the younger priests and bishops.  The most fervent and dynamic Catholics, lay and clerical, cannot be browbeaten into embracing  a vision of the Church as this-worldly social services agency or into loving a Eucharistic liturgy that is more evocative of a secular business meeting than of the choirs of heaven.

     Nonetheless, the beautiful traditional Mass may become less available for a time.  There is one thing, however, that Pope Francis says in his letter that we can use for the benefit both of those who want to attend the TLM but can’t, and those who simply attend the post Vatican II Mass:

At the same time, I am saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides. In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that “in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions”.

The opening of Vatican II, 1962

     There you have it: Pope Francis is on record that he doesn’t like abuses of the new Missal. I say we hold him to it. As it happens, it is possible to celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass according to the rubrics and have something that is much more like the TLM than what most Catholics see today, and is in fact much closer to the reformed liturgy envisioned in the documents of Vatican II (one of the Pope’s reasons for restricting the TLM was because he believes it encourages a rejection of  Vatican II). There is no stipulation in the rubrics, for instance, that the priest face the congregation, instead of facing the altar with the people. There is no reason why we can’t encourage Catholics to receive communion on the tongue (kneeling, while we’re at it), with an altar server holding a paten under the chin.  Latin is still the official language of the Mass, and a priest doesn’t need anybody’s permission to say even the post-Vatican II Mass in Latin (for any of you who don’t know Latin, by the way, it’s never too late to start learning).  There is a vast store of beautiful sacred music that can be restored to parish churches everywhere. None of these things are abuses or distortions, and all of them make a more reverent Mass, a Mass much closer to the TLM in appearance and in spirit.  

     Most of us, of course, aren’t priests or bishops, and it’s up to the clergy to offer up the Mass.  We are all capable of making our voices heard, however, respectfully and positively, but insistently:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  (Matthew 7:7-10)

     We need to keep asking for bread and fish, directly and indirectly, individually and in groups.

     This is not to say, by the way, that I am advocating giving up on the TLM: far from it.  I am saying that now is the time for the vox populi to be heard: we need to make it clear that we need a holy, reverent, spiritually nourishing  divine liturgy that shows gives us a glimpse here on Earth of the liturgy that, God willing, awaits us in Heaven.  As I said above, the TLM isn’t going away, whatever the aging veterans of the Spirit of Vatican II may wish.  At the same time, it doesn’t require any interventions from Rome to offer Catholics attending what Benedict XVI referred to as the Ordinary Form of the Mass something much more beautiful and inspiring than what they’re getting now. I’ve seen it done at a couple of faithful Catholic Colleges, I’ve seen it done in a diocesan Cathedral.

     Understandably, many of us feel shocked and saddened, even betrayed, by the Pope’s intervention.  I’ll let the first Pope have the last word::

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

iacobusm Faith and Sin, The Church

Eucharistic Adoration: Sitting at the Feet of the Lord

    How often we are reminded that we are not incontrol.  My laptop died, and all the alternatives are limited and very slow.  I had planned a new post on current Eucharistic controversies this weekend, but it won’t be ready on time.  Instead, I’m reposting a piece that was originally a talk on Eucharistic Adoration that I was asked to deliver in my then-parish a few years ago:

    As Catholics, we are blessed to have some wonderful devotional practices that help us grow closer to Christ.  One of the most profound of these is Eucharistic Adoration.  My wife and I were recently asked to help encourage participation in Adoration in our parish, in the course of which we ourselves came to see dimensions of this great gift that we hadn’t considered before. 

     For one thing, we both thought immediately of scriptural connections. My lovely bride thought of the passage from First Kings (1 Kings 19:10-13) where the Lord tells the prophet Elijah to stand on the mountain, for “The Lord is about to pass by”.  There’s a mighty wind, an earthquake, and a roaring fire, but God is not in any of those things; instead, Elijah encounters the Lord in a “gentle whispering”. 

