Author Archives: richbrewers

The awesome power of the Christmas story

25 Monday Dec 2017

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“The awesome power of the Christmas story” by Bishop Robert Barron

http://beta.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-barron-christmas-power-20171225-story.html

One of the best Christmas sermons I have ever read appeared some years ago in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. In the course of a wide-ranging interview, the Irish rocker Bono, leader of the group U2, spoke of his religious faith. Prompted to articulate why he embraces Christianity, Bono said, “I believe that there is a logic that stands behind all things, and as a poet, I see the wonderful appropriateness that this awesome power would express itself as a baby born in straw poverty.”

Any number of religious and philosophical systems would hold to the first part of Bono’s statement. They would teach that an intelligent power is responsible for the order and intelligibility of the universe. What makes Christianity distinct is the puzzling and subversive assertion that this creative mind, this high metaphysical principle and first cause, looks like “a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

Mary and Joseph, two nobodies in a dusty corner of the Roman Empire, made their way from the tiny hamlet of Nazareth to the little town of Bethlehem. They were too poor and unimportant to secure lodging, even in the pathetic travelers’ hostel, and thus were compelled to take shelter in a cave, surrounded by animals. In that dirty and forgotten place, the baby who is God came into the world.

Stated as bluntly and directly as that, the claim seems weird, doesn’t it? It is meant to. For it expresses the poetic reversal that Bono invoked. The creator of the universe is not a cold and impersonal force. It is a love that makes itself vulnerable for the sake of the other. The logic that lies behind all things is an infant too weak to raise his own head.

This poetic and theological illumination compels us to think differently about many things, but especially about the nature of power. The maker of the cosmos in its entirety is undoubtedly a supreme power, but now we know that authentic power is not a matter of domination and manipulation, but of nonviolence. Willing the good of the other (the classical definition of love) is moving with the deepest rhythms of creation and with the very nature of God. And this is precisely why it can transform society. If you doubt me, look at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s remaking of American culture or Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian revolution — both prompted and sustained by love, not violence.

St. Augustine offered, in the 4th century, a pithy definition of sin: libido dominandi (the lust to dominate). Although it applies to any and all types of sin, Augustine’s characterization is particularly compelling in regard to the sins that have been on public display these last months and years. What we see in the abuse of children, in the exploitation of the weak, in human trafficking, in cruelty to the families of immigrants, and in the sexual harassment of women is, fundamentally, the libido dominandi, the twisted exercise of power.

There is an extraordinary passage in the book of the prophet Isaiah in which the seer envisions the coming of God’s reign, which will put an end to suffering and injustice: “The Lord bares his holy arm for all the nations to see; to the furthest corners of the earth, he makes known his saving power” (Is. 52:10). The image is bold, even aggressive — God pulling up his sleeve and revealing his mighty arm. As the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright pointed out, the supreme irony of Christmas is that the holy arm of the Lord God is revealed as the tiny arm of a baby emerging from the crib of Bethlehem.

The power that made the universe is not the assertion of personal prerogatives; it is not pushing people around; it is not manipulating others for the aggrandizement of one’s ego; it is not preening self-display; it is not the lust to dominate. The logic that lies behind all things is a baby born in straw poverty. When we get that in our bones, we will understand the meaning of Christmas.

Robert Barron is auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

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HOLY FRIENDSHIP IN A HYPERSEXUAL WORLD

23 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by in Theology of the Body

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A wonderful article appeared in the Federalist this past December by D.C. McAllister titled “How To Stop Sexualizing Everything.” It tapped into the schizophrenic character of our modern age, particularly in American culture, that surrounds our expressions of intimacy. Essentially, she posited, we either fearfully avoid touch and intimacy as it might be misread as a sin or a sexual advance, or we completely give in, and all that we touch is tinged with sexual undertones and innuendos. McAllister notes “The effect of these two warring attitudes – Puritanism and sexualization – has had a distorting effect on friendship. On the one hand, people don’t feel free to show emotions. On the other, when they do, those feelings are sexualized.”

A recent BBC documentary called “The Secret Letters of Pope John Paul II” perfectly illustrates this distorted dichotomy. For decades, St. John Paul II held a well known relationship with Dr. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, a Polish philosopher who was an expert in the work of German philosopher Edmund Husserl. The pope’s shared interest in Husserl’s phenomenology allowed the two to form a friendship over the years (albeit, not without its difficult moments – see George Weigel’s excellent article on that backstory here: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/431359/pope-john-paul-ii-letters-women-celibacy). She was a married woman with three children, living in America. He, at the time they met, was a Cardinal in the Church. Their correspondence lasted well into old age.

Journalist Ed Stourton, who crafted the documentary, proposes that the decades long relationship was somehow, for at least one of the parties involved, romantic. His claims are “substantiated” by Emeritus Professor Eamon Duffy of the University of Cambridge, who states in the interview, “Clearly there’s an element of playing with fire when you’ve got a strongly heterosexual man and an attractive woman in a very intense relationship that is cultivated and which engages mind at a high level of intensity. There’s danger everywhere.”

