Random thoughts

Christ the King

Sat, 9 Jan 2010 11:05:45 -0500

Here is my homily for the Solemnity of Christ the King, celebrated on 22 November 2009:

On this great feast the Church proclaims throughout the world that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords, and the sacred liturgy offers a glorious hymn of thanks to God the Father in the Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer:

Father “You anointed Jesus Christ, your only Son, with the oil of gladness, as the eternal priest and universal king. As priest he offered his life on the altar of the cross and redeemed the human race by this one perfect sacrifice of peace. As king he claims dominion over all creation, that he may present to you, his almighty Father, an eternal and universal kingdom: a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace.”

Even in the midst of this joyful celebration, though, we know that the dominion of the Lord Jesus is a disputed sovereignty. The world is filled with manifestations of evil, and we can see all around us the plain evidence that we do not yet live fully in a kingdom of holiness and grace. Instead, we live in a world filled all too often with rape and murder, with theft and lies, with betrayals and infidelities, with injustice and violence. How, then, in the face of evidence contrary to what we profess about Christ’s kingdom of justice, love, and peace are we to understand the Church’s faith that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords?

In the Gospel this morning, we find the answer. Pilate said to Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not is not from the world.”

Now, to understand what our Lord means here by these words we must remember that in the Gospel of John, the expression “the world” always means simply that part of creation which is in rebellion against the Creator. So, the Lord Jesus is not saying that he has a kingdom on Mars, but not on Earth, or in a different corner of the universe but not here. No, Jesus is teaching Pilate, and us, that his kingship is unlike that of earthly kings who rule by force in a fallen world, a world in rebellion against the Creator. Instead, we must look for his kingdom in a different way, and so the dialogue continues.

Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world -- to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

That’s a curious phrase, everyone who belongs to the truth, but now we get to the heart of the question: How do we find the kingdom of Christ among us? Elsewhere in John’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus gives us the answer: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” In other words, living in the kingdom of Christ requires belonging to the truth, and that is possible only when we abide in the word of God, only when we become disciples or students of the Lord Jesus and let him teach us how to live and how to love, how to think and how to choose, according to the freedom of the children of God -- the freedom from sin and death.

Now notice, when Jesus says to Pilate “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice,” Pilate has an answer ready at hand: “What is truth?” But this is not the sincere question of a pupil seeking the instruction of a master; it is the cynical refusal of a hardened heart to hear the words of truth and life, the words of holiness and grace that alone can deliver us from the death of rebellion to the perfect freedom of the obedience of faith. But Pilate is not the only one to reject Jesus with such cynicism. We ask exactly this same question, What is truth?, every time we sin and then try to justify our sins or, even worse, say that our sins aren’t sins. That is the condition of the world in rebellion against the Creator, and those who live in that condition and will not repent of it can have no place in the eternal and universal kingdom of justice, love, and peace.

So, if we want to be converted from our rebellion and forgiven of our sins to live in Christ’s kingdom as free children of God, what are we to do? The Book of Revelation sings a great hymn of glory: “Jesus Christ is the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, who has made us into a kingdom of priests for his God and Father, to him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.”

Here’s our answer: He has made us into a kingdom of priests for his God and Father. Friends, this is the Church, which is on earth the seed and beginning of the Kingdom of God, and in the Church we find all the means of grace to live even now, not in rebellion, but in the obedience of faith, hope and love. By our Baptism we are made part of the royal priesthood of Christ, and through Word and Sacrament we can live the life of the new creation even now by cooperating with God’s grace to free us from sin. Every time we go to Confession, the grace of our Baptism is renewed; every time we worthily receive the Most Holy Eucharist, the gift of new life in nourished in us. Every day the Church prays, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” These words, taught to us by the Savior, reveal how we can live ever more perfectly in the kingdom of truth and life for which we all long: by doing God’s will, by abiding in his word, by belonging to the truth, by allowing the Gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, to teach us how to order everything in our lives: at home and at work, in the bedroom and the boardroom, at play and in the ballot box. That is how we hasten the coming of the kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love, and peace.

And that is how we give glory to our victorious king, the Alpha and the Omega, the One who is, who was, and who is to come. Praised be Jesus Christ! Now and forever!

The Danger of False Religion

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:50:14 -0400

Here is my homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday of the Year:

In the first lesson from Deuteronomy, Moses instructs the children of Israel: “In your observance of the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin upon you, you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it.”

In the second lesson from the Letter of St. James, the Apostle urges the disciples of the Lord Jesus: “Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.”

And in the Gospel from Mark, the Lord Jesus excoriates the Pharisees: “Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me, in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

In each case, Sacred Scripture warns us today against the danger of false religion. Here we must first note a problem for modern man: If all religion is merely a private matter of taste, how can there be true religion and false religion? This is one of the many reasons why neither a Christian nor a Jew before us may ever consent to the assertion that religion is a private matter of personal taste. Now in Christian thought, there are two kinds of false religion: worshipping false gods is the first, and worshipping the true God in a false way is the second. There are many religions in the world, but only three of them claim to be revealed by God: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Jews and Christians believe that Muslims worship the true God but in a way invented by man, and that very possibility reminds Christians of the danger posed to us by the second kind of false religion: replacing divine revelation with human wisdom and calling it faith. In the teaching of Moses and the Lord Jesus, this very simply constitutes false religion.

For the past two months, we have been reviewing the Eight Principles of Evangelical Catholicism which I drafted to guide catechesis in the parish and to help us understand the challenges posed by false religion in our day, and perhaps the most dangerous false religion we face is what I call cultural Catholicism, which begins by belonging to the tribe rather than by believing the Word. “Of course I’m Catholic,” the cultural Catholic proudly exclaims, “my great-grandmother was from Sicily.” This is false religion.

Fill in the blank to account for your own tribe, but if ethnic identity is the only source of one’s religion, then that religion is false. No one is born a Christian; each man is born only a child of Adam and a child of wrath and must be born again a child of God by water and the Holy Spirit. The sacrament of Baptism, like all the sacraments of the New Covenant, is a sacrament of faith: faith in the Word of God, the Word of God made flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. And it is belief in that Word, not the place on the map in which one’s ancestors were born, that makes one a disciple of the Lord Jesus.

The false religion of cultural Catholicism is crumbling fast before our eyes: today one in ten Americans is an ex-Catholic. This is what happens when membership in the tribe, rather than faith in the Word, is the foundation of one’s religion: once the bonds of tribal loyalty are loosened, religious identity is the first thing to be cast off. But there was once a time when cultural Catholicism, whatever its flaws, was a powerful force in American life, shaping our great cities and raising up vast networks of parishes, hospitals, school, colleges and universities, announcing the arrival on these new shores of the ancient Church. And perhaps no family in American history better embodies this sort of cultural Catholicism than the storied Kennedy clan of Boston.

This was brought to mind yesterday by the funeral of Ted Kennedy, who spent his entire adult life in the United States Senate, being known since the murder of his two brothers in the 1960’s as the most visible Catholic in the nation’s public life. Ted Kennedy was, by all accounts, a man of rare charm and numerous gifts; he was loved by his family and friends, respected by his colleagues, and trusted by the voters of Massachusetts who faithfully returned him to the Senate no matter how scandalous or numerous his personal flaws. But whatever his political or legislative accomplishments, we must reckon with this fact: the most visible Catholic in the nation’s public life spent the past four decades defending, promoting, excusing, and seeking to pay for by your taxes the wholesale slaughter of babies in the womb.

The mind reels at this contradiction and seeks for a plausible explanation of the fact that the unrestricted abortion license which has exterminated over fifty million American children was devised and constructed, promulgated and defended very largely by men and women who call themselves Catholic. And I believe that the primary explanation of this abomination is simple: the self-identified Catholics who stoutly defend the murder of unborn children are cultural Catholics only. They belong to the false religion of the tribe, rather than the living faith of the Word, and so like the Pharisees condemned by the Lord Jesus, they do not hesitate to replace the Word of God with human wisdom, in this case replacing worship of the true God with the worship of a false god named “freedom to choose.”

But how did we come to this sorry pass? While legions of cultural Catholic politicians have collaborated in building the culture of death, it is not the work of the laity alone. In 1964, a groups of six priests (including the notorious pro-abortion Jesuit Robert Drinan) met with the Kennedy family at their home in Hyannisport, and during a long day of debate and discussion, the six priests worked out the false theological reasoning used to justify the support of abortion by Catholic politicians. The details of that meeting were revealed years later in a book written by one of the six priests, long after he left the priesthood and the Catholic Church, and this sorry tale is sad confirmation of the terrible fact that the false religion of cultural Catholicism includes among its adherents too many priests and religious, too many theologians and professors.

So, what are we do? In the face of such treachery and collusion with the culture of death, what can we do? Let us heed the Letter of St. James:

“Put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror. He sees himself, then goes off and promptly forgets what he looked like. But the one who peers into the perfect law of freedom and perseveres, and is not a hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, such a one shall be blessed in what he does. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, his religion is in vain. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1: 21-27)

My friends, this is evangelical Catholicism, and once we have surrendered our minds, our wills, our bodies, our entire selves to the Word of God in the obedience of faith, then we find the perfect freedom, the evangelical freedom, of the children of God -- not the license to do whatever we want but the liberty to do everything we should. The remedy for the false religion of cultural Catholicism is the true religion of evangelical Catholicism. We are Catholics not because we belong to the tribe but because we believe the Word, and we have work to do. The eighth Principle of Evangelical Catholicism puts it this way:

All the baptized are sent in the Great Commission to be witnesses of Christ to others and must be equipped by the Church to teach the Gospel in word and deed. An essential dimension of true discipleship is the willingness to invite others to follow the Lord Jesus and the readiness to explain his Gospel.

That is our task: to be doers of the Word and not hearers only, lest we delude ourselves and make our religion in vain. And how do we accomplish this mission?

At our Baptism, the Lord Jesus called each of us by name to follow Him in the Way of the Cross. Let us heed that call by living as Evangelical Catholics who bear witness to the Savior, who bear witness even to our cultural Catholic brethren, through radical conversion, deep fidelity, joyful discipleship, and courageous evangelism. This is how we welcome the Word that has been planted in us and is able to save our souls. This is religion pure and undefiled. This is true Catholicism.

Praised be Jesus Christ! Now and forever!

The Society for Catholic Liturgy at St. Mary’s Church

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 09:55:41 -0400

The Society for Catholic Liturgy, founded in 1995, is a multi-disciplinary association of Catholic scholars, teachers, pastors, and professionals (including architects and musicians) in the Anglophone world. The Society is committed to promoting scholarly study and practical renewal of the Church’s liturgy and does this, among other means, by publishing Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal and by conducting an annual conference combining model celebrations of the sacred liturgy, lectures, discussions, and social events.

Previous conferences have been held in cities such as Washington, DC and Denver, at seminaries such as the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio and Chicago’s University of St. Mary of the Lake at Mundelein, and at the famed Cathedral Church of St. Cecelia in Omaha, Nebraska.

In 2010 the host for the Society’s annual conference will be St. Mary’s Church in Greenville, South Carolina. The topic is Munera Liturgica: Liturgical Roles and Responsibilities, and the meeting will take place from 28 to 31 January 2010. For more information, please visit the Society’s website is at www.liturgysociety.org, and for details about the conference schedule and registration go to www.liturgysociety.org/conferences

The Formation of Priests

Mon, 5 Jan 2009 20:30:27 -0500

On 31 October 2008, the Center for Theology at Lenior-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina sponsored the Sixteenth Annual Aquinas-Luther Conference, and the topic was “Pastoral and Priestly Formation.” I was invited to speak to this topic from the Catholic tradition, primarily to Lutheran pastors and undergraduate students of Lenior-Rhyne University. My purpose, then, was simply to sketch an outline of Catholic teaching about the nature of the priesthood and the central features of priestly formation for those unfamiliar with these. Here is the text of my paper, entitled “The Form of the Priesthood and the Formation of Priests.”