     Just as God does not appear to Elijah in any of the grand and dramatic forms we might expect, so Jesus enters the world as a tiny baby, and continues to manifest himself to us as a simple piece of bread.  Eucharistic Adoration gives us a chance to shut out all the storm and stress of our daily lives while we contemplate the infinite God embodied in that piece of bread, and hear his gentle whisper.

     My own first thought was the passage from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 10:38-42) where Jesus is visiting the sisters Martha and Mary.  Martha, who is “worried about many things”, is frantically bustling about the house, while Mary simply sits at the feet of Jesus, watching and listening.  When Martha complains that Mary isn’t helping her, Jesus answers that Mary has chosen “the better part, and it will not be taken away from her”. 

     Most of us can probably identify with Martha: always “worried about many things”, and too distracted to notice the Lord.  Adoration is a great opportunity to give our “inner Martha” a rest and, like Mary, choose “the better part”. After all, what is Eucharistic Adoration, if not watching and listening at the feet of Jesus?

     What’s true for us as individuals also applies to us communally.  However important, even necessary, all of our various activities, committees, and causes may be, they can overshadow “the one thing”, as Jesus tells Martha, “that is needful”.  What better reminder that Christ is the Center than a parish putting aside twelve hours in the middle of the week to sit at the Master’s feet?  It keeps us from becoming nothing but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals (1 Corinthians 13:1).

     My brief comments here can’t even begin to explore the depth of meaning contained in the Eucharist. God who created us knows what we need; having given us both body and soul, he knows we need material means to understand spiritual realities.  The opportunity to kneel in adoration before our Eucharistic Lord is a gift we can’t afford to pass up. 

Featured image top of page: “Christ in the House of Mary and Martha” by Vermeer, 1655

iacobusm Faith and Politics, Pro-Life, The Church

Discerning the Body: The Bishops, The Politicians, and The Eucharist

Qui bene distinguit bene docet

     It is now abundantly clear to all of us, I hope, that St. Paul’s warning about the eternal battle “against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12) is not just a rhetorical trope.  It’s raging all around us with a palpable intensity.  One of the clearest signs is that more and more of our institutions are taking up and loudly proclaiming the ancient lie first whispered by the Father of Lies to our first parents: “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5) The New Orthodoxy, in fact, goes beyond determining good and evil for ourselves: even external realities like male and female must bow before the the power of the “awakened” human will.  Anyone with the temerity to question the new teachings will be told, as Lot was by the men of Sodom:  “This fellow came to sojourn, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” (Genesis 19:9)

    When you consider the nature of the current struggle, it seems clear that language is one of the main fronts in the war right now.  Above I referred to Satan as the “father of lies”.  That title is bestowed on him by Jesus himself: “When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But, because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.” (John 8:44-45) To the extent that we’re wading through a sea of lies, we’re fighting on the Enemy’s chosen ground.  We need to find a way to move the battle back to dry land, to the truth.

     That’s where the Latin adage above comes in: Qui bene distinguit bene docet, “He who distinguishes well, teaches well”.  A sure way to deceive people either by misdirection or by appealing to their desires, is to obscure the distinction between the truth and a falsehood that bears a passing resemblance to the truth.  Promoters of killing embryonic human beings for their stem cells, for instance, will leave out the important qualifier “embryonic” and say that those who oppose the practice are “against stem cells”.  In this way they suggest that opponents of embryonic stem cell mining are also against the morally benign and medically beneficial use of adult stem cells, and that they are therefore “anti-science,” and “against medical treatments”, etc. etc.  That’s a lie, because most opponents of embryonic stem cell research support the use of adult stem cells.

     I should make a caveat at this point: yes, whenever we lie, and whenever we distort or corrupt the language in order to deceive, we are by definition doing the Devil’s work.  That doesn’t mean that everyone who gets on board with a false narrative is in League With Satan.  I’m sure most such people believe that they are on the side of the (unfallen) angels.  At the same time, that doesn’t mean that they (or we, when we do it) aren’t at fault.  We are responsible for properly forming our consciences, and when we ought to know better, well, we ought to know better.