This thought that a male and female friendship simply by its very nature is “dangerous” is given further credence in the remarks of someone Stourton refers to as a “trainee priest” (My research revealed that a “trainee priest” is also known as a seminarian). John Cornwell apparently attended seminary from 1953 to 1958. He states that back then “The perception was that even if you had a close association of friendship with the woman, this could be what was known as an occasion of sin and an occasion of sin was as bad as if you’d actually done it.” This sad (and completely incorrect) articulation of what sin consists of is followed by another interviewee who states that their “training meant most priests would have been wary of such a close relationship. The most natural reaction would have been for him to terminate contact.”

Ironically, the language in this interview reveals to viewers and readers of this breaking story the deepest scandal of all, which has nothing to do with St. John Paul II. It is the scandal that all too many men and women today are incapable of imagining an intimate relationship that does not somehow involve some sort of sexually romantic overtone.

In truth, the Church has a long history of examples of men and women who have formed intimate and affectionate relationships that did not involve sexual relations. They were known as friendships (this is a wonderful word we should restore to the modern lexicon). In fact, St. John Paul II had numerous friendships with women that lasted decades and included letters, phone calls, shared meals, and walks together. The BBC footage seems to imply that this particular relationship with Dr. Tymieniecka was isolated and the meetings exclusive. But the fact is, they were not. St. John Paul II was a magnanimous figure who loved people deeply, and was rather transparent about his friendships. He was also prudent, meeting men and women together for those private meals and taking vacations with friends or families together. In the image of St. John Paul II and Dr. Tymieniecka standing beside a car, one should realize a third person took the photo. I imagine it was her husband.

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Now regarding the correspondence, here is an excerpt from a letter:

“I know you have complete confidence in my affection; I have no doubt about this and delight in the thought. I want you to know and to believe that I have an intense and very special desire to serve you with all of my strength. It would be impossible for me to explain either the quality or the greatness of this desire that I have to be at your service, but I can tell you that I believe it is from God, and for that reason, I cherish it and every day see it growing and increasing remarkably… God has given me to you; so consider me as yours in Him, call me whenever you like…”

I’m sorry, I tricked you just there. This was actually an exchange between St. Francis de Sales to St. Jane de Chantal, dated June 24, 1604. After the death of her husband, St. Francis served as her spiritual director for years, giving her counsel in forming a new religious community. (I don’t have access to an extended quote from St. John Paul II’s letters to Dr. Tymieniecka, and would prefer not to cherry pick one out at this point as the BBC interview did.)

Regardless, here is an intimate note, man to woman, celibate man to widowed mother. How did you feel in reading that exchange? Did it make you uncomfortable? Were you shocked? Did you feel it was inappropriate? I know it really struck me personally when I first read it. I found it to be astoundingly beautiful, and I felt duped and double-crossed by this hyper-sexualized culture we live in because I too felt a little manipulated as it were to see romance when I read those words holding such fervent love. But who has the larger issue here? Who needs a little restoration of that original vision we’ve been called to?

The examples of chaste and simultaneously fervent love go on, nonetheless, and in each we are challenged to see others first as “occasions of grace” rather than “occasions of sin.” By this grace, in the words of St. John Paul II “we come to an ever greater awareness of the gratuitous beauty of the human body, of masculinity and femininity. This gratuitous beauty becomes a light for our actions….”

Over a two year period that lead up to her own early death, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and a seminarian named Maurice would exchange 21 letters in total. He wrote 11 and the Little Flower wrote 10. For both of these holy souls, the letters reveal a love that was fully human and completely chaste. St. Thérèse wrote in one note: “In your letter of the 14th you made my heart tremble with joy. I understand better than ever how much your soul is the sister of my own, since it is called to lift itself up to God by the ELEVATOR of love and not to climb the hard stairway of fear….” Later, as he was about to be sent on mission, she wrote “When my dear little brother leaves for Africa, I shall follow him not only in thought and in prayer; my soul will be with him forever. …”

Let’s look at another intimate exchange, now between men, from over 1600 years ago: “…To talk and jest together, to do kind offices by turns; to read together honied books; to play the fool or be earnest together… (to) long for the absent with impatience; and welcome the coming with joy. These and the like expressions, proceeding out of the hearts of those that loved and were loved again, by the countenance, the tongue, the eyes, and a thousand pleasing gestures, were so much fuel to melt our souls together, and out of many make but one. This is it that is loved in friends…”

That was St. Augustine, taken from his own intimate and perennially modern autobiography “Confessions” (Chapter 8, section 13), written between 397 and 400 AD. For modern ears, this level of intimacy between men can only be seen as some kind of closet homosexuality. The same minds, tinged again by a culture inundated by sexual allusion and innuendo in all things, even place a gay frame around the relationship between David and Jonathan in 1 Samuel 18:1,3. “As soon as he had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”

We have become, in the words of St. John Paul II himself, “masters of suspicion,” incapable of seeing how human interactions could ever rise above mere sexual gratification and appropriation.