The Form of the Priesthood and the Formation of Priests

“Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)

Three times in those three verses from Philippians, St. Paul uses the term “form” or morphe in Greek, here a synonym for the Greek word eidos, meaning the inherent nature of a thing. Let’s read the verses again with the term “nature” standing in for morphe, and we can begin to see more clearly Paul’s meaning: Jesus, though he was in the nature of God, took the nature of a servant, and being found in human nature, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

I want to discuss today something about the making or forming of priests, but in order to do so, I must speak first about the form or nature of the priesthood. So, what is a priest? In the Old Testament we find two priesthoods: that of Melchizedek and that of Aaron.

Melchizedek, the king of Salem, was—we are told in Genesis—a priest of God Most High, and his name meant “king of righteousness.” After Abram’s defeat of the king of Elam and the kings who were with him, Melchizedek offered a sacrifice of bread and wine and imparted a blessing to Abram (Genesis 14:17-19), after which Abram paid the first tithe recorded in Scripture.

Aaron was the brother of Moses and the great-grandson of Levi, one of the twelve sons of Jacob or Israel. At the command of God, Moses consecrated Aaron and his sons as priests of divine worship, with Aaron designated high priest, according to an elaborate ritual revealed and ordered by God (Exodus 28 and 29), and the hereditary priesthood in Aaron’s line, the Levitical priesthood, was established for the offering of sacrifice for sins, first in the Tabernacle or Meeting Tent and then in the Temple at Jerusalem—the dwelling places of God on earth.

Both of these priesthoods, that of Melchizedek and that of Aaron, are used in the Letter to the Hebrews to teach Christians about the nature and purpose of the priesthood of Jesus Christ. And following the Letter to the Hebrews, Catholic tradition understands both of these Old Testament priesthoods as types and figures of the priesthood of Christ, who is the only priest of the New and Everlasting Covenant. So, Christ is the priest-king who offers to God the perfect sacrifice for sin, a sacrifice made present to God’s chosen people through the offering of bread and wine. This sacrifice is Christ’s own body and blood, so He is both the priest who offers and the victim who is offered. And the place in which this sacrifice is offered is the dwelling place of God on earth—the human body of the Son of Mary who is the Son of God.

The Hebrew word for priest, cohen, was rendered in the Septuagint as heireus, which might be translated for us as “man of the temple.” It was this Greek word for priest which was used in the Letter to the Hebrews to describe the priesthood of the Lord Jesus, who is the high priest and the only priest of the New Covenant. And when the Bible was translated from Hebrew and Greek into Latin by St. Jerome, the Latin word he chose to render both cohen and heireus was sacerdos. So, the Latin word sacerdos can describe the priestly offices of Melchizedek, Aaron, and the Lord Jesus, and the priesthood of a sacerdos is a sacerdotium.

I beg your patience in this linguistic exercise because making these distinctions in the ancient biblical and theological languages will help bring much greater conceptual clarity to the discussion which follows of Catholic teaching on the priesthood or sacerdotium of bishops and presbyters on one hand and of all the baptized on the other.

Now, remember, I began this section of my lecture with a question: What is a priest? And we’ve seen that in the Old Testament there were two different priesthoods—that of Melchizedek and that of Aaron, while in the New Testament there is only one priesthood—that of the Lord Jesus. But from these three separate priesthoods we can find these common elements: a priest is chosen by God and set apart from the people to offer sacrifice for them and to bless them. The priest being set apart from the people for the sake of the people so that he can lead them to God is the root idea of consecration and holiness, and this in turn stands as the background for St. Peter’s teaching on the sacerdotium or priesthood of all the baptized in his first Letter:

“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:4-5 and 9)

And although St. Paul does not use the words priest or priesthood in his Letter to the Romans, it is this same idea of the priesthood of all the baptized which allowed Paul to write to the Christians in Rome: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)

And so we come back to the word “form.” Do not be con—formed, but be trans—formed. Do not, in other words, take the nature of the fallen world in rebellion against the Creator, but instead receive the nature of the new creation by grace through faith which makes possible again the capacity of the human mind to know the true and of the human will to choose the good and of the human heart to love the beautiful. In other words, the making or forming of disciples is nothing other than receiving the form of Christ, or as Paul puts it in Ephesians, we must attain to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13), while to the Galatians he describes himself as “in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you.” (Galatians 4:19)

This is a work of grace, not a product of human exertion, and it is by this trans—formation that the image of God in which we were created but which is disfigured by sin is restored in us. Image or eikon is a concept closely related to form or morphe, both in Greek philosophy and in the language of revelation, and the notion of iconography turns out to be of great importance in understanding the sacramental priesthood or sacerdotium of the New Testament.

Which bring us back again to the question: What is a priest? One chosen by God and set apart for the sake of offering sacrifice to God and of imparting God’s blessing to His people. In the New Testament, there is only one priest, one cohen, one heireus, one sacerdos: the Lord Jesus Christ, but He shares his priesthood with his disciples by the grace of the sacraments. And the Catholic Church believes and teaches that in the New Covenant there are two fundamentally different sacramental participations in the unique priesthood of Christ: Baptism and Ordination.

The priesthood of the baptized is the royal priesthood described by St. Peter; it is this universal priesthood of the baptized which allows the disciple, in the words of St. Paul, to offer his body to God as a living sacrifice, an act of spiritual worship. The priesthood of the ordained, on the other hand, is given to some men called out by God from among the baptized to make present the sacrifice of Christ by the offering of bread and wine and thus to continue the hierarchical ministry of the Apostles, who were set apart by the Lord Jesus from all the other disciples to teach, sanctify, and govern God’s people in Christ’s Name and with his authority.

From among his many hundreds of disciples, the Lord Jesus chose twelve men to become his emissaries, ambassadors, apostles, and to these Twelve alone did the Lord say: Do this in remembrance of me; he who hears you hears me; whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; 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.

The Catholic Church has from the beginning understood these commands of the Lord Jesus to constitute the giving of a sacred power to the Apostles and to those who succeed them by the laying on of hands, and this sacred power is a sacramental participation in the priesthood of Jesus Christ different in kind and not in degree from the sacramental priesthood of the baptized.

The Second Vatican Council described the relationship of these two priesthoods in these words:

“Though they differ essentially and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial priesthood or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless ordered one to another; each in its own proper way shares in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power that he has, forms and rules the priestly people; in the person of Christ he effects the Eucharistic sacrifice and offers it to God in the name of all the people. The faithful indeed, by virtue of their royal priesthood, participate in the offering of the Eucharist. They exercise that priesthood, too, by the reception of the sacraments, prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, abnegation, and active charity.” (Lumen Gentium, 10)

With this in mind, we are almost ready to consider the nature and purpose of the ministerial priesthood in the Catholic Church. But first a few more words about language.

In Catholic usage, the word “minister” properly refers in ordinary circumstances only to the three Orders which constitute the sacrament of Holy Orders: the Order of Deacons (or diaconate), the Order of Presbyters (or presbyterate), and the Order of Bishops (or episcopate). Thus we speak of the ministry of deacons, presbyters, and bishops, and all of them may be called in a generic sense ministers or servants of God. Two of these Orders are understood to be a sacramental participation in the priesthood of Christ, and one is not. Deacons are ordained unto the ministry, but not unto the priesthood, in the sense of the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood. For this reason, deacons cannot offer the Most Holy Eucharist, hear Confessions, celebrate Confirmation, or administer the Anointing of the Sick—all of which require the priestly character of the presbyterate or the episcopate.

And that leads to the final consideration of language. In the Catholic Church those who hold my office—presbyter—are in English commonly called priests, and this comes from the British habit of swallowing syllables whole. For example, Wor-ches-ter becomes Wooster. And pres-byt-er becomes pres-ter which becomes prest which becomes priest. But here lies the source of no little confusion: Remember, in Greek heireus means priest and presbyteros means elder; heireus comes into Latin as sacerdos and presbyteros becomes the Latin presbyter. But both sacerdos and presbyter in Latin come into English as “priest,” and that’s where the confusion begins. So at the risk of being pedantic, please allow me for the sake of clarity to set aside for a moment the use of the English word priest and speak instead of bishop to mean episcopos (or overseer), presbyter to mean presbyteros (or elder), and sacerdos to mean priest (or heireus).

And so we come back to the ministerial priesthood or sacerdotium in the Catholic Church. The two Orders of bishop and presbyter share in different degrees in the one sacerdotium or priesthood of Christ, and therefore the word sacerdos or priest understood as heireus can be used interchangeably of both bishops and presbyters.

So, at long last, we are ready to talk about the making or forming of presbyters in the Catholic Church, and the first thing to be said is that the comparatively recent beginning of seminaries as house of priestly formation is indirectly the result of the Protestant Reformation. There’s that word “form” again!

In the more than fifteen centuries between the Day of Pentecost and the Council of Trent, the vast majority of presbyters were prepared for their ordination by a long apprenticeship with a bishop or senior presbyter and by an education through whatever means were common in a given time and place: by private tutor, in a monastery, at a bishop’s house or cathedral school, and finally by the universities which began to rise in the 12th century. Only in 1457 did something resembling a modern seminary appear in Rome, the Almo Collegio Capranica founded by an Italian cardinal, but it wasn’t until the rise of the Jesuits and similar groups within the Church during the Catholic Reformation of the 16th century that the pattern of seminary life was established which we still know today. These developments were in large measure a response to the legitimate criticisms of Protestant reformers that too many bishops and presbyters were ignorant, lax, or even immoral, and the basic lines of priestly formation were laid down to ensure that the men who would be ordained to the presbyterate were faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus, who were properly schooled in the sacred sciences and possessed both the theological virtues and the human virtues necessary for an effective exercise of the priestly ministry.

From the Council of Trent to the Second Vatican Council, a period of four hundred years, the basic shape of seminary life and priestly formation remained unchanged, but as with so many other features of life in the Catholic Church, the Second Vatican Council introduced significant changes to the texture of priestly formation, and only now (forty-three years after the Council ended) are we beginning to see the true fruits of the renewal called for by the Council Fathers.

The Second Vatican Council issued sixteen documents during its four year run, and of these two are devoted to the priesthood. The Decree on the Training of Priests was promulgated in October 1965, and the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests followed in December 1965. The first of these two documents explains the purpose of priestly formation:

“In them (major seminaries) the whole training of the students should have as its object to make them true shepherds of souls after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, teacher, priest, and shepherd. Hence, they should be trained for the ministry of the Word, so that they may gain an ever increasing understanding of the revealed Word of God, making it their own by meditation, and giving it expression in their speech and in their lives. They should be trained for the ministry of worship and sanctification, so that by prayer and the celebration of the sacred liturgical functions they may carry on the work of salvation through the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments. They should be trained to undertake the ministry of the shepherd, that they may know how to represent Christ to men, Christ who did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for the many…Hence, all the elements of their training, spiritual, intellectual, disciplinary, should be coordinated with this pastoral aim in view…” (Optatam Totius, 4)

In these words, the Second Vatican Council made clear that authentic formation must prepare the presbyter to be a shepherd, a pastor of souls after the heart of Christ, and that the spiritual authority and sacred power given to presbyters in their ordination must be exercised in the manner of the paradoxical servant-leadership of Christ. And please note what comes first in this approach to priestly formation: the ministry of the revealed Word of God which every priest must understand by prayer and study and give flesh to by his own words and deeds. Only then does the ministry of divine worship lead to the sanctification of God’s people, and since the salvation of souls is the primary task of the Christian shepherd, priestly formation must prepare the young presbyter to lead everyone entrusted to his care to saving faith in the Lord Jesus by a ministry of Word and Sacrament.