Bene Docet

     This brings us to the second half of our legal maxim, bene docet, “teaches well”. If we don’t know the truth because we failed to distinguish well, we will not be able to teach well. How well could I teach Latin, for example, if I couldn’t (or didn’t) distinguish nouns from verbs?  As it happens, there are more important truths to be taught than proper Latin grammar (if you can believe it).  There are truths, or maybe better there is Truth, that is essential for our eternal salvation . . . and there are men who are specially commissioned to teach it.

     I’m talking about the bishops of the Catholic Church, of course.  The three most essential tasks given to a bishop are these: to teach, to govern, and to sanctify.  One of the most important things they are responsible for teaching is, in fact, just what we are celebrating this weekend: Christ’s real Presence, Body and Blood, in the Eucharist.  How well are they teaching it? According to a study published by the Pew Research Center two years ago, not very. You’ve probably heard the bottom-line finding: 70% of Catholics don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in Eucharist.

     That figure alone doesn’t tell us anything about why they don’t believe, but a deeper dig into the report turns up some interesting details:

Most Catholics who believe that the bread and wine are symbolic do not know that the church holds that transubstantiation occurs. Overall, 43% of Catholics believe that the bread and wine are symbolic and also that this reflects the position of the church. Still, one-in-five Catholics (22%) reject the idea of transubstantiation, even though they know about the church’s teaching.

The vast majority of those who believe that the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ – 28% of all Catholics – do know that this is what the church teaches.

What’s striking here is that the largest segment of Catholics, more than four out of every ten, don’t believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, but not because they’ve rejected the doctrine: they don’t even know that it is the doctrine. That is a huge failure on the part of those responsible for teaching in the Church, but a great opportunity as well. Who knows what might happen if somebody tells them what the Catholic Church really believes?

Exempla Docent

  A smaller group, but still much too large, are those who say they know the teaching, but reject it.  This is a tougher nut to crack.  The Pew survey doesn’t go into why they don’t believe or why, despite rejecting a foundational Church doctrine, they still consider themselves Catholic. No doubt they don’t think it’s terribly important.  Isn’t that the message they get from the institutional Church?  It’s unlikely they’ve heard much of an explanation or defense of the doctrine of transubstantiation, unless they’ve actively sought it out.  

Speaking of teaching, here’s another Latin maxim: exempla docent: examples teach. The reception of Communion seems a pretty casual affair in many places without the patens, communion rails, and reception on the tongue that served as concrete reminders to earlier generations of just what, or better yet Whom, they are receiving. And not only that:  everyone receives. Everyone and anyone, it seems, is worthy to receive the Body and Blood of Our Lord, even promoters and purveyors of a practice as abominable as abortion.  

     Let’s go back for a moment to bene distinguit.  We need to distinguish between doctrinal teaching and mere opinion. We need to make the distinction between a state of grace and a state of sin. We need to distinguish the Body and Blood of Christ from ordinary bread and wine. The Church tells us that the Eucharist is the Summit and Source of the Christian Life, but millions of Catholics are at risk of losing their Life in Christ, and they don’t even know it.

Qui Non Bene Distinguit, Non Bene Docet

     That is the issue that many of our Teachers in the Church fail to discern in the current controversy over Eucharistic Coherence, which, as we saw recently, simply refers to the question of whether to admit public, unrepentent advocates of legal abortion and other evil practices to Holy Communion.  Those who say that to exclude such people is to “politicize” or “weaponize” the Eucharist are failing to distinguish between the practice of faith and mere politics.  In doing so, they endorse the view that the deliberate destruction of innocent human life is not an issue of Good and Evil, but simply a policy disagreement.  Qui non bene distinquit, non bene docet.

     The issue isn’t political advantage for one party or another, the issue is life itself . . . eternal life.  Let’s add a little Greek lesson to the Latin.  In secular parlance, a “scandal” is when a prominent person is publicly embarassed.  That’s not the original meaning , or the Catholic meaning of the word, however.  In Greek σκάνδαλον originally meant the trigger of a trap, the stick that, knocked out of place, causes the snare to catch the victim.  From there we get the Christian meaning of scandal, a practice or behavior that blurs the distinction between right and wrong, and in so doing ensnares people in Sin.