This is nothing new. During the beatification process for Padre Pio, in 1990, the case was blocked after a stash of letters were revealed that the holy Franciscan had written to his spiritual daughter, as he called her, Cleonice Morcaldi. He had met her around 1930. when she was a child, orphaned from both parents. St. Padre Pio had promised her dying mother he would take care of her like a daughter. Some investigators however felt the letters to be too affectionate.

Man and woman. This is holy ground. This is sacred ground, and in this place we are called to a deep self-mastery, and a healthy recognition of our own hearts and where we stand in the ability to truly see one another. I have placed several links to resources below and encourage readers to go further, to pray more deeply about this lost art of friendship, of holy friendship. It must be rekindled. It will take work and prayer and much patience, especially in this present darkness. But with grace we can reclaim a beautiful gift, and our vision of one another can indeed be restored. It is a hope within reach. It is our inheritance and a promise too. “Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins.” (CCC, 2336) I’ll close with a wonderful and deeply personal word from St. John Paul II, originally signed on February 8, 1994 but was not printed until 2006:

“God has given me many people, both young and old, boys and girls, fathers and mothers, widows, the healthy and the sick. Always, when he gave them to me, he also tasked me with them, and now I see that I could easily write a separate book about each of them—and each biography would ultimately be on the disinterested gift man always is for the other. Among them were the uneducated, for instance factory workers; there were also students, university professors, doctors and lawyers, and finally priests and the consecrated religious. Of course, they included both men and women. A long road led me to discover the genius of woman, and Providence itself saw to it that the time eventually came when I really recognized it and was even, as it were, dazzled by it.”

Saint John Paul the Great, Poet of the Divine Mysteries and Apostle of the Beauty of the Human Person, pray for us!

________

Resources:

A Meditation on Givenness by St. John Paul II 

http://www.communio-icr.com/articles/view/a-meditation-on-givenness

But I Have Called You Friends; Reflections on the Art of Christian Friendship by Mother Mary Francis

http://www.amazon.com/But-Have-Called-You-Friends/dp/1586170805

Francis de Sales, Jane de Chantal: Letters of Spiritual Direction (Classics of Western Spirituality (Paperback))

(http://www.amazon.com/Francis-Sales-Jane-Chantal-Spirituality/dp/0809129906)

Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla

http://www.amazon.com/Love-Responsibility-Karol-Wojtyla/dp/0819845582/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1455825397&sr=1-1

How to Stop Sexualizing Everything by D.C. McAllister

http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/28/how-to-stop-sexualizing-everything/

Article originally posted at: http://tobinstitute.org/john-paul-ii/holy-friendship/

A Monk’s Chronicle: 14 March MMXVI — The Bible’s in Our Bones

18 Friday Mar 2016

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Friends, I always enjoy Fr. Eric’s blog, but wanted to share this weeks because it is a great reflection as we near Holy Week.

A Monk's Chronicle

IMG_0113_2The Bible’s in Our Bones

Several years ago I ran across a story about Temple Emanuel in New York.  The congregation had commissioned a new Torah scroll, and the leaders had decided to make it something that everyone could participate in.  Rather than isolate the scribe in his studio, however, synagogue officials invited people to put their hand on the scribe’s shoulder as he carefully put quill to vellum to create the Hebrew letters.

To no one’s surprise but that of the scribe, this turned out to be a deeply moving experience, and many of the participants burst into tears.  Naturally this irritated the scribe to no end, until he finally realized what was happening.  For him the creation of a Torah scroll was both a sacred ritual and a job.  But for first-time observers this was the awesome realization that in one brief moment they were helping to create…

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The Protestant Achilles’ Heel

16 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Bible, Scripture, Uncategorized

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Reposted from Catholic Answers, by Tim Staples, I thought this was a good reflection on Sola Scriptura.

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According to ancient Greek legend, the great warrior, Achilles, was invulnerable against attack, except for one area of weakness—his heel. That weakness would be exploited near the end of the Trojan War by Paris. As the story goes, he shot Achilles in the heel with an arrow, killing his seemingly undefeatable foe.

Okay, so referring to Sola Scriptura as the Protestant Achilles’s Heelis not a perfect analogy. There are many weak spots in Protestant theology. But the use of the image of “Achilles’s Heel” in prose today is employed not only to accentuate a singular weakness in an otherwise impenetrable person or institution, but a particularly acute weakness. It is in that sense that I think the analogy fits.

Sola Scriptura was the central doctrine and foundation for all I believed when I was Protestant. On a popular level, it simply meant, “If a teaching isn’t explicit in the Bible, then we don’t accept it as doctrine!” And it seemed so simple. Unassailable. And yet, I do not recall ever hearing a detailed teaching explicating it. It was always a given. Unchallenged. Diving deeper into its meaning, especially when I was challenged to defend my Protestant faith against Catholicism, I found there to be no book specifically on the topic and no uniform understanding of this teaching among Protestant pastors.