So far, nothing in this teaching would sound strange to a Lutheran or other Protestant of nearly any Christian communion. But please recall that we have seen that one feature common to all Scriptural notions of priesthood is the offering of sacrifice for sins, and on this point, there is usually some disagreement or at least confusion of language between Catholics and Protestants. In the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, the Second Vatican Council, speaking now of presbyters as priests, teaches that

“Through the ministry of priests the spiritual sacrifice of the faithful is completed in union with the sacrifice of Christ the only mediator, which in the Eucharist is offered through the hands of the priest in the name of the whole Church in an unbloody and sacramental manner until the Lord himself come. The ministry of priests is directed to this and finds it consummation in it. For their ministration, which begins with the announcement of the Gospel, draws its force and power from the sacrifice of Christ and tend to this, that ‘the whole redeemed city, that is, the whole assembly and community of the saints should be offered as a universal sacrifice to God through the High Priest who offered himself in his passion for us that we might be the body of so great a Head.’” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 2)

And here we do come to one of the controverted questions of 16th century theological disputes over the sacrificial nature of the Mass and the priesthood. According to Catholic doctrine, the pastoral office of presbyters is a true sacramental participation in the unique priesthood of Jesus Christ, and the Most Holy Eucharist is the making present in every time and place of the one sacrifice of Calvary through the consecrated hands of priests. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that the Eucharist is fittingly called “the Holy Sacrifice, because it makes present the one sacrifice of Christ the Savior and includes the Church’s offering. The terms holy sacrifice of the Mass, sacrifice of praise, spiritual sacrifice, pure and holy sacrifice are also used, since (the Eucharist) completes and surpasses all the sacrifices of the Old Covenant.” (CCC, 1330)

Moving on to the priesthood, the Catechism continues: “In the ecclesial service of the ordained minister, it is Christ himself who is present to his Church as Head of his Body, Shepherd of his flock, high priest of the redemptive sacrifice, Teacher of the Truth. This is what the Church means by saying that the priest, by virtue of the sacrament of Holy Orders, acts in persona Christi Capitis. It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, whose sacred person his minister truly represents. Now the minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is truly made like to the high priest and possesses the authority to act in the power and place of the person of Christ himself. Christ is the source of all priesthood: the priest of the old law was a figure of Christ, and the priest of the new law acts in the person of Christ.” (CCC, 1548)

It is for these reasons that the priest concludes the Offertory Rite at Mass with this invitation addressed to the congregation: “Pray, brethren, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God, the almighty Father.” After which the assembly answers the priest, “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of His name, for our good and the good of all the Church.” In this ritual dialogue, the sacred liturgy teaches that the manner of the offering is different for the baptized and the ordained because their sacramental participations in the one priesthood of Christ is essentially different, and that, in turn, is why the Most Holy Eucharist cannot validly be celebrated by anyone other than a truly ordained presbyter or bishop in apostolic succession.

Which brings us to a point of rejoicing and of sadness for Catholics. The Catholic Church acknowledges with joy that the apostolic succession of bishops and priests continues unbroken in the Orthodox Church and that, for this reason, all of the sacraments or sacred mysteries given by the Lord Jesus to his Church are celebrated in their fullness by Orthodox Christians. The same, however, cannot be said by Catholics of the Christian communities of the 16th century Reformation, in which was broken the apostolic succession of bishops and priests, for which reason five of the seven sacraments were lost: Holy Orders, the Most Holy Eucharist, Confession of Sins, Anointing of the Sick, and Chrismation or Confirmation. What remains to the ecclesial communions of the Reformation are the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Matrimony and, of course, the Sacred Scriptures of God’s revealed Word. This is not to say that when Protestants celebrate the Lord’s Supper or other acts of Christian worship besides Baptism and Marriage they are engaged in play-acting or worse. On the contrary, the Catholic Church recognizes as instruments of grace those acts of divine worship by which Protestant Christians seek to celebrate the Paschal Mystery of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection, but she cannot call them sacraments because of the absolutely essential ministry of bishops and priests in historic succession from the Apostles. And it is the indispensable place of that ministry in the Church which gives rise to her great concern for priestly formation.

The Decree on the Training of Priests of the Second Vatican Council ordered that the bishops of every nation draw up their own program of priestly formation to provide for the local implementation of universal norms, and in the United States that document is now in its fifth edition, having been revised most recently in 2005. The American Program of Priestly Formation is based upon several sources: the decrees of the Second Vatican Council, the apostolic exhortation of Pope John Paul II on the formation of priests in the present day called Pastores Dabo Vobis, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and two codes of canon law—the 1983 Code of the Latin Church and 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. These sources represent the best contemporary statement of Catholic belief and practice in the training, education, and formation of priests, and the Program of Priestly Formation is meant by the American bishops to fashion from these norms a tool capable of shaping every facet of life in a seminary of our day. And the life of a seminarian is first a life of conversion.

The Program of Priestly Formation teaches that “Priestly life lived in configuration to Jesus Christ, Head and Shepherd, must necessarily manifest and give witness to the radicalism of the Gospel. In other words, priests are called to a way of life that gives evident and transparent witness to the power of the Gospel at work in their lives. The elements of such a lifestyle include

+ a way of life permeated by the three-fold charge given priests at ordination to teach, to sanctify, and to govern
+ a life of steady prayer first and foremost centered in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist, the Liturgy of the Hours, and the liturgical cycles, but also in prayer that is personal and devotional
+ a deep devotion to the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, Lord and Savior
+ a life of obedience that is apostolic, communal, and pastoral
+ a life lived in communion with one’s bishop and the presbyterate, a communion that includes sacramental, apostolic, and fraternal bonds
+ a life of celibate chastity that serves as both ‘a sign and stimulus of love, and as a singular source of spiritual fertility in the world,’ and, being freely accepted, shows that the priest is ‘consecrated in a new way to Christ’ and offers in himself a reflection of the virginal love of Christ for the Church
+ a life of gratitude for the material blessings of God’s creation couples with a simple and generous lifestyle that cares for and is in solidarity with the poor, works for universal justice, makes itself ready and available for all those in need, administers the good of the community with utmost honesty, and offers a courageous prophetic witness in the world
+ a life that embraces ‘the mind and heart of missionaries open to the needs of the Church and the world’
+ a life that promotes the array of ecclesial vocations

This is a daunting array of responsibilities, but perhaps the one thing in that list which first catches the attention of people in our time is the obligation of perpetual celibacy. So allow me to take a moment to discuss that part of priestly life and ministry and one other feature that also stands as a sign of contradiction in our day: the reservation of priestly ordination to men.

As recorded in Chapter 19 of St. Matthew’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus proposed celibacy as a freely chosen and permanent state of life and as a witness to the kingdom of heaven, and this was a true revolution in Judaism. Because marriage is, as the Nuptial Blessing puts, the one blessing that was not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood, and because we are commanded by the one, only, living and true God to be fruitful and multiply, marriage was considered by Jews to be not simply a happy domestic arrangement but a sacred duty. And for this reason, not being married was usually thought of as at least a tragedy and perhaps a punishment. Scholars tell us that religiously motivated celibacy was a feature of life in the Essene community to which it seems John the Baptist had connections, but this was surely outside the mainstream of Jewish life.

From the time of the Apostles, however, celibacy for the sake of the kingdom has been a regular feature of Christian life in the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and although there is no essential or intrinsic connection between the priesthood and perpetual celibacy, it has long been required for priestly ordination in the Latin Church because it is held to be most fitting for the priestly life. The Second Vatican Council expressed that conviction this way:

“Perfect and perpetual continence for the sake of the kingdom of heaven was recommended by Christ the Lord. It has been freely accepted and laudably observed by many Christians down through the centuries as well as in our own time, and has always been highly esteemed in a special way by the Church as a feature of priestly life. For it is at once a sign of pastoral charity and an incentive to it, as well as being in a special way a source of spiritual fruitfulness in the world. It is true that it is not demanded of the priesthood by its nature. This is clear from the practice of the primitive Church and the tradition of the Eastern Churches where in addition to those—including all bishops—who choose from the gift of grace to preserve celibacy, there are also many excellent married priests. While recommending ecclesiastical celibacy this sacred Council does not by any means aim at changing that contrary discipline which is lawfully practiced in the Eastern Churches. Rather, the Council affectionately exhorts all those who have received the priesthood in the married state to persevere in their holy vocation and continue to devote their lives fully and generously to the flock entrusted to them.” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16)

But, the Council continues, “there are many ways in which celibacy is in harmony with the priesthood. For the whole mission of the priest is dedicated to the service of the new humanity which Christ, the victor over death, raises up in the world through his Spirit and which is born ‘not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God’ (John 1:13). By preserving virginity or celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, priests are consecrated in a new and excellent way to Christ. They more readily cling to him with undivided heart and dedicate themselves more freely in him and through him to the service of God and of men. They are less encumbered in their service of his kingdom and of the task of heavenly regeneration. In this way they become better fitted for a broader acceptance of fatherhood in Christ.

“By means of celibacy, then priests profess before men their willingness to be dedicated with undivided loyalty to the task entrusted to them, namely that of espousing the faithful to one husband and presenting them as a chaste virgin to Christ. They recall that mystical marriage, established by God and destined to be fully revealed in the future, by which the Church holds Christ as her only spouse. Moreover, they are made a living sign of that world to come, already present through faith and charity, in which the children of the resurrection shall neither be married not take wives.” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 16)

So, to summarize, although there is no necessary connection between celibacy and the priesthood, the Catholic Church finds that it is a fitting discipline for priests freely to embrace the celibate state for these reasons: to be conformed more completely to Christ, to serve more freely the people entrusted to their care, to live as Christ lived—as a spouse only to the Church, and to bear witness to the life to come in which there is no marriage. There are and always have been married priests in the Catholic Church, but in the Western Church for more than a thousand years, the norm has been and continues to be that only celibate males are eligible for priestly ordination.

This public commitment to a life without marriage and therefore a life without sex quite naturally makes Catholic priests objects of ridicule and contempt when we do not live according to that promise, and this is true most of all when the misconduct either is homosexual or is with minors or both. The notorious scandals of the past several years have caused many in the Catholic Church to ask if its time to reconsider the commitment to celibacy for priests, but the basic response of Church authorities so far seems be this: First, celibacy no more causes unchastity than marriage causes adultery, and second, the general promiscuity of our culture makes celibacy for the kingdom a more important witness now than it has ever been. From my own experience of these matters, I would say that the discipline of celibacy for priests is here to stay.

For all that, however, priestly celibacy is merely a discipline. That is to say that celibacy for priests is a rule made by the Church that could be changed by the Church. Restricting the ordination of priests to men alone, however, is not a discipline that can be changed; it is a doctrine of the faith that is irreformable. And this distinction is of supreme importance to those who want to understand the shape of priestly life and ministry in the Catholic Church.

The Code of Canon Law puts the matter simply: “A baptized male alone receives sacred ordination validly.” (CIC, canon 1024) Although it was first in the 20th century that a determined argument was made by Christians for the ordination of women to the priesthood (leaving aside the novel theories of some Gnostics in the early centuries of the Church), it is not a new question. In the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas asks “Whether the Female Sex Is an Impediment to Receiving Orders?” As is his custom in the question and answer format of the Summa, Thomas first makes the case for the ordination of women, saying that “It would seem that the female sex is no impediment to receiving Orders. For the office of prophet is greater than the office of priest, since a prophet stands midway between God and the priests, just as the priest does between God and the people. Now the office of prophet was sometimes granted to women…therefore, the office of priest also may be…”(ST, IIIa, Q.39, a. 1) But having made that case, he then refutes it. “Certain things are required in the recipient of a sacrament as being requisite for the validity of the sacrament, and if such things be lacking, one can receive neither the sacrament nor the reality of the sacrament. Other things, however, are required not for the validity of the sacrament, but for its lawfulness….Accordingly, we must say that the male sex is required for receiving Orders not only in the second but also in the first way. Wherefore even though a woman were made the object of all that is done in conferring Orders, she would not receive Orders…” (ST, IIIa, Q.39, a.1) Now, in explaining his reason for this conclusion, Thomas quotes St. Paul from 1 Timothy 2:12 “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” and then goes on to draw a general principle about the inability of women to, as he puts it, “signify eminence of degree.” The Church has long since ceased to deploy that argument in support of the doctrine that only men can validly receive priestly ordination, but the doctrine is unchanged.