Bene Distinguant Episcopi Nostri

     The issue here is not that the politicians in question are politicians per se, it is that that as prominent people who represent themselves as Catholic they are publicly using their influence to promote things that are gravely sinful.  When those responsible for teaching, governing, and sanctifying fail to distinguish the true dimensions of the problem, and fail to govern by allowing those who persist in openly promoting sin to receive communion, the appointed teachers are teaching by their actions that the Body and Blood of Our Lord is simply not that important.  As St. Paul reminds us, unworthy reception of communion is not sanctifying, but condemning:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.  Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.  For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.  That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. (1 Corinthians 27-30)

The real issue is not politics, but the saving of souls, the souls of the politicians in question and the souls of those whom they ensnare by their example.  Bene distinguant Episcopi nostri – May our bishops distinguish well.

Feature image: “The Anti-Christ” from the Cathedral of Orvieto, painted by Luca Signorelli 1499-1500.

iacobusm Sacred scripture, Saints, The Church

The Church’s First Decision and The First Successor to the Apostles: St. Mathias

     Not everyone, it would seem, is pleased with the current Roman Pontiff.  If that hadn’t been clear to me already, it would certainly be apparent in many of the comments some of my recent posts (this one and this one, for instance) have received in various online venues.  Who would have thought it?

     Happily, I’m not writing today to discuss the worthiness (or lack thereof) of Pope Francis for his current job.  Instead we’re looking at St. Mathias, whose feast we are celebrating. I mention the current Pope because our discussion of St. Mathias will necessarily involve the papal office, if not the papal personality.

    St. Mathias was the thirteenth Apostle, chosen to replace Judas Iscariot after Judas betrayed the Lord then took his own life. It’s interesting that our scriptural sources actually tell us very little about St. Mathias himself.  The only place he is mentioned by name is the passage is the Acts of the Apostles that describes his election:

In those days Peter stood up among the brethren (the company of persons was in all about a hundred and twenty), and said, “Brethren, the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David, concerning Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus.  For he was numbered among us, and was allotted his share in this ministry . . . For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his habitation become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it’; and ‘His office let another take.’  So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us–one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, “Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which one of these two thou hast chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside, to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was enrolled with the eleven apostles. (Acts 1:15-26)

    Notice that the only personal information we have about st. Mathias, aside from the fact of his election, was that he had been a follower of Jesus since the beginning of his ministry. That’s all. Now, as an Apostle Mathias was ipso facto an important person, and there are various traditions identifying him with other names that come up in the New Testament, and about his ministry and martyrdom; the passage above, however,  is the only canonical information we have.  Which is to say that whatever importance he had in his own time, his significance for us lies in the very fact and manner of his selection.

     So, what do we see in this passage?  We see Peter taking the initiative: he presides and authoritatively interprets Scripture.  We see also that it is universally understood that the Apostles hold an office that someone must fill when another relinquishes it, and it is accepted that their choice is guided by the Holy Spirit. We also have concrete confirmation that Jesus’ mission didn’t pass from the world when he ascended into Heaven, but was to be carried forward by his followers.

     This passage and others like it were very important to me at the time of my reversion to the Church after my exile among the secular humanists. One of the first things I did following my own initial conversion experience was to read through the New Testament, where I could see in this passage not just the Early Church, but the Catholic Church with Pope and Bishops already in place just a few days after the Ascension.  Not only that, it’s clear that they were already exercising magisterial authority, with the help of the Third Person of the Trinity, even before the full outpouring of the Holy Spirit a few days later at Pentacost.  It confirmed for me that if I wanted to set aside my disordered life and follow Jesus, I also needed to submit to the authority of the Church that He had established from the beginning.