Once I got past the superficial, I had to try to answer real questions like, what role does tradition play? How explicit does a doctrine have to be in Scripture before it can be called doctrine? How many times does it have to be mentioned in Scripture before it would be dogmatic? Where does Scripture tell us what is absolutely essential for us to believe as Christians? How do we know what the canon of Scripture is using the principle of sola scriptura? Who is authorized to write Scripture in the first place? When was the canon closed? Or, the best question of all: where is sola scriptura taught in the Bible? These questions and more were left virtually unanswered or left to the varying opinions of various Bible teachers.

The Protestant Response

In answer to this last question, “Where is sola scriptura taught in the Bible?” most Protestants will immediately respond as I did, by simply citing II Tm. 3:16:

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

“How can it get any plainer than that? Doesn’t that say the Bible is all we need?” Question answered.

The fact is: II Timothy 3—or any other text of Scripture—does not even hint at sola scriptura. It says Scripture is inspired and necessary to equip “the man of God,” but never does it say Scripture alone is all anyone needs. We’ll come back to this text in particular later. But in my experience as a Protestant, it was my attempt to defend this bedrock teaching of Protestantism that led me to conclude: sola scriptura is 1) unreasonable 2) unbiblical and 3) unworkable.

Sola Scriptura is Unreasonable

When defending sola scriptura, the Protestant will predictably appeal to his sole authority—Scripture. This is a textbook example of the logical fallacy of circular reasoning which betrays an essential problem with the doctrine itself. One cannot prove the inspiration of a text from the text itself. The Book of Mormon, the Hindu Vedas, writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Koran, and other books claim inspiration. This does not make them inspired. One must prove the point outside of the text itself to avoid the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Thus, the question remains: how do we know the various books of the Bible are inspired and therefore canonical? And remember: the Protestant must use the principle of sola scriptura in the process.

II Tim. 3:16 is not a valid response to the question. The problems are manifold. Beyond the fact of circular reasoning, for example, I would point out the fact that this verse says all Scripture is inspired tells us nothing of what the canon consists. Just recently, I was speaking with a Protestant inquirer about this issue and he saw my point. He then said words to the effect of, “I believe the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth as Jesus said in Jn. 16:13. The Holy Spirit guided the early Christians and helped them to gather the canon of Scripture and declare it to be the inspired word of God. God would not leave us without his word to guide us.”

That answer is much more Catholic than Protestant! Yes, Jn. 16:13 does say the Spirit will lead the apostles—and by allusion, the Church—into all truth. But this verse has nothing to say about sola scriptura. Nor does it say a word about the nature or number of books in the canon. Catholics certainly agree that the Holy Spirit guided the early Christians to canonize the Scriptures because the Catholic Church teaches that there is an authoritative Church guided by the Holy Spirit. The obvious problem is my Protestant friend did not use sola scriptura as his guiding principle to arrive at his conclusion. How does, for example, Jn. 16:13 tell us that Hebrews was written by an apostolic writer and that it is inspired of God? We would ultimately have to rely on the infallibility of whoever “the Holy Spirit” is guiding to canonize the Bible so that they could not mishear what the Spirit was saying about which books of the Bible are truly inspired.

In order to put this argument of my friend into perspective, can you imagine if a Catholic made a similar claim to demonstrate, say, Mary to be the Mother of God? “We believe the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth and guided the early Christians to declare this truth.” I can almost hear the response. “Show me in the Bible where Mary is the Mother of God! I don’t want to hear about God guiding the Church!” Wouldn’t the same question remain for the Protestant concerning the canon? “Show me in the Bible where the canon of Scripture is, what the criterion for the canon is, who can and cannot write Scripture, etc.”

Will the Circle be Unbroken?

The Protestant response at this point is often an attempt to use the same argument against the Catholic. “How do you know the Scriptures are inspired? Your reasoning is just as circular because you say the Church is infallible because the inspired Scriptures say so and then say the Scriptures are inspired and infallible because the Church says so!”

The Catholic Church’s position on inspiration is not circular. We do not say “the Church is infallible because the inspired Scriptures say so, and the Scriptures are inspired because the infallible Church says so.” That would be a kind of circular reasoning. The Church was established historically and functioned as the infallible spokesperson for the Lord decades before the New Testament was written. The Church is infallible because Jesus said so.