In May 1994, Pope John Paul II addressed the question of ordaining only men to the priesthood in a short Apostolic Letter entitled Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. He first insists that only men are called to the priesthood and then that this is in no way an offense to the dignity of women before reaching his conclusion. John Paul wrote: “In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner. In doing so, he exercised the same freedom with which, in all his behavior, he emphasized the dignity and the vocation of women, without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time. In fact, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles attest that this call was made in accordance with God’s eternal plan; Christ chose those whom he willed (cf. Mark 3:13-14; John 6:70), and he did so in union with the Father, ‘through the Holy Spirit’ (Acts 1:2), after having spent the night in prayer (cf. Luke 6:12). Therefore, in granting admission to the ministerial priesthood, the Church has always acknowledged as a perennial norm her Lord’s way of acting in choosing the twelve men whom he made the foundation of his Church (cf. Revelation 21:14). These men did not in fact receive only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the Church; rather, they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself (cf. Matthew 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mark 3:13-16; 16:14-15). The Apostles did the same when they chose fellow workers who would succeed them in their ministry. Also included in this choice were those who, throughout the time of the Church, would carry on the Apostles’ mission of representing Christ the Lord and Redeemer.” (OS, 2)

“Furthermore, the fact that the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, received neither the mission proper to the Apostles nor the ministerial priesthood clearly shows that the non-admission of women to priestly ordination cannot mean that women are of lesser dignity, nor can it be construed as discrimination against them. Rather, it is to be seen as the faithful observance of a plan to be ascribed to the wisdom of the Lord of the universe.” (OS, 3)

“Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22:32), I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” (OS, 4)

It was not John Paul’s purpose in this Apostolic Letter to develop a full theological explanation for the Church’s doctrine on this question, but, the pope insisted, there can be no doubt what that teaching is and that it is unchangeable. In this way, the doctrine that it is impossible to ordain women to the priesthood is fundamentally different from the discipline that priests in the Latin Church must be celibate, despite the fact that these two are commonly linked in the public imagination. On the contrary, the first is an irreformable doctrine which the Church cannot change, and the second is a prudential discipline which the Church can change but has decided repeatedly not to. What is beyond dispute, however, is that these two dimensions of the Catholic priesthood are both signs of contradiction to the world and to many other Christians.

Which brings us back, after a long detour, to the Program of Priestly Formation and the means it outlines to help seminarians become priests who give witness to the radicalism of the Gospel. Four distinct but interrelated areas of priestly formation are identified: human formation, spiritual formation, intellectual formation, and pastoral formation. The seminary seeks to address all four of these areas in equal measure to ensure that the candidate for ordination is capable of being an instrument of grace for others who can “act in the power and place of the person of Christ himself.”

This approach to priestly formation differs starkly from other models commonly found, for example, in many non-Catholic divinity schools where the student is evaluated on what he knows or even on how he works with others but not necessarily on what he believes or how he lives. In the Catholic approach to priestly formation, however, the Church must evaluate candidates for ordination on all of these levels to ascertain with certainty the truth of the call to priestly life and ministry. A man might be a brilliant student of dogma and still be a heretic or might have a deft pastoral touch but be a libertine. Both holiness and wholeness are sought in the seminarian, and so integral formation proceeds along all four fronts: human, spiritual, intellectual, and pastoral. The Program of Priestly Formation identifies the specific requirements which may differ from country to country, but the common elements are the same in every nation and reflect the perennial wisdom of Christian living and the ratio studiorum or plan of studies which orders the teaching of the arts and sciences, and languages both ancient and modern, and which culminates in philosophy, the handmaiden of theology, and in sacred theology, the queen of the sciences.

I would like to conclude by drawing attention to two features of this ratio studiorum, both during the first formation of seminarians and in the ongoing formation of priests throughout their lives. These two are the place of Sacred Scripture and of Thomas Aquinas in forming the priestly mind.

In its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, the Second Vatican Council teaches that “the Sacred Scriptures contain the Word of God, and because they are inspired, they truly are the Word of God. Therefore, the study of the sacred page should be the very soul of sacred theology…(and)…all clerics, particularly priests of Christ…should immerse themselves in the Scriptures by constant sacred reading and diligent study.” (Dei Verbum, 24-25)

Then, taking its lead from the Council, the Code of Canon Law provides that “Theological instruction is to be imparted in the light of faith and under the leadership of the magisterium in such a way that the students understand the entire Catholic doctrine grounded in divine revelation, gain nourishment for their own spiritual life, and are able properly to announce and safeguard it in the exercise of the ministry. Students are to be instructed in Sacred Scripture with special diligence in such a way that they acquire a comprehensive view of the whole of scripture. There are to be classes in dogmatic theology, always grounded in the written Word of God together with Sacred Tradition; through these, students are to learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation, especially with St. Thomas as a teacher.” (CIC, canon 252)

With Aquinas as our teacher, we are to learn to penetrate more intimately the mysteries of salvation. One of my favorite images of priestly ministry comes from St. Paul, who wrote to the Corinthians, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.” (1 Corinthians 4:1) In the Christian East, the Church speaks not of the sacraments but of the mysteries—the saving words and deeds of the Lord Jesus which are communicated to us in Holy Scripture and divine worship; priests are stewards of these mysteries.

In one of the Votive Masses of the Roman Missal, the priest opens the sacred liturgy with this Collect: “Father, for your glory and our salvation, you appointed Jesus Christ eternal High Priest. May the people he gained for you by his blood come to share in the power of his cross and resurrection by celebrating his memorial in this Eucharist.” Then at the Offertory Rite the priest speaks for the people to the Father when he asks, “Lord, may we offer these mysteries worthily and often, for whenever this memorial sacrifice is celebrated the work of our redemption is renewed.” And finally, in the concluding prayer, the priest as a steward of the mysteries just celebrated prays, “Lord, by sharing in this sacrifice which your Son commanded us to offer as his memorial, may we become, with him, an everlasting gift to you.”

That is the form of the priesthood which should always guide the formation of priests.

Celebration Ad Deum at St. Mary’s

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 06:36:34 -0400

During Eastertide 2008, the priests of St. Mary’s Church began to celebrate Mass ad orientem or ad Deum, and in preparation for this I devoted my bulletin columns on the five Sundays of Lent to explaining some of the history of the placement of the altar and the posture of the priest and why it is desirable and appropriate to experience the sacred liturgy celebrated in this ancient posture of expectation. Here are those five bulletin columns:

The First Sunday of Lent

From Christian antiquity, priests and people have celebrated the Holy Eucharist by facing together towards the LORD. This simple and obvious theological precept has been somewhat obscured in the last generation by the novel practice of the priest standing across the altar from the people during the Eucharistic Prayer, a custom almost never before found in the sacred liturgy except for rare instances of architectural necessity, and in the last few years, theologians and pastors have begun to review this novelty in light of the best scholarship and the experience of the past 40 years.

Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger was one of most thoughtful and respected critics of the unintended consequences which flow from the priest and people facing each other across the altar during the Eucharistic Prayer. Ratzinger argued that this arrangement, in addition to being a radical novelty in Christian practice, has the effect of creating a circle of congregation and celebrant closed in upon itself rather than allowing the congregation and celebrant to be a pilgrim people together turned towards the LORD. And this closed circle, in turn, too easily renders the Eucharist more of a horizontal celebration of the congregation gathered than a vertical offering of the sacrifice of Christ to the Father. This flattening of divine worship into a self-referential celebration is, in part, what leads many Catholics to experience Mass as much less than the source and summit of the Church’s life, and the remedy for this malady is to open the closed circle and experience the power of turning together towards the LORD.

This can be done primarily in two ways: 1) return to the ancient and universal practice of the priest standing with the people on one side of the altar as they together face liturgical East, the place from which the glory of the LORD shines upon us, or 2) even when the priest and people remain separated on opposite sides of the altar, place a cross at the center of the altar to allow both celebrant and congregation to face the LORD. Pope Benedict, through his writing and by his example, is encouraging priests everywhere to work towards these goals to enrich the experience of divine worship and free us from the danger of solipsism which is contained in self-referential ways of praying.

This is why you see today in the sanctuary a new crucifix standing at the center of the altar. In the weeks ahead, as we grow accustomed to this gentle modification of the way we pray together, I will review with you the meaning and practical consequences of the priest and people turning together towards the LORD. For those of you who would like to read about these matters in some depth, I recommend two books. The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Ratzinger and Turning Towards the Lord by Uwe Michael Lang are both excellent places to learn about the nature and purpose of divine worship and the ways in which the Church’s ritual must reflect the reality of the sacred in liturgical prayer.

The Second Sunday of Lent

The ritual forms of Catholic worship have changed and evolved many times throughout the centuries, and the architectural arrangements for the celebration of these ritual forms have likewise changed. Ordinarily, this process of change is slow, deliberate, and incremental, but in the 1960’s the Church experienced an intense burst of change which dramatically altered both the ritual forms of our worship and the architectural arrangements of our churches. Because there were so many changes in such a short span of time, all of the alterations were considered by most people to be essentially connected to each other, but that is not the case. A good example is the use of Latin in the liturgical texts promulgated after the II Vatican Council. Many people falsely believe that because Vatican II permitted the use of the vernacular languages in worship, the Council banished Latin from the modern Roman Rite. In fact, however, the same Council which permitted the use of the vernacular also insisted that all Catholics should be able to say and sing their parts of the new Mass in Latin. Celebrating the modern Roman Missal in Latin, therefore, is not in any way a rejection of the II Vatican Council; rather, the regular use of Latin in modern worship is precisely what the Council Fathers called for.

A similar confusion exists with respect to the location of the altar and the place of the priest at the altar. From Christian antiquity, most churches had only one altar, and it was freestanding, meaning that the priest could walk completely around it during the celebration of the liturgy. This custom was retained in the Christian East by Orthodox and Catholics alike, but in the West the altar was gradually pushed back from the center to the rear wall of the sanctuary, in large measure to allow it to merge architecturally with the tabernacle. This change was later accompanied by adding additional altars to most churches, eventually yielding the custom of having three altars in each church. Even before the Second Vatican Council, pastors and theologians began to argue for a return to our own tradition of having but one altar in each church and insisting that it once again be freestanding. This was, in part, the fruit of the Liturgical Movement of the 19th and 20th centuries which reminded the Church, among other things, that the altar is the preeminent symbol of Christ in the liturgy. Accordingly, throughout the Western Church the old “high altars” found at the rear of the sanctuary were abandoned, changed, or replaced to allow the ancient and new custom of a freestanding altar. But just as this was happening, a novelty was introduced and attached to the newly detached altar: the custom of the priest and people facing each other across the altar during the Eucharistic Prayer. How and why this novelty spread so far and so fast is a tale for another time and place; for now I want only to make this point: there is no essential connection between the liturgy of Vatican II, the freestanding altar, and the priest facing the people at the altar. In fact, even now the rubrics in the modern Roman Missal are written with the assumption that the priest and people are together facing liturgical East during the Mass, and as I explained last week, Pope Benedict XVI wants Catholics everywhere to understand that to be faithful to our own tradition, we must live in continuity with the Church’s worship in every age.

Next week: Why the East?