“As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”  (John 20:21)

“The Great Commission” by Szymon Czechowicz, 1758

     That’s not to say that we owe unthinking obedience to all pronouncements from persons holding positions of authority in the Church (this is a topic I also discuss in “What Do We Do When Our Priest Is A Communist?” Part I & Part II).  Let’s remember that the passage from the Acts of the Apostles above tells us more about the need to fill an office that’s been vacated by the wrongdoing of its occupant than it does about the personal qualities of the new Apostle Mathias. The holders of office come and go, but the office itself remains, and retains the authority invested in it by none other than Jesus Christ himself.  That is in fact one of the salient themes of yesterday’s Feast of the Ascension: Jesus is withdrawing his direct, human presence so that his followers can take over the leadership of his mission. It is clear that the authority they are to exercise is his, not their own, and that they are to be guided by the Holy Spirit.  For instance, in John’s Gospel we read:  

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  (John 20:21-23)

and also in Matthew’s Gospel:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20)

So, yes, today’s feast honors one of the first Apostles and, in fact the very first successor to the Apostles.  It is also a timely reminder that malfeasance on the part of an office holder, even on the scale of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus himself, can’t undo that essential office.

Concluding Prayer from today’s Liturgy of the Hours:

O God,

Who assigned St. Mathias

a place in the college of Apostles,

grant us, through his intercession, that,

rejoicing at how your love has been allotted to us,

we may merit to be numbered among the elect.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ. Your Son,

Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

One God, for ever and ever,

–          Amen.

iacobusm The Church

Aborigines, Atheists, and the Authenticity of the Gospels

    A few years ago I ran across an amazing story (“Ancient Sea Rise Tale Told Accurately For 10,000 Years“) from Scientific American, detailing how aboriginal Australians have preserved, via oral tradition, accurate information about geographical features that have been underwater since the end of the last Ice Age, circa 10,000 years ago. The article is fascinating for its own sake, but it also shows some of the limitations of the modern skeptical, ostensibly scientific (but more accurately “scientistic”) worldview.  Not only that, it has some relevance to our Faith, and particularly to the question of the veracity of Scripture.  In the post below I discuss how the amazing memories of Australia’s oldest inhabitants inform our defense of the authenticity of the Gospels.

Port Philip Bay today (photo from https://melbournedaily.blogspot.com/)

    Let’s start with the scriptural question.  A common line of attack by well-trained atheist enthusiasts is that the books of the New Testament weren’t even written down until 30-60 years after the death of Jesus: how can we expect them to be reliable?  There are a number of good answers to this.  I used to point out to my skeptical students, for instance, that I had been married for about 30 years, and I still remembered the events of my wedding day quite well, and also events of my childhood and adolescence even further back. My parents still remembered things that had happened 70 years prior, or more.  While the average life span was far lower two thousand years ago than it is today (as best we can determine), there were still plenty of people who lived into their 70’s and 80’s – so the events recounted in the Gospels were still within living memory when they were written down.

    It’s also a fact that people in ancient societies had much better powers of memory (as people in less literate societies do today), because they needed to rely on memory much more than we do.  It should be no surprise, then, that in the 19th century Heinrich Schliemann disproved the rationalist scholars who insisted that the Iliad and Odyssey could not possibly have any real historical background when he excavated the sites of Troy and Mycenae, right where Homer’s epics said they would be (both poems existed for centuries before they were written down).  

“A Reading From Homer” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1885

Likewise, in the early 20th century Milman Parry refuted the scholarly assertion that it was impossible for ancient rhapsodes to memorize with accuracy long epic poems such as Homer’s works when he located and recorded Croatian bards who accomplished similar feats of memory.  And now we see Aborigines who have transmitted information accurately over not merely decades, but millennia:

Without using written languages, Australian tribes passed memories of life before, and during, post-glacial shoreline inundations through hundreds of generations as high-fidelity oral history. Some tribes can still point to islands that no longer exist—and provide their original names.

That’s the conclusion of linguists and a geographer, who have together identified 18 Aboriginal stories—many of which were transcribed by early settlers before the tribes that told them succumbed to murderous and disease-spreading immigrants from afar—that they say accurately described geographical features that predated the last post-ice age rising of the seas.