Having said that, it is true that we know the Scriptures to be inspired because the Church has told us so. That is also an historical fact. However, this is not circular reasoning. When the Catholic approaches Scripture, he or she begins with the Bible as an historical document, not as inspired. As any reputable historian will tell you, the New Testament is the most accurate and verifiable historical document in all of ancient history. To deny the substance of the historical documents recorded therein would be absurd. However, one cannot deduce from this that they are inspired. There are many accurate historical documents that are not inspired. However, the Scriptures do give us accurate historical information whether one holds to their inspiration or not. Further, this testimony of the Bible is backed up by hundreds of works by early Christians and non-Christian writers like Suetonius, Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Josephus, and more. It is on this basis that we can say it is an historical fact that Jesus lived, died, and was reported to be resurrected from the dead by over 500 eyewitnesses. Many of these eyewitnesses went to their deaths testifying to the veracity of the Christ-event (see Lk. 1:1-4, Jn. 21:18-19, 24-25, Acts 1:1-11, I Cr. 15:1-8).

Now, what do we find when we examine the historical record? Jesus Christ—as a matter of history–established a Church, not a book, to be the foundation of the Christian Faith (see Mt. 16:15-18; 18:15-18. Cf. Eph. 2:20; 3:10,20-21; 4:11-15; I Tm. 3:15; Hb. 13:7,17, etc.). He said of his Church, “He who hears you hears me and he who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects him who sent me” (Lk. 10:16). The many books that comprise what we call the Bible never tell us crucial truths such as the fact that they are inspired, who can and cannot be the human authors of them, who authored them at all, or, as I said before, what the canon of Scripture is in the first place. And this is just to name a few examples. What is very clear historically is that Jesus established a kingdom with a hierarchy and authority to speak for him (see Lk. 20:29-32, Mt. 10:40, 28:18-20). It was members of this Kingdom—the Church—that would write the Scripture, preserve its many texts and eventually canonize it. The Scriptures cannot write or canonize themselves. To put it simply, reason clearly rejects sola scriptura as a self-refuting principle because one cannot determine what the “scriptura” is using the principle of sola scriptura.

Sola Scriptura is Unbiblical

Let us now consider the most common text used by Protestants to “prove” sola scriptura, II Tm. 3:16, which I quoted above:

All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

The problem with using this text as such is threefold: 1. Strictly speaking, it does not speak of the New Testament at all. 2. It does not claim Scripture to be the sole rule of faith for Christians. 3. The Bible teaches oral Tradition to be on a par with and just as necessary as the written Tradition, or Scripture.

1. What’s Old is Not New

Let us examine the context of the passage by reading the two preceding verses:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood (italics added) you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

In context, this passage does not refer to the New Testament at all. None of the New Testament books had been written when St. Timothy was a child! To claim this verse in order to authenticate a book, say, the book of Revelation, when it had most likely not even been written yet, is more than a stretch. That is going far beyond what the text actually claims.

2. The Trouble With Sola

As a Protestant, I was guilty of seeing more than one sola in Scripture that simply did not exist. The Bible clearly teaches justification by faith. And we Catholics believe it. However, we do not believe in justification by faith alone because, among many other reasons, the Bible says, we are “justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24, emphasis added). Analogously, when the Bible says Scripture is inspired and profitable for “the man of God,” to be “equipped for every good work,” we Catholics believe it. However, the text of II Tim. 3:16 never says Scripture alone. There is no sola to be found here either! Even if we granted II Tm. 3:16 was talking about all of Scripture, it never claims Scripture to be the sole rule of faith. A rule of faith, to be sure! But not the sole rule of faith.

James 1:4 illustrates clearly the problem with Protestant exegesis of II Tim. 3:16:

And let steadfastness (patience) have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

If we apply the same principle of exegesis to this text that the Protestant does to II Tm. 3:16 we would have to say that all we need is patience to be perfected. We don’t need faith, hope, charity, the Church, baptism, etc.

Of course, any Christian would immediately say this is absurd. And of course it is. But James’s emphasis on the central importance of patience is even stronger than St. Paul’s emphasis on Scripture. The key is to see that there is not a sola to be found in either text. Sola patientia would be just as much an error as is sola scriptura.

3. The Tradition of God is the Word of God

Not only is the Bible silent when it comes to sola scriptura, but Scripture is remarkably plain in teaching oral Tradition to be just as much the word of God as is Scripture. In what most scholars believe was the first book written in the New Testament, St. Paul said:

And we also thank God… that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God… (I Thess. 2:13)

II Thess. 2:15 adds:

So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions you have been taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

According to St. Paul, the spoken word from the apostles was just as much the word of God as was the later written word.

Sola Scriptura is Unworkable

When it comes to the tradition of Protestantism—sola scriptura—the silence of the text of Scripture is deafening. When it comes to the true authority of Scripture and Tradition, the Scriptures are clear. And when it comes to the teaching and governing authority of the Church, the biblical text is equally as clear:

If your brother sins against you go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone … But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you … If he refuses to listen … tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Mt. 18:15-17)

According to Scripture, the Church—not the Bible alone—is the final court of appeal for the people of God in matters of faith and discipline. But isn’t it also telling that since the Reformation of just ca. 480 years ago—a reformation claiming sola scriptura as its formal principle—there are now over 33,000 denominations that have derived from it?