The Third Sunday of Lent

Praying in a “sacred direction” is a feature common in many religions (Think of Muslims who pray facing Mecca—a practice instituted by Mohammed, who initially had his followers pray facing Jerusalem.), and following similar customs in Judaism, the idea of a “sacred direction” has been a part of Christianity since the beginning. Only since the 1960’s has this concept been neglected in the Western Church, but now Pope Benedict XVI is teaching the whole Church to retrieve the babies that were thrown out with the bathwater during the confusing days of liturgical change over 40 years ago. The first Christians expected the return of Christ in glory to occur at the Mount of Olives, from where He ascended to His Father, and so it was a common practice for them during prayer to turn towards the Mount of Olives. This practice later evolved into the general custom of preferring to face Jerusalem during prayer, and as the Church spread through the Mediterranean world, this notion further changed into a connection between the light of the rising sun and the glory of the returning Son. The seeds of this idea are planted throughout Scripture (Wisdom 16:28, Zechariah 14:4, Malachi 3:2, Matthew 24:27 and 30, Luke 1:78, and Revelation 7:2), and the early Church placed great emphasis on this point. In the second century, St Justin Martyr wrote “For the word of His truth and wisdom is more ardent and more light-giving than the rays of the sun, and sinks down into the depths of heart and mind. Hence also the Scripture said, ‘His name shall rise up above the sun.’ And again, Zechariah says, ‘His name is the East.’” And St. Clement of Alexandria was even more emphatic: “In correspondence with the manner of the sun’s rising, prayers are made toward the sunrise in the East.” (For a much fuller explanation of this theme, I again recommend the splendid little book Turning Towards the Lord by Uwe Michael Lang, published in 2004 by Ignatius Press and introduced with a forward by Joseph Ratzinger.)

For these reasons, since the building of Christian churches began on a large scale in the fourth century, they have literally been “oriented” to the East wherever local geography permitted this, and even when the building could not run on an east-west axis, the apse of the church and the altar within it have been understood as “liturgical East”, the symbolic place of the glory of the LORD. Moreover, because the Eucharistic Prayer is addressed to God the Father and not to the congregation, the normal posture of the priest has always been to face the East with his congregation and offer the sacrifice of the Mass with and for them to the Father. Accordingly, it is a simple mistake to think of the priest as “having his back to the people” when they stand together on the same side of the altar; rather, the priest and people by their common “orientation” show that they are turning towards the LORD, a physical metaphor for the interior work of conversion which can thought of as the “reorientation” of our lives. This is why in nearly every place and for almost all of Christian history, the priest has stood with his people on the same side of the altar so that, together facing the East of the sacred liturgy, they could offer their lives while pleading the sacrifice of Christ, and it is this deep dimension of our common prayer which Pope Benedict wants us to retrieve from our own tradition.

The Fourth Sunday of Lent

One objective of the liturgical reforms of the 1960’s was to encourage the active participation of the Catholic people in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, in part by reminding them that they are participants in, not spectators of, offering the sacrifice of praise at the heart of all Christian worship. Unfortunately, in the years following the II Vatican Council, the Church’s desire that all the faithful participate fully in the sacred liturgy was too often rendered a caricature of the Council’s teaching, and misconceptions about the true nature of active participation multiplied. This led to the frenzied expansion of “ministries” among the people and turned worship into a team sport. But it is possible to participate in the liturgy fully, consciously, and actively without ever leaving one’s pew, and it is likewise possible to serve busily as a musician or lector at Mass without truly participating in the sacred liturgy. Both of these are true because the primary meaning of active participation in the liturgy is worshipping the living God in Spirit and truth, and that in turn is an interior disposition of faith, hope, and love which cannot be measured by the presence or absence of physical activity. But this confusion about the role of the laity in the Church’s worship was not the only misconception to follow the liturgical reforms; similar mistakes were made about the part of the priest.

Because of the mistaken idea that the whole congregation had to be “in motion” during the liturgy to be truly participating, the priest was gradually changed in the popular imagination from the celebrant of the Sacred Mysteries of salvation into the coordinator of the liturgical ministries of others. And this false understanding of the ministerial priesthood produced the ever-expanding role of the “priest presider,” whose primary task was to make the congregation feel welcome and constantly engage them with eye contact and the embrace of his warm personality. Once these falsehoods were accepted, then the service of the priest in the liturgy became grotesquely misshapen, and instead of a humble steward of the mysteries whose only task was to draw back the veil between God and man and then hide himself in the folds, the priest became a ring-master or entertainer whose task was thought of as making the congregation feel good about itself. But, whatever that is, it is not Christian worship, and in the last two decades the Church has been gently finding a way back towards the right ordering of her public prayer. In February 2007 Pope Benedict XVI published an Apostolic Exhortation on the Most Holy Eucharist entitled Sacramentum Caritatis in which he discusses the need for priests to cultivate a proper ars celebrandi or art of celebrating the liturgy. In that document, the pope teaches that “the primary way to foster the participation of the People of God in the sacred rite is the proper celebration of the rite itself,” and an essential part of that work is removing the celebrant from the center of attention so that priest and people together can turn towards the LORD. Accomplishing this task of restoring God-centered liturgy is one of the main reasons for returning to the ancient and universal practice of priest and people standing together on the same side of the altar as they offer in Christ, each in their own way, the sacrifice of Calvary as true worship of the Father. In other words, the custom of ad orientem celebration enhances, rather than diminishes, the possibility of the people participating fully, consciously, and actively in the celebration of the sacred liturgy.

The Fifth Sunday of Lent

In the last four bulletin columns, we’ve seen that:

+ until the 1960’s the vast majority of Christians in every time and place offered the sacrifice of the Most Holy Eucharist with the priest and people standing together on the same side of the altar

+ this ancient and universal practice of offering the Eucharistic Prayer ad orientem, or facing East (whether geographical or liturgical East), is rooted in Judaism and the practice of the first Christians and emphasizes the vertical dimension of worship by opening the circle of priest and people to the presence of God among us in the sacred liturgy. For this reason, the custom of facing East is also described as praying ad Deum or towards God.

+ when properly understood and celebrated, this form of prayer not only does not constitute an impediment to the full, conscious, and active participation of the people in the sacred liturgy, it actually enhances that possibility by removing the priest from the center of the action and allows him to be once again merely a steward of the Sacred Mysteries rather than a host charged with entertaining his guests

+ the II Vatican Council said not one word about the direction in which the priest should face at the altar, and even now the rubrics of the modern Roman Missal are written with the assumption that the priest is facing East at the altar. Moreover, the Congregation for Divine Worship has clarified that facing East and facing the congregation are both equally lawful and that no special permission is needed for the priest to face the East, a fact underscored recently by Pope Benedict’s public celebration ad orientem, something he does everyday in his chapel.

For all of these reasons, we will begin to celebrate Mass ad Deum at St. Mary’s sometime between Easter and Pentecost, after all the clergy and servers have been prepared for the logistical changes which will attend this development. We will celebrate the Mass in this fashion for several months until both priests and people have had the opportunity to grow accustomed to a practice that is unfamiliar to us, despite being the norm of Christian worship for nearly all of our history. After a suitable period of acclimation, we will evaluate our progress and review the best practices for our parish, and during the months of testing, I ask only that everyone (no matter whether you support this decision, oppose it, or have no opinion) exercise patience, prudence, and charity. This return to our own tradition is not an exercise of change for the sake of change; it is, rather, an effort to respond to the leadership of our Holy Father, who reminds us that what has been held sacred by all generations of Christians is to be held sacred by us. Let’s work together in this retrieval of an ancient and noble part of Christian prayer to see how it might strengthen our union with the Lord Jesus and deepen our capacity to worship the Father in Spirit and truth.

Communion with the Church by Degrees of Fullness

Mon, 15 Oct 2007 19:54:55 -0400

In 2001, while I was teaching canon law at the Pontifical College Josephinum, I was invited to address the Theological Students’ Association of the Catholic University of America. I spoke on the development of doctrine by the Second Vatican Council on the notion of communion with the Catholic Church of individual Christians by degrees of fullness. Although a seemingly technical point of law, the theological foundations of the teaching of the Council have enormous implications for Christians everywhere. Here is the text of my lecture:

In his De Praescriptione Haereticorum, Tertullian famously asked with derision, "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?", meaning "What has philosophy to do with theology?" I begin with this reminder because, although I am here to address the Theological Students' Association, I am not a theologian; I a canon lawyer. And some among you may well ask with derision, "What has canon law to do with theology?" It's a fair question, so before I explore the topic at hand today, I need briefly to digress and establish something of a lingua franca for our discussion.

Because she is a human society, the Church has had law, and therefore lawyers, since her foundation, but canon law as a distinct science and course of study did not emerge until the twelfth century. Canonists reckon the Italian monk Gratian as the Pater scientiae canonicae because his work provided a systematic and logical ordering of 1000 years of lawmaking. The Decretum Gratiani, completed around the year 1140, remained an indispensable touchstone for all canonists in the Western Church until the promulgation of the first Code of Canon Law in 1917. Now, you might suppose that after nearly nine centuries of doing this thing called canon law, there would be common agreement among canonists about just what their discipline is. You might suppose so, but you'd be wrong.

Among canonists today, there are some fundamental disagreements about the nature and method of their discipline, with two of the major proposals being--for lack of more precise terms--legal positivism and juridic theology. I am not here today to describe this disagreement, let alone to resolve the dispute. But to make intelligible much of what will follow in my remarks, I must explain that I hold canon law to be a truly theological discipline and therefore to have a theological method and object. Within the one science of sacred theology we commonly acknowledge many divisions: dogmatic theology, moral theology, biblical theology, and so forth. To these, I submit, must be added juridic theology--that is, canon law understood as a theological discipline with a specifically juridic character, vocabulary, and purpose.

One of the reasons why there is disagreement among canonists about the nature of their discipline is that there is often a tension between theological language and juridic language, or to put it otherwise, making laws out of theological truths is not simple. And yet, there must be an organic connection between the two if the law of the Code is to be truly the law of the Church. Pope John Paul II addressed this point in the 1983 Apostolic Constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges, by which he promulgated the present Code of Canon Law. The pope writes:

“As the Church's principal legislative document founded on the juridical-legislative heritage of revelation and tradition, the Code is to be regarded as an indispensable instrument to ensure order both in individual and in social life ... the Code ... fully corresponds to the nature of the Church, especially as it is proposed by the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.... Indeed, in a certain sense this new Code could be understood as a great effort to translate this same conciliar doctrine and ecclesiology into canonical language ...”

John Paul continues, “It follows that what constitutes the substantial newness of the Second Vatican Council, in line with the legislative tradition of the Church, especially in regard to ecclesiology, constitutes likewise the newness of the Code.... If, therefore, the Second Vatican Council has drawn both new and old from the treasury of tradition.... then it is clear that the Code should also reflect the same note of fidelity in newness and of newness in fidelity, and conform itself to this in its own subject matter and in its own particular manner of expression.”

It is clear, I believe, that the legislator-the pope-fully intends the juridic language proper to the Code to be nothing other than a translation of theological doctrine into canonical norms, reflecting most especially the true development of doctrine--or, as the pope puts it, the substantial newness--present in the ecclesiology of the Second Vatican Council. Now, with all this in mind, we can turn to our proper topic: communion with the Church by degrees of fullness.

One of the great services of the Second Vatican Council is the recovery of the understanding that the one Church of Christ is a koinonia, a true communio--a genuine fellowship of persons or communion. Moreover, the Council teaches that the Church is a communion of communions; in other words, the communion of the universal Church is a communion of all particular Churches. Following this path and striving to find a way to describe the condition of baptized Christians who are not Catholics, the Fathers of the Council began to use, in a variety of forms, a new phrase: full communion.

In the conciliar Decree on Ecumenism, for example, the Fathers are describing the fact of disunity among Christians: "In (the) one and only Church of God from its very beginnings there arose certain rifts, which the Apostle strongly censures as damnable. But in subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the Catholic Church"...(UR, 3).

Having acknowledged the fact of disunity, the Council Fathers then describe the theological condition of non-Catholic Christians: "...one cannot charge with the sin of separation those who at present are born into these communities and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers. For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church" (UR, 3).