     There’s more to these examples, however, than simple powers of memorization.  I found this passage from the Scientific American article about the Aborigines very intriguing:

“There are aspects of storytelling in Australia that involved kin-based responsibilities to tell the stories accurately,” Reid said.  That rigor provided “cross-generational scaffolding” that “can keep a story true.”

How much more important to “tell the stories accurately” if they are about God-become-Man, and to forget means eternal oblivion?

“The Four Evangelists”, Frans Floris I, mid-1500s

In other words, older people who know the story will correct the story-teller who messes it up, and it’s a “kin-based responsibility” because these stories are a crucial part of the group identity: they tell people who they are. To forget is to become nobody. How much more important to “tell the stories accurately” if they are about God-become-Man, and to forget means eternal oblivion? And when the elders checking the story-tellers’ accuracy were eye witnesses . . . or when the story-tellers themselves were witnesses or participants in what they are describing?  

     Believing Catholics, of course, trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit in preserving the truth, but that won’t help to convince those who don’t share our Faith.  Natural reason, however, and the available evidence, show that the earliest Christians were not only quite capable of preserving the story of Jesus accurately, but also were extremely unlikely to do otherwise.  That, at least, is the rational conclusion: what evidence can the doubters offer to the contrary?

(I published an earlier version of this Throwback Thursday post 12 February 2015)

Feature image above: photo by Lefteris Pitarakis, from website https://www.ancient-code.com/

iacobusm Advent and Christmas, Faith and Culture, The Church

A Smaller, Purer Church?

Fr. Ratzinger Speaks 

“It seems a good time to take a break from all the culture war stuff.”  So I said in the introduction to my last post.  The Lord knows we could all use a break, and yet the hits keep on coming, don’t they? Well, as that witty old atheist Leon Trotsky might have said, “You may not be interested in the Culture War, but the Culture War is interested in you”.  The forces pushing culture war don’t seem to feel the need for a break at all, and they’re coming right at us.

     But the Culture War, you might recall, is only one front in the larger war.  In some earlier posts (here and here) I used the image of a pyramid to illustrate the different levels upon which our society is built, with politics the top (and least important), with culture underlying politics, and religion as the bottom level, the basis for the whole structure. I’ve touched previously on the political and cultural fronts of the war (which is, at root, a spiritual conflict); today we’re going to look at the religious front.

     Let’s start with one of the more famous non-doctrinal statements of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, going back to long before he became pope, or even a bishop: that the Church of the future would be a “smaller, purer Church”.  While there’s no record of him ever saying it in exactly those words, that does fairly accurately sum up a number of statements Joseph Ratzinger made over the years. The earliest and perhaps most famous instance was in a Christmas Day address on German radio in 1969, when the future Pope Benedict XVI was simply Fr. Ratzinger, a theology professor at the University of Tübingen in Germany.

“From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much.“

   

 

The Crisis of Today and the Church of Tomorrow

We’d be mistaken if we thought that Fr. Ratzinger was advocating a smaller, purer Church, or suggesting we’d be better off if we jettisoned members who don’t live up to a certain standard of purity.  Nor was his address a “prophecy” in the Biblical sense, although the past half century has shown it to be prophetic in the more colloquial sense, in that it accurately foretold what was to come (this was the sense I meant in a previous piece several years ago called “Fr. Ratzinger’s Prophecy”).  In reality, all Fr. Ratzinger was doing was looking at social trends, the “signs of the times” (see Matthew 16:3). He saw a society in which Christian belief was becoming less important with, as a consequence, progressively less social advantage to membership. As the advantage diminished and eventually disappeared, the less committed members would move out, and on to something else:

From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision . . .

Most of us would probably agree, half a century later, that Fr. Ratzinger was on to something. As for the Church becoming purer, he says:

The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed.

Signs of the Decline

Hard going, indeed: I suspect we’re still only beginning to see how hard it’s going to be.  But let’s go back to the first part here, the “smaller Church”.  Social science data gives us a more tangible idea of what the decline in Christianity looks like.  The Pew Research Center has been measuring religious practice and attitudes for the past several decades.  The decline in Christian belief and practice is very real, as a report published by the Pew Center a little over a year ago shows (In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace  ).  There’s not space to go into all the details here, but you can get the main idea from two of its numerous graphs.