For 1,500 years, Christianity saw just a few enduring schisms (the Monophysites, Nestorians, the Orthodox, and a very few others). Now in just 480 years we have this? I hardly think that when Jesus prophesied there would be “one shepherd and one fold” in Jn. 10:16, this is what he had in mind. It seems quite clear to me that not only is sola scriptura unreasonable and unbiblical, but it is unworkable. The proof is in the puddin’!

If you liked this post and you would like to dive deeper into this topic and more, click here.

Tim Staples is Director of Apologetics and Evangelization here at Catholic Answers

Source: The Protestant Achilles’ Heel

A Monk’s Chronicle: 10 August MMXV — Peserverance Until Death

10 Monday Aug 2015

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What an increadible undertaking this project has been–it is something right out of the monastic tradition that brought us The Book of Kells. Thank you, your monsastic brothers, Donald Jackson and his team, SJU and all who contributed for this piece of history that brings us the Word.

A Monk's Chronicle

imagePerseverance Until Death

On November 27, 1995, I sat down to lunch with Donald Jackson, whose day job at the time was scribe to the Queen of England.  He and I had just spoken at The Newberry Library in Chicago, and we were dining at a restaurant called The Italian Village — which still exists, I believe.

Normally lunch should not count as a big deal, and there’s no reason anyone should remember a particular lunch nearly twenty years later.  To my credit, I can’t recall what I ate that day, save that it was probably Italian.  But I do recall the substance of our conversation.  That day Donald Jackson proposed what eventually would become The Saint John’s Bible.

That lunch no longer matters that much, save for the fact that last week I put a little bit of closure on a venture that began at that meal.  That…

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Father Don Talafous, OSB

30 Monday Mar 2015

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When I was a freshman student at Saint John’s many years ago, I was walking across campus one day and I was stopped by one of the monks. He looked at me, called me by name and asked if I was from Ghent. I had never met him before, but that was Father Don. He would memorize the pictures of all the incoming freshmen and call us by name when he met us. During my time at SJU, he never forgot my name, and I never forgot his.

I believe Father Don found Christ in each of us, and in some small way, his act of taking the time to know us, meant a lot. Fr. Don Talafous is being honored with the SJU President’s Medal and Citation. Fr. Don has been a part of the Saint John’s community for more than 70 years. As a monk, professor, university chaplain and faculty resident, he has touched the lives of thousands of students, alumni, parents and friends. He shows us how being fully present and attentive to those around us, makes a difference in their lives. Below is a short video about Father Don.

–Rich

Catechism in a Year

02 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Catechism

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Friends:
I would like to recommend following the “Catechism in a Year” (Information below). Most of us use the Catechism as a reference, like an encyclopedia, but it is so much more. It is almost poetic in how well it is written and how rich it is in meaning. The “Catechism in a Year” makes reading the Catechism easy and accessible.
–Rich
 Catechism
Catechism fans! On January 1, 2015, we start over (at the beginning) studying the entire catechism in a year. We hope you’ll join the largest group in human history to ever study the Catechism together! And don’t forget to invite your friends to join in, too (just share the links below).
A few questions you might have:
What if I want to do something different? You might want to try reading all four Gospels in a Year. Just go here and subscribe: flocknote.com/gospel
What about the exciting new project starting in 2015? We will be announcing this and letting you know how it works some time in January. It will not be another daily email *study* program (like Catechism in a Year or Gospels in a Year). It is something new, different, fun and much less time-intensive for you. So stay tuned for that.
How do I sign up for Catechism in a Year (or help my friends do so)? If you are getting this email, you are already signed up to get it (so no need to do anything). If you want to invite others to join in, simply share this link with them:flocknote.com/catechism
How do I STOP getting Catechism in a Year? Simply click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of this email.
I hope you’re all having a blessed Christmas season and are ready for a new year of growing in faith together!
– Matthew Warner

A Sedevacantist Catholic Church in Lebanon, OH

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Churches

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The traditional Latin Mass or Tridentine Mass was the most widely celebrated Mass in the world until the introduction of the present ordinary form of the Roman Rite of the mass given us post Vatican II by Pope Paul VI in December 1969.

St. Therese the Little Flower, a new Sedevancantist Catholic Church located on West Mulberry Street In Lebanon, was dedicated by their Bishop Mark Pivarunason yesterday, August 6th.  The church is not affiliated with the Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati,

What is a Sedevancantist Church?

The web site for St. Therese the Little Flower states: “The clergy and parishioners of St. Therese adhere firmly to the unchangeable Catholic Faith as taught by all true Popes, from St. Peter to Pius XII. Because of our faithfulness to the Catholic Church of the ages, we reject the Modernist church of Vatican II with all its teachings, liturgical rites, and disciplines. We reject John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis as illegitimate usurpers of the papal office and believe that there is currently no Pope reigning in the Catholic Church (sede vacante).”