So, the Council Fathers both acknowledge the fact of disunity and confess that even non-Catholic Christians have real, if imperfect, communion with the one Catholic Church. And then they add one additional refinement: "Without doubt, the differences that exist in varying degrees between them and the Catholic Church-whether in doctrine and sometimes in discipline, or concerning the structure of the Church-do indeed create many obstacles ... to full ecclesiastical communion"(UR, 3). In other words, the real but imperfect communion which exists between baptized non-Catholics and the Catholic Church exists by degrees of fullness. To illustrate, we may say that the Orthodox, because they retain a valid episcopate and Eucharist, are--among non-Catholics Christians--in the fullest degree of communion with the Catholic Church. Next, perhaps, would come Lutherans and Anglicans, who--among the children of the Protestant Reformation--hold the highest doctrines of the Church and her sacraments. The central point here is that communion between a baptized Christian and the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is a reality which exists--according to differences of doctrine and discipline--by degrees of fullness.

Having described the condition of non-Catholic Christians and using this same idea of communion by degrees of fullness, the Council Fathers then describe Catholic Christians in this way in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church:

“Fully incorporated into the Church are those who, possessing the Spirit of Christ, accept all the means of salvation given to the Church together with her entire organization, and who-by the bond constituted by the profession of faith, the sacraments, ecclesiastical government, and communion-are joined in the visible structure of the Church of Christ, who rules her through the Supreme Pontiff and the bishops.” (LG, 14)

It is here, I believe, that the Second Vatican Council has achieved a genuine development of doctrine in ecclesiology. In the bitter controversies surrounding both the eleventh and sixteenth century schisms, theological and canonical language--following the notion of the Church as a perfect society--focused on an individual Christian being either in or out of the Church. To put it crudely: if you were subject to the Pope, you were in; if not, you were out. By recovering the notion of the Church as a communion, Vatican II restored the possibility of seeing one's communion with the Church as a delicate, complex reality which can exist by degrees of fullness. No one validly baptized, in a certain sense, is ever truly out of the Church, although his communion with the Church may be impeded or all but destroyed in a variety of ways--for example, full communion is impeded or broken by apostasy, heresy, schism, or mortal sin. Here the Council follows the teaching of St. Augustine, "Even though incorporated into the Church, one who does not persevere in charity is not saved. He remains indeed in the bosom of the Church, but 'in body', not 'in heart.'"(LG, 14). But, in addition to following the tradition on this point, the Council also made a genuine innovation. In seeking a way to describe the relationship of non-Catholics to the Church, the Council Fathers also found a new way to describe the often complex relationship of Catholics to their Church.

As we saw earlier, Pope John Paul desired that the newness of the Council's ecclesiology should be reflected in the Code and that the Council's doctrine should be translated into canonical language. It is not surprising, therefore, to find canons in the code which take the texts I have quoted from Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio almost word for word.

First describing all the baptized, whether Catholic or not, Canon 204 says, "The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through baptism, have been constituted as the people of God. For this reason, made sharers in their own way in Christ's priestly, prophetic, and royal office, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each."

Next, having described all the baptized, Canon 204 continues by describing the Church, "This Church, constituted and organized in this world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church governed by the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him."

Finally, describing only the Christians who are Catholics, Canon 205 says, "Those baptized are fully in the communion of the Catholic Church on this earth who are joined with Christ in its visible structure by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance."

It is worth noting here the clear echoes in this juridic language of the words of Sacred Scripture from the Acts of the Apostles, "So those who received (Peter's) word were baptized...and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers" (Acts 2:41-42). Thus did St. Luke first describe fullness of communion with the Catholic Church.

Once again, as John Paul indicated, what was new in the Council would be new in the Code. Accordingly, there is nothing remotely like Canon 205 in any earlier legislation of the Church, including the Code of Canon Law of 1917. The newness of this canon meant that understanding its true meaning and full consequences would take some time and that interpreting this canon would involve trial and error. And since the Second Vatican Council, there has certainly been a great deal of trial and error.

Towards the end of lessening the trials and curbing the errors, John Paul II has continued to make clear the intent of the legislator and to explain the correct meaning of the conciliar doctrine on, among other things, communion with the Church by degrees of fullness. The most recent example of this ongoing clarification is Dominus Iesus, which although not a document specifically about ecumenism, does help us understand more fully the ecclesiological consequences of the Church's faith that there is but one Lord, one faith, one baptism. More to the point for us today, however, are two other clarifications which shed light on the meaning and consequences of Canon 205.

In the 1983 Code, Canon 833 provides a list of persons required to make a profession of faith according to the formula approved by the Apostolic See. All who become participants in a ecumenical or particular council, or in a synod of bishops or a diocesan synod must make this profession of faith. All who become diocesan bishops or a member of the College of Cardinals must make this profession of faith. All who become vicars general, judicial, or episcopal must make this profession faith. All who become parish pastors, seminary rectors or professors, and all who are to be ordained deacon must make this profession of faith. All who become rector of a Catholic university or who teach disciplines involving faith or morals in any sort of university must make this profession of faith. In short, anyone and everyone charged with teaching the Gospel in the Church's name must make this profession of faith. The Code, however, does not provide the text for this profession of faith, and it was six years after the promulgation of the Code that the new formula was finally given.

The text of the profession is simple: it begins with the Symbol of Faith, and after the words of the Creed are added three short paragraphs, each corresponding to a different level of teaching and the nature of the assent demanded. The first of these paragraphs states: "With firm faith I also believe everything contained in God's word, written or handed down in tradition and proposed by the Church, whether by way of solemn judgement or through the ordinary and universal magisterium, as divinely revealed and calling for faith."

The next paragraph describes a different sort of teaching and acceptance: "I also firmly accept and hold each and everything that is proposed definitively by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals."

Finally, the last paragraph describes yet a third level of doctrine and response: "Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise the authentic magisterium, even if they proclaim those teachings by an act that is not definitive."

When the profession of faith was promulgated in 1989, these three paragraphs elicited howls of outrage from many in the theological and canonical guilds, but these words are nothing more or less than a juridic translation of the teaching of Lumen Gentium on the nature of teaching authority in the Church and the response called for from the faithful. (cf. LG, 25). In other words, the Profession of Faith does precisely what the pope said in 1983 all legislation should do: translate conciliar doctrine into canonical norms for the right ordering of the Church's life.

So, as we have seen, the Code was promulgated in 1983, and the Profession of Faith followed in 1989. The third panel of our triptych came in 1998: Ad Tuendam Fidem--a document which slightly modified the Code of Canon Law. At the beginning of that Apostolic Letter, John Paul explains why he decided to add sections to the 1983 Code. The pope writes:

“To protect the Catholic faith against errors arising on the part of some of the Christian faithful, in particular among those who studiously dedicate themselves to the discipline of sacred theology, it appeared highly necessary to us, whose special task is to confirm the brethren in faith, to add new norms to the text of the Code of Canon Law.... The purpose of the new norms is to impose expressly the duty to preserve the truths proposed definitively by the magisterium of the Church and to institute canonical sanctions concerning the same matter.”

John Paul then goes on to explain that the promulgation of the Profession of Faith in 1989 left a gap in the Code of Canon Law of 1983 and that he decided to close that gap. Specifically, Canon 750 in the original '83 Code--contained in Book III on the Teaching Office of the Church--described in juridic language the obligation of the faithful to believe with divine and Catholic faith all those things contained in the deposit of faith. Moreover, Canon 752 described the duty to give religious submission of intellect and will even to doctrines which are not proposed as definitive. These two canons, then, corresponded to the first and third paragraphs which follow the Creed in the Profession of Faith. As John Paul points out in Ad Tuendam Fidem, however, the Profession of Faith distinguishes not two, but three, levels of teaching, and one was missing from the original 1983 Code. Accordingly, he added a second section to Canon 750 which now reads, "Each and every thing which is proposed definitively by the magisterium of the Church concerning the doctrine of faith and morals, that is, each and every thing which is required to safeguard reverently and to expound faithfully the same deposit of faith, is also to be firmly embraced and retained; therefore, one who rejects those propositions which are to be held definitively is opposed to the doctrine of the Catholic Church." As with the Profession of Faith nine years earlier, this Apostolic Letter raised the hackles of some in the theological and canonical guilds, and yet in both cases, John Paul was merely continuing the process of refining the Church's understanding of a new thing: the idea of communion with the Church by degrees of fullness.

Let's return to Canon 205: "Those baptized are fully in the communion of the Catholic Church on this earth who are joined with Christ in its visible structure by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance." Three essential elements for full communion are laid out: the profession of faith, the celebration of all the sacraments, and adherence to the authority of the Pope and the bishops in communion with him. Precisely because this canon was a new thing, however, it was not self-evident what all of this meant. Moreover, while Canon 205 describes what constitutes full communion, it does not describe how such fullness is effected, and neither does it explain how full communion might be compromised.

Because of these ambiguities in the law before the clarification offered by the Profession of Faith and Ad Tuendam Fidem, even able and respected canonists misinterpreted part of the novelty of this development. For example, in his commentary on Canon 205 published in 1985, the estimable James Provost wrote: "Heresy, the obstinate denial or doubt of a teaching that is to be held with divine and catholic faith, requires pertinacity in addition to denial or doubt (c. 751). Heresy does not apply to doubt or even denial of other types of church teaching, which presumably would not break the bond of full communion." (p. 127; emphasis added).

About one thing Father Provost was absolutely correct: heresy is technically only the obstinate denial or doubt of a doctrine which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith--that is, the level of teaching corresponding to the first paragraph added to the Creed in the Profession of Faith. But fifteen years after Father Provost wrote those words, Pope John Paul closed the gap in the Code and clarified exactly this point. The Code now contains a section corresponding to the second paragraph of the Profession of Faith, and it is here that all of our strands come together.

On the same day Ad Tuendam Fidem was made public in June 1998, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger published an official commentary on the letter, explaining the consequences of the changes to the Code of Canon Law. Concerning the doctrines described by the second paragraph of the Profession of Faith and now included in Canon 750, Ratzinger wrote:

“Every believer ... is required to give firm and definitive assent to these truths, based on faith in the Holy Spirit's assistance to the Church's magisterium and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the magisterium in these matters. Whoever denies these truths would be in the position of rejecting a truth of Catholic doctrine and would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church.” (Ratzinger's Commentary, n. 6; emphasis added)

This bears repeating carefully: In light of the teaching of Lumen Gentium as clarified by the Profession of Faith and Ad Tuendam Fidem, it is now clear that as a juridic norm based on Canons 205 and 750 of the Code of Canon Law, a Catholic who rejects a doctrine which must be definitively held is no longer in full communion with the Catholic Church. Great precision of language is needed here. As Father Provost correctly insisted, rejecting a doctrine which must be definitively held (as opposed to one which must be accepted with divine and Catholic faith) does not make one a heretic. But contrary to the early interpretation of the law, rejecting a doctrine which must be definitively held does break the bond of full communion.

Now, you may well ask, what are some of those doctrines. In his commentary, Cardinal Ratzinger lists a few: that only baptized men may validly receive priestly ordination; that euthanasia is intrinsically immoral; that prostitution and fornication are immoral; that a Pope once legitimately elected is, in fact, the supreme pastor of the universal Church; that canonized saints do, in fact, enjoy the beatific vision; and that Anglican orders are absolutely null and utterly void. Within this list of examples there are truths connected to divine revelation by logical necessity, by historical necessity, or by dogmatic fact. But despite the differences in the kinds of connection to divine revelation, all of these teachings must be accepted with full and irrevocable assent; they are doctrines de fide tenenda and to reject such a doctrine is to break the bond of full communion.

What does all of this mean? Well, at this point, that isn't clear. Remember that it has taken 35 years to move from the conciliar documents to the understanding of their consequences now given in the pope's teaching and the law of the Church. But, whatever may still be in doubt, it is now clear that the law provides for consequences for rejecting a doctrine which must be definitively held.