The first graph shows that in the twelve years from 2007-2019 the number of Americans who identify as Christian has declined from 77% or 78%, depending on the which survey you look at, to 71% in 2014 and 65% in 2019.  At the same time, the so-called “Nones”, Americans who have no religious affiliation increased from 16% or 17% to 23% in 2014 and 26% in 2019:

The second graph is even more sobering, because it strongly suggests  the decline will only get worse.  We see every succeeding generation less Christian and more disconnected.  The Millennial Generation comprising those Americans born between 1981-1996 is the first in American history in which less than half identify as Christian:

  Now, it’s likely that many of those Millennials will “find religion” as they get older.  That’s not unusual.  In order even to catch up with the not-terribly-religious Generation X, however, they would need to go through a Great Awakening greater than anything this country has ever seen. We can also be sure that some who now consider themselves Christian will fall away later in life.  Given all that, it’s not unreasonable to project that, a generation or two down the road, Christians will be in the minority in the United States.

Those Who Lap Like Dogs

     So, how are we to square this sobering prognosis with Christ’s promise that the Gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18)? Well, first of all, Christ’s Church is not the same as our local churches.  Large stretches of the Middle East and North Africa that used to be solidly Christian are now peopled overwhelmingly by Muslims; we have no guarantee that the Church in the United States will survive.  We also have no guarantee that individual souls will be saved; even victorious armies suffer casualties, sometimes heavy ones.

     At the same time, a trend is only a trend as long as it keeps going in the same direction. Consider the story of Gideon, in the Book of Judges.  Gideon was bringing out his army to face the Midianites when he heard the voice of God:

The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, ‘My own hand has delivered me.’ Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home.’” And Gideon tested them; twenty-two thousand returned, and ten thousand remained. (Judges 7:2-3)

That, however, wasn’t enough:

And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; take them down to the water and I will test them for you there; and he of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall go with you,’ shall go with you; and any of whom I say to you, ‘This man shall not go with you,’ shall not go.”  So he brought the people down to the water; and the Lord said to Gideon, “Every one that laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself; likewise every one that kneels down to drink.”  And the number of those that lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was three hundred men; but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water.  And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will deliver you, and give the Midianites into your hand . . . (Judges 7:4-7)

“Gideon Overcoming the Midianites” by Peter Paul Rubens (c. 1625-1630)

And of course The Lord did deliver Midian into the hands of Gideon, but not as we might expect.  While Gideon and his three hundred blew trumpets, broke jars, waved torches, and shouted, among the Midianites “the Lord set every man’s sword against his fellow and against all the army; and the army fled as far as Beth-shittah toward Zererah” (Judges 7:22).  It couldn’t have been clearer to Gideon and his followers that they didn’t defeat Midian through their own prowess: they themselves were rescued from Midian by the God in Whom they trusted.

Hope in The Lord

     The story of Gideon should give us hope. It is clear we have just about come to that place Fr. Ratzinger foresaw when membership in the Church would no longer confer social advantages; it may even be that we are entering an era when being a Christian is an actual detriment (there are some places, such as academia, where it already is). The fearful and trembling are on their way home, and soon, perhaps, we’ll be down to the three hundred who lap like dogs.  What happens then? Let’s go back to Fr. Ratzinger:

     But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

   This is where the story of Christ’s Church diverges from the story of Gideon. Gideon and his army chased down the confused and frightened Midianites with the sword; the reduced and purified Church will, instead, offer them a beacon of hope. The remaining Christians will truly need to be the salt that gives savor to a godless world, and the light to “shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16). Ratzinger accordingly predicts:

 It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

     There is reason for Hope amid the gloom.  Christ’s Church may need to suffer as Jesus himself did on the Cross, but there’s no Resurrection without the Crucifixion.  As St. Peter reminds us:

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)