Typically, Sedevacantist churches reject the changes that occurred in the Church after the Second Vatican Council, particularly in the areas of liturgy. They celebrate the sacraments in the pre-Vatican II Tridentine manner. They argue that the Popes since John XXIII have espoused modernist doctrines over traditional Catholic teachings, hence are not really true popes. Stephen Heiner — founder of TrueRestoration.org a member of the sedevacantist movement argues there hasn’t been a true pope in Rome since Vatican II.

According to William Marshner, professor of theology at Christendom College in Virginia, sedevacantists base their argument on an obscure Papal bull issued in the 1550s by Pope Paul IV which pronounced excommunication against anyone who secretly held any sort of heresy. Anyone in the hierarchy who was even suspected of heresy was deprived of office.

“No reputable theologian today thinks that it (the Papal Bull) was anything but canonical legislation — a disciplinary thing,” Marshner said. But the sedevacantists today “try to inflate it to a doctrinal level so that it can’t be canceled by later pontiffs.” They go through statements of Pope John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Pope Francis deciding what is heretical in their statements and using their findings to claim that this person should be deprived of all ecclesiastical office and therefore can’t be pope.

“They seem to be unaware,” he continued, “of an important canon from the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, which says that you can’t accuse your ecclesiastical superior of heresy or of a crime without a canonical process. You can’t set yourself up as judge and jury.”

Pope Francis seems to be getting special attention from the sedevacantists. Many view Pope Francis’s statements as too liberal and feel conservative Catholics will look to sedevacantists as an alternative. The Society of Saint Pius X, a slightly more moderate sedevacantist group, said in a statement that recent statements by Pope Francis had “provoked some new interest” in them and predicted membership would grow, “if the Holy Father confirms the direction he seems to be taking.”

For authentic Catholics, is there a  problem with Sedevacantists Churches?

As the name of our web site suggests, I am a Lay Catholic–that means a member of the rank and file and not a member of the clergy. Therefore, some of the doctrinal differences between what I consider “authentic Catholics” and sedevacantists may escape me. Never-the-less I see the fundamental problem with sedevacantist groups as a failure of faith that the Holy Spirit is acting through the the Church to give us what we need when we need it. They fail to recognize the authority of the magesterium. Some view Vatican II as a misstep in Church history—I do not. I think too often people who shun Vatican II have not actually read its documents.

From my perspective, our last three Popes show that God is active in our Church. Saint John Paul II gave us hope when we needed it. He brought the Church to the people traveling more than any previous Pope; he reached out to the world’s youth at a time when most felt the Church was out of touch; he gave us theology of the body, for which I believe he will eventually be named a doctor of the Church; and he helped clarify what Vatican II meant. For anyone who is uncertain of his contributions, please read Saint John Paul the Great: His Five Loves, by Jason Evert. It is a great read.

After John Paul II, the Holy Spirit gave us Pope Benedict who helped defend our Faith. Benedict helped us understand that Vatican II was not a radical break from the past but rather a continuation of the best traditions of our 2,000-year-old church. Benedict can be considered one of the greatest living theologians in recent Church history: he authored more than 65 books, stretching from the  “Introduction to Christianity” in 1968 to the final installment of his triptych on “Jesus of Nazareth.” In between, he lead the effort to produce the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” – which I personally believe to be the most important work since Vatican II.

Finally, the Holy Spirit has given us Pope Francis. I believe he is the Pope of Charity and Love. Pope Francis models what charity in action looks like and the joy on his face as he interacts with the faithful shows his love. Sedevacantists may believe that Francis is liberal and will drive conservatives from the Church, but I believe they are wrong. Francis has not changed Church doctrine and if the sedevacantists had issues with Pope Benedict, they will oppose anyone the authentic Church names as Pope. In my opinion, it is a tragedy to deny the blessings these great men have brought to the faithful and the world at large.

Is there hope for reconciliation? 

The Church has been actively seeking reconciliation. As recently as this past Sunday, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Guido Pozzo as secretary of Ecclesia Dei, the curial office charged with reconciling the Church with the Society of St. Pius X. The office is meant to facilitate “full ecclesial communion” of those associated with the Society “who may wish to remain united to the Successor of Peter in the Catholic Church.”

The Society was excommunicated by John Paul II in 1988, when their leader Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops against the orders of Pope John Paul II.

Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications in 2009 as a prelude to talks about reconciling the society with the Church. At the time he said that the society would have to show “true recognition of the magisterium and the authority of the Pope and of the Second Vatican Council” to restore full communion, “but we cannot negotiate on revealed faith; that is impossible.”

The concern these groups had about being able to perform the Tridentine mass has been largely removed by Pope Benedict. The Pope declared that the Tridentine mass is to be considered as an extraordinary expression of the Roman Missal. “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful. It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place.” -Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops, 7 July 2007

My family and I recently attended a Tridentine mass at St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville, IL. It was a beautiful service, full of reverence for the Eucharist but, in truth, I enjoyed it more for its historical relevance then I did for what I got out of the mass spiritually. Our current mass is rich in meaning and it is more accessible–it is our highest form of prayer with Christ truly present in a way that nurtures us. I would not want to go back.