In addition to adding a second section to Canon 750, Ad Tuendam Fidem also added a section to Canon 1371 in Book VI of the Code, on Sanctions in the Church. Canon 1371 now says that anyone who rejects a doctrine which must be definitively held and who does not retract after having been warned either by the Apostolic See or by his Ordinary is to be punished with a just penalty. In other words, breaking the bond of full communion--by, for example, teaching that women can receive priestly ordination--has juridic consequences. Exactly what those consequences are is not spelled out in the law, and it is clear that more time will be needed before clarity emerges on the prudent, just, and charitable response of the Church's pastors to such situations. But that there must be consequences is now indisputable, because what is at stake is nothing other than full communion with the Church.

In the sometimes unruly disputes of the past 35 years, the claim has often been advanced--sometimes crudely, sometimes with refinement--that is possible to dissent, that is, to disagree with the Church about the doctrine of the faith and yet remain--as it were--a Catholic in good standing. With the increasing clarity gathered from theological and canonical reflection on the idea of communion with the Church by degrees of fullness, it is now apparent that this claim is false. Ideas do have consequences. Refusing to believe a doctrine which must be definitively held does not, it is true, make a Catholic a heretic, but it does render his communion with the Church less than full. And such a theological reality must have canonical consequences, especially if the person in question holds an ecclesiastical office or teaches in the name of the Church.

Here we must tread lightly. No one is advocating a witch hunt; neither can we tolerate a hypercritical spirit of which would attack even legitimate diversity. And when a Catholic does have difficulty accepting a doctrine which must be definitively held, we must be kind, gentle, and patient; after all, St. Paul exhorts us to bear the burdens of those whose faith is weak. Nevertheless, fidelity to the Gospel--even, as the pope put it, fidelity in newness--demands that we be honest about the consequences of our beliefs and acknowledge the effect they have on our communion with the Church. And because of a genuine development of doctrine from the Second Vatican Council we now have the conceptual apparatus--in the newness of fidelity--to express with precision the theological and canonical consequences for a Catholic of rejecting a doctrine of the faith which must be definitively held.

Just as we now understand that it is possible for Orthodox and Protestant Christians to approach communion with the Church by degrees of fullness, so we must now grasp that it is equally possible for Catholic Christians to depart from communion with the Church by degrees of fullness and that such departure must have canonical consequences. Expanding on the precept of St. Augustine that a unless he persevere in charity a Catholic can remain bound to the Church in body but not in heart, I wonder if it is not now possible to describe circumstances in which some non-Catholic Christians have a greater degree of fullness of communion with the one Church of Christ than do some Catholic Christians because of their stubborn refusal to believe doctrines of the faith which must be definitively held. I suspect that such a prospect is a logical consequence of the substantial newness of ecclesiology in Vatican II--namely, that one is not either in or out of the Church, but rather that all the baptized are joined in real communion with the Church by some degree of fullness. In other words, it is now clear that the road of communion with the Catholic Church by degrees of fullness is a two-way street.

You, your pupils, your friends, and God.

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 08:41:02 -0400

I was graduated from Ragsdale High School in Jamestown, North Carolina in 1980, and I was blessed to have there many gifted and dedicated teachers. But the one who did the most to shape my young mind was Mrs. Magdalene Parker Mileski, my tenth grade English teacher. It was my sad duty and great privilege to preach at Mrs. Mileski’s Mass of Christian Burial on 15 May 2007 at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in High Point, North Carolina, and here is the text of my homily:

Silas Marner.

This, of course, is the title of George Eliot’s classic novel about loss and gain, hatred and love, sin and redemption. But for generations of Maggie Mileski’s students, it is also a byword. For us the name Silas Marner stands for terror in the classroom, for our cold indifference towards literature transformed into reverence for learning, and for Mrs. Mileski’s own disciplined learning ordered to cultivating wisdom in us. But only a gifted teacher could bring about such a change in sullen adolescents, and what a gifted teacher she was.

It is thirty years this August since I became Maggie’s student, and in those days I was an atheist who dreamed of being a physicist. I thought that reading Silas Marner and all the rest was a dreadful waste of time, and I told her so. Early in the first term of my sophomore year, I sat in Mrs. Mileski’s classroom one afternoon and explained with all the arrogance of youth that I was taking her course only because I had to and that I regarded the study of English literature as far beneath the dignity of real learning in the serious disciplines of math and science. With a knowing twinkle in her eye, Maggie thanked me for condescending to attend her lectures and asked only that I fulfill the course requirements. That year passed quickly, and in the first semester of the following year I was back in Maggie’s classroom at her request so that she could ask me very gently to stop correcting my junior year English teacher with the constant refrain, “But that’s not what Mrs. Mileski taught us.” It may be thirty years since I sat in Mrs. Mileski’s classroom, but I have never stopped being her student.

Maggie Mileski was the first Catholic I ever knew, but to the best of my recollection she never explicitly discussed her faith in the classroom. Her task was to teach us the rules of grammar, the techniques of writing, and the glories of the English language, not to catechize us. And yet without ever mentioning the Gospel of Jesus Christ in so many words, she bore eloquent witness to the Truth who sets us free, the eternal and incarnate Word of God. Maggie taught us to revere all things good and true and beautiful, and in so doing she was planting seeds of the Word which helped prepare her students to receive in another time and place the grace of saving faith in the Word made flesh. Maggie also insisted that we implicitly honor our Creator by working honestly to the very highest standards and to the uttermost limits of our gifts. She sought to open our hearts and minds to the wonders of love, and she formed our souls in the perennial wisdom of Christian civilization reflected in classical works of literature. But how and where did she get all this? Who taught the teacher?

Long before she became Magdalene Mileski, she was Magdalene Parker. From her parents and siblings she learned the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and through Christ’s Church she was born again in Baptism and nourished with the sacraments of the New Covenant. In the late 1940's the young Maggie was taught by the famed School Sisters of Notre Dame at the College of Notre Dame in Baltimore, the first Catholic college for women to grant the four year baccalaureate in the United States, and from the Sisters, accomplished scholars all, she acquired the intellectual habits which shaped her mind and her character for the rest of her life. Then, over a span of four decades, Maggie honed the art of teaching to near perfection at the high schools of Elizabethtown, East Mecklenberg, and our beloved Ragsdale. But this splendid teacher learned her most important lessons not in the library or the classroom; rather, she learned them in the school of the solemn and sacramental covenant of marriage with her beloved husband, Raymond, who completed her transformation from Miss Magdalene Parker into the teacher of legend, Mrs. Magdalene Mileski.

By the time Raymond and Maggie were retired, I was no longer an atheist. Indeed, I was by then already studying for the priesthood, and they both took great interest in my path to the altar. During those years of healthy leisure, Raymond and Maggie gave themselves fully to what they had already done for many years as time permitted: they served the residents, the staff and the Sisters of Maryfield Nursing Home with the gift of sacred music, and they gave their all to the upbuilding of this parish church, their spiritual family. But at length the years of healthy leisure gave way to the long struggle of illness and the losing battle we all fight with time and gravity, and in the suffering which attended those years, Maggie began to understand ever more deeply the eternal wisdom of Holy Scripture: For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. And as her understanding grew with suffering, Maggie began again to teach. She taught us how to surrender gracefully the things of youth; how to offer our trials in union with the suffering of Christ; how to live in the sacrament of the present moment with childlike confidence in the tender mercies of the Savior.

Now, make no mistake: Magdalene Mileski was tough. How else could a woman who stood barely five feet tall reduce to quivering fear the largest and most aggressive students? And even with the passing of years, Maggie never lost her edge. She could be sharp, impatient, and blunt. But Maggie’s dissatisfaction with compromise came from her lifelong desire to see all things be made perfect, or as nearly perfect as the frailty of the human condition permits this side of the Kingdom. And the thing she most wanted to be made perfect was her own soul -- fallen, wounded, and sinful as we all are, but striving always by conversion to be conformed to that which is good, and true, and beautiful. Striving always, in other words, to be conformed by grace through faith to Christ Jesus, and Him crucified.

“Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life.” Maggie knew in the depths of her soul that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, and in loving all that is good, and true, and beautiful she learned to love Jesus Christ above all others and all others for Christ’s sake. As daughter and sister, as wife and aunt, as teacher and friend, Maggie lived her life from beginning to end as a faithful disciple of the Lord Jesus, and in so doing she drew countless others to walk with her in the Way of the Cross.

Ten years after my conversion to Christ, I was traveling in England with two seminary classmates, and during a long drive through the glorious English countryside, we were trying to sort out the mysterious workings of grace that had led each of us to the improbable vocation of being priests. As we thought out loud about the things that had moved us imperceptibly along the path to that moment, I suddenly understood that the love of literature and the desire which it awakened in me to know and love all things good, true and beautiful were indispensable means of grace in my turning to the Lord, and then I thought of Magdalene Mileski and that afternoon so many years before when I declared that her course was a waste of time. That circle of grace was completed when Raymond and Maggie traveled as pilgrims to Rome for my ordination to the diaconate in 1992 and to Charleston for my ordination to the priesthood in 1993. On the morning of my first Mass, as I wore this chasuble for the first time, I heard Maggie say that it was one of the proudest days of her life: the hidden work of a teacher bearing fruit after long years of loving service. And what is true of my own story is multiplied times beyond reckoning in the lives of generations of students who learned much more than the rules of grammar and composition from Magdalene Mileski.

In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, the Lord High Chancellor of England, Sir Thomas More, is in conversation with a young man named Richard Rich, who wants a post of prestige and power in the royal court of King Henry VIII. But the Chancellor and future martyr knows that Rich is not suited for such a life and sees in him instead the makings of a teacher. More suggests, “Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine teacher; perhaps a great one.” Dejected by this prospect of hidden toil, Master Rich responds, “If I was, who would know it?” And Sir Thomas answers, “You; your pupils; your friends; and God. Not a bad public, that.”

Magdalene Mileski was a loving wife, a devoted sister and aunt, a true friend, and a faithful Christian. And by the grace of God, the gifts of nature, and the discipline of hard work, she was also a great teacher. Her students know it, her friends know it, and God knows it. Not a bad public, that.

Thanks be to God for the life of Magdalene Parker Mileski. May Christ Jesus, the merciful Savior, acknowledge her now as a sheep of his own fold, a lamb of his own flock, a sinner of his own redeeming, and a teacher of his own Gospel.

Grant rest, O Lord, to your servant Maggie with all your saints in light, where sorrow and pain are no more, but perfect peace and life everlasting. Amen.

The Second Vatican Council

Tue, 9 Oct 2007 08:00:56 -0400

I wrote this final essay for the six-part series on Councils over twelve years ago, but the themes I sounded then are still pertinent today, especially on-going arguments about the sacred liturgy, the suspicion of the Council by the Traditionalist movement, and the role of Joseph Ratzinger in showing the way forward to the renewal of the Church’s life called for by the Council.

On 25 January 1959 Pope John XXIII stunned the entire Christian world by announcing his decision to convoke an ecumenical council, the twenty-first such council in the Church's history. Surprise greeted the pope's decision not only because he was an old man regarded by most observers even from his election as merely a transitional figure and caretaker, but also because in 1959 the Catholic Church appeared to be majestic, serene, and triumphantly at peace with standing apart from the modern and non-Catholic world. Partially as a result of the intellectual political, and religious revolutions of every century from the sixteenth to the twentieth, it seemed that the Church had simply withdrawn behind the security of her formidable ramparts and had become a large, comfortable, and culturally rich--but isolated--Catholic ghetto. Moreover, as G.K. Chesterton once quipped, the Church is never behind the times because she is beyond the times, and this other-worldly dimension of the Church's nature had led many, both Christian and pagan, to conclude that the Church is not interested or involved in the City of Man. Anyone well acquainted with the Church's long history, however, knows that she is passionately interested and involved in the world of human affairs and ideas, and Pope John XXIII sought a way to remind both the Church and the world that the Bride of Christ, by her nature and the will of her Bridegroom, must be to the world both Mother and Teacher. The instrument he chose was an ecumenical council.