Personally I believe reunification with sedevacantists will happen once pride is overcome. Never-the-less, I am reminded of a debate between Scott Hann and Robert M. Bowman in which Mr. Bowman notes in his opening statement that most Christians today do not have a good understanding of their own faith. The subtleties of these kind of doctrinal arguments are lost on most people and only show division among Christians, but there is much we agree upon and we should look to those common grounds to build up the faithful, not confuse them with distractions.  

(The post A Sedevacantist Catholic Church in Lebanon, OH was first published in Reflections of a Lay Catholic)

 

Saints in a Confessional Box

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Catholic Moral Teaching

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February 7, 2014

Saints in a Confessional Box

By Robert Barron

The Catholic Church is often criticized as rigorist, unrealistic, and unbending, especially in regard to its teaching on sexuality. How could anyone, we hear over and again, possibly live up to the Church’s demands concerning masturbation, artificial contraception, or sex outside of marriage? Moreover, every poll that comes out suggests that increasing numbers of Catholics themselves don’t subscribe to these moral demands. Few expect the Church to acquiesce to the moral laxity of the environing culture, but even many faithful Catholics think that it ought at least to soften its moral doctrine, adjust a bit to the times, become a tad more realistic.

I wonder whether I might address these questions a bit obliquely, shifting the focus from the sexual arena into another area of moral concern. The Church’s teaching on just war is just as rigorist as its teaching on sexuality. In order for a war to be considered justified, a number of criteria have to be simultaneously met. These include declaration by a competent authority, a legitimating cause, proportionality between the good to be attained and the cost of the war, that military intervention is a last resort, etc. Furthermore, in the actual waging of a war, the criteria of proportionality and discrimination have to be met. The latter means, of course, that those engaged in the war must distinguish carefully between combatants and non-combatants, targeting only the former. If these criteria are strictly applied, it is difficult indeed to find any war that is morally justifiable.

Many would hold that the Second World War met most if not all of the criteria for entering into a war, but even its most ardent moral defenders would have a difficult time justifying, in every detail, the waging of that war. For example, the carpet bombings of Dresden, Frankfurt, and Tokyo, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents, certainly violated the principles of discrimination and proportionality. Even more egregious examples of this violation, of course, were the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Catholic moral theology would characterize all of these actions as intrinsically evil, that is to say, incapable of being justified under any circumstances.

In the wake of the atomic bombings in 1945, the English moral philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe made the Catholic case vociferously in a number of public debates. She went so far as to protest President Harry Truman’s reception of an honorary degree at Oxford, on the grounds that a great university should not honor a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents. In answer to Anscombe’s criticisms, many Americans — Catholics included — used frankly consequentialist forms of moral reasoning, arguing that the atomic bombings undoubtedly saved untold numbers of lives, both American and Japanese, and effectively brought a terrible war to an end. And I am sure that a poll of American Catholics conducted, say, in late 1945 would have revealed overwhelming support for the bombings.

But does anyone really think that the Church ought to lower its standards in regard to just war? Does anyone really think that the difficulty of following the Church’s norms in this arena should conduce toward a softening of those norms?

Here is the wonderful and unnerving truth: the Catholic Church’s job is to call people to sanctity and to equip them for living saintly lives. Its mission is not to produce nice people or people with good intentions; its mission is to produce saints, people of heroic virtue. Are the moral demands regarding warfare extravagant, over the top, or unrealistic? Well, of course they are! They are the moral norms that ought to guide those striving for real holiness. To dial down the demands because they are hard and most people have a hard time realizing them is to compromise the very meaning and purpose of the Church.

Now let us move back to the Church’s sexual morality. Is it exceptionally difficult to live up to all of the demands in this arena? Do the vast majority of people fall short of realizing the ideal? Do polls of Catholics consistently reveal that many if not most Catholics would welcome a softening of sexual norms? Sure. But none of these data prove much of anything, beyond the fact that living a heroically virtuous life is difficult. As in regard to just war, a compromising of the ideal here would represent an abdication of the Church’s fundamental responsibility of equipping the saints.

However, here is the flip-side. The Catholic Church couples its extraordinary moral demand with an extraordinarily lenient penitential system. Suppose the pilot of the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (I believe he was a Catholic) came into a confessional box and, in an attitude of sincere repentance, confessed the sin of contributing to the deaths of 100,000 innocent people. The priest would certainly give him counsel and perhaps assign a severe penance, but he would then say, “I absolve you of all your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” And that man’s sins, before God, would be wiped away. Period.

The Church calls people to be not spiritual mediocrities, but great saints, and this is why its moral ideals are so stringent. Yet the Church also mediates the infinite mercy of God to those who fail to live up to that ideal (which means practically everyone). This is why its forgiveness is so generous and so absolute. To grasp both of these extremes is to understand the Catholic approach to morality.

Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary.

Saints in a Confessional Box.