During the early and high Middle Ages, ecumenical councils were relatively frequent. In the 126 years between 325 and 451, there were 4 councils, and in the 422 years between 1123 and 1545 there were 11 councils--an average in the two periods of one council every 36 years. But between the end of the Council of Trent in 1563 and the opening of the First Vatican Council in 1869, there was a gap of 306 years. Generations of Christians had begun to think of ecumenical councils as a thing of the past.

The First Vatican Council met from 1869 to 1870 and is famous primarily for its dogmatic definition of papal infallibility in all extraordinary teaching on faith and morals. The Fathers of Vatican I intended to do a great deal more than they did, but the turmoil of the times made that impossible. In 1870 Rome fell to Garibaldi's troops in the Italian Risorgimento, and the Council ended abruptly without a formal conclusion. Thus began the long isolation of the pope as a "prisoner" of the Vatican, which ended in 1929 with the Concordat between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See. Vatican City and its extraterritorial possessions were recognized by Italy as an independent and sovereign state with the pope as head of state, and this unique status once again allowed the Bishop of Rome to look beyond the Tiber. Before anything could be accomplished, however, worldwide depression and war once again isolated the pope. Finally, at the death of Pope Pius XII--the pope of the war years who had long desired to convene a council--John XXIII was elected in a time of peace and prosperity, and he determined to close the unfinished business of the nineteenth century and chart a course for the twenty-first.

The years since the I Vatican Council had seen dramatic change in both the world and the Church. Pope John XXIII, for example, was born before the manufacture of automobiles and had lived to see jet airplane travel and man-made satellites orbiting the earth. The 1910 Edinburgh Missionary Conference gave rise to the Protestant ecumenical movement, which in turn led to the establishment of the World Council of Churches. And the totalitarian states organized by the atheist ideology of Marxism had enslaved hundreds of millions of people around the world and had persecuted the Church more savagely than any power since pagan Rome. In short, the world and the Church were changing rapidly, and the Church needed to respond to the signs of the times.

Answering the call of John XXIII, over 2500 bishops convened in Rome in the Fall of 1962 to begin the II Vatican Council. The Council Fathers first solemnly closed the I Vatican Council--a formality left undone in 1870 in the haste of fleeing from an occupying army--and then on 11 October 1962, the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican opened in the Patriarchal Vatican Basilica of St. Peter the Apostle. The Fathers met in four general sessions of about three months each in the Fall of the years 1962 to 1965, and they enacted sixteen documents in three classes of descending importance and authority: 4 constitutions, 9 decrees, and 4 declarations. These documents, which are generally referred to by their Latin titles, covered a bewildering array of topics; they are in the chronological order of their promulgation: Sacrosanctum Concilium (The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), Inter Mirifica (The Decree on the Means of Social Communication), Lumen Gentium (The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church), Orientalium Ecclesiarum (The Decree on the Catholic Eastern Churches), Unitatis Redintegratio (The Decree on Ecumenism), Christus Dominus (The Decree on the Pastoral Office of Bishops in the Church), Perfectae Caritatis (The Decree on the Up-to-Date Renewal of Religious Life), Optatam Totius (The Decree on the Training of Priests), Gravissimum Educationis (The Declaration on Christian Education), Nostra Aetate (The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions), Dei Verbum (The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation), Apostolicam Actuositatem (The Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People), Dignitatis Humanae (The Declaration on Religious Liberty), Ad Gentes Divinitus (The Decree on the Church's Missionary Activity), Presbyterorum Ordinis (The Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests), and Gaudium et Spes (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World).

These sixteen documents, which were translated almost overnight into the world's major languages, were carefully drafted, publicly debated, and extensively rewritten by the Council Fathers, who intended their words to be the foundation of a renewal of the Church's life, an updating of her work. All of this activity took place in the presence of hundreds of theologians and canonists, scores of Orthodox and Protestant observers, and a huge contingent of the international press corps--making the II Vatican Council the most observed, reported, documented, and commented upon council in the Church's history. For all that, however, the legacy of Vatican II, thirty years after the close of the Council, is still a hotly contested matter within the Church.

Since 1965 the Church has been anything but tranquil. Dissident theologians, massive defections from the priesthood and religious life, chaos in catechetics, rebellion among restless bishops, instability in the seminaries, constant turmoil in the sacred liturgy, precipitous decline in Mass attendance, the near collapse of the Sacrament of Penance, the schism of Archbishop Lefebvre, and the attempted revolution of radical feminism are all signs of a less than successful renewal of the Church's life. It would seem that the Council is a failure or, even worse, a misbegotten mistake from the beginning. But to reach such a conclusion is to forget our history.

Thirty years after the First Council of Nicaea, vast numbers of bishops, priests, and laity were still Arians; in fact, three hundred years after Nicaea there were still legions of Arians. But First Nicaea was not a failure or a mistake. The Council of Ephesus declared in 431 that Mary is truly the Mother of God, and the Assyrian Church of the East did not formally recognize this doctrine until 1994. But Ephesus was not a failure or mistake. The Council of Chalcedon taught infallibly in 451 that Christ is a single Divine Person with two natures, and even to this day there are Monophysite (one Nature) churches. But Chalcedon was not a failure or a mistake. Moreover, each of these councils was preceded and followed by fierce--sometimes violent or bloody--controversy which appeared ready to tear the Church into pieces. That a Council is followed by chaos or controversy is not an indication that it was not inspired and preserved from error by God. Indeed, post-conciliar chaos is the rule, not the exception, in the Church's history.

At least one other lesson emerges from a brief glance at conciliar history: the actual documents of each council--and not what is said or written about them--are the critical element of post-conciliar change. As we have seen in our review of the first four councils, the meaning of words and the content of texts are at the heart of conciliar teaching and the change which flows from each council. For one to understand the teaching of Vatican II and the changes it seeks to bring about, it is absolutely necessary to study the 16 documents of the Council; there can be no substitute for reading the words of the Council Fathers themselves. And given the degree of distortion of the Council with which most Catholics have lived for thirty years, an inspection of those documents will surely yield many surprises. Examples from two documents will illustrate.

To the renegade priest or liturgist who makes the sacred liturgy his plaything by introducing his own personal touch, the Council says: "Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the...Apostolic See...Therefore no other person, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority"(Sacrosanctum Concilium, no.22). To those who say that Latin and plainchant were forbidden or at least discouraged by the Council, the Fathers answer: "Care must be taken to ensure that the faithful may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the...Mass which pertain to them" and "The Church recognizes Gregorian chant as being specially suited to the Roman liturgy. Therefore, other things being equal, it should be given pride of place in liturgical services"(Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 54 and 116). It is true that the Council inaugurated a reform of the sacred liturgy, but it did not mandate the revolution which has instead been inflicted on all too many parishes, seminaries, and religious communities.

To the dissident theologian or catechist who invokes the shield of academic freedom or individual conscience to reject the Church's teaching in a matter of faith or morals, the Council says: "Bishops who teach in communion with the Roman Pontiff are to be revered by all as witnesses of divine and Catholic truth; the faithful, for their part, are obliged to submit to their bishops' decision, made in the name of Christ, in matters of faith and morals, and to adhere to it with a ready and respectful allegiance of mind. This loyal submission of the will and intellect must be given, in a special way, to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when he does not speak ex cathedra..." The Fathers continue, "The Roman Pontiff...enjoys...infallibility in virtue of his office, when, as supreme pastor and teacher of all the faithful--who confirms his brethren in the faith (cf. Lk 22:32)--he proclaims in an absolute decision a doctrine pertaining to faith or morals"(Lumen Gentium, no. 25). Theological dissidents who invoke the "spirit of Vatican II" to justify their denial of the Church's teaching clearly contradict the doctrine of the Council itself.

These examples could be multiplied many times over, but the lesson to be learned is simple: the teaching of the II Vatican Council is not a rejection of the past in favor of some vague exhortation to "be open" to new things; rather, the Council seeks to apply the timeless truths of Christianity to new circumstances and bring about a genuine renewal of the life and work of the Church without fear of or hostility towards anything genuinely human, that is anything good, true, or beautiful.

Within the context of preserving and transmitting the deposit of faith, Vatican II did introduce some true innovations. Among these are a renewed emphasis on the universal call to holiness of all Christians, an exhortation to the lay faithful to sanctify the world by their witness to the Gospel, a deeper appreciation of sacramental marriage as a communion of the whole life of the spouses, a profound awareness of the Church herself as a communion of all the baptized and a recognition that, although only the Catholic Church is the Church of Christ fully and rightly ordered, all the baptized--even those not in visible communion--are to some degree bound to the one true Church. These dimensions of the Church's life represent the Council's true innovations and lasting contribution to updating and renewal, not the sterile disputes about how little one must believe or how little one must do in order to be a Catholic.

In addition to the sixteen conciliar documents, there are three other works which are critical to understanding the teaching and effects of Vatican II. These three works translate, as it were, the principles of conciliar teaching into practice, and they are: the Roman Missal--especially its General Introduction, the Code of Canon Law (or for Byzantine Catholics the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II, who promulgated both canonical codes and the Catechism, has said over and over again that these documents represent the fruit of the Council and that their application is indispensable to bringing about the renewal hoped for by the Council Fathers. He should know; as a young bishop, Karol Woytla participated in all four of the general sessions and made great contributions to several conciliar documents. Though the Council was convoked by John XXIII and closed by Paul VI, it is John Paul II who is truly the pope of the Council.

Thus far, we have examined the similarities between Vatican II and earlier Councils. A word must be said, though, about a signal difference--one which helps explain some of the developments since 1965. The II Vatican Council is the first and only ecumenical council to take place since the rise of the electronic media. In the early Church, it sometimes took years or decades for conciliar decrees even to travel to distant places, let alone be implemented. At Vatican II, however, conciliar debates and decisions were beamed around the world instantly; the Council Fathers would vote in the morning, and Catholic school children would hear about it in the afternoon.

This development in communications--which prompted the Council to issue a decree on the subject--profoundly changed the rhythm of the transmission of information and created the false impression that the Council's teachings were being widely disseminated and understood. No matter how fast our machines now work, our minds still work at the same speed and in the same way as those of our ancestors in the third and thirteenth centuries. To know, understand, and appreciate something as richly complex as--for example--the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church requires years of patient study. It also requires direct access to the text, not the editorial interpretation of a document frequently reported by the media--whether Catholic or secular.

Finally, in the years immediately after the Council, not a few of the Church's trusted theologians attempted--with the complicity of a sympathetic band of journalists--to "hijack" the Council's teaching and take it where they--not the bishops--wanted it to go. Some of these self-appointed teachers of the faith were theological experts at the Council who grew accustomed during those heady years to telling bishops what they should think and say. After the Council, it became increasingly clear to this camp that the radical changes they desired (e.g. married priests, remarriage after divorce, contraception and abortion as moral choices, and eventually homosexual "marriage" and women priests) were not forthcoming. In the face of Roman opposition to their attempt to deform rather than reform the Church, they began to say the Pope John Paul II and the Roman Curia do not understand the Council and regularly violate its "spirit" in the interest of preserving Roman authority and domination of the Church. These dissidents--both clergy and laity--often work for the Church or claim to speak for her, and they have influenced countless university professors, seminary staff, religious superiors, chancery officials, and parochial leaders and teachers to embrace a spurious interpretation of Vatican II. Such opposition to the Church also becomes organized publicly in groups such as Call to Action, CORPUS, and Catholics for a Free Choice and finds voice in misleadingly named journals such as National Catholic Reporter. This massive undeclared war on the Church from the left and the rejection of the Council from the right exemplified by Archbishop Lefebvre and his followers both represent a proud refusal to submit to the teaching authority of Christ, Who speaks through the Roman Pontiff and the Church's ecumenical councils. And the chaos engendered by the public disputes over what the Council did or did not say has served only to confuse many of the faithful and impede the reception and implementation of the Council's teaching. These difficulties, in part, prompted the pope to summon an extraordinary session of the Synod of Bishops in 1985--the twentieth anniversary of the close of Council. That synod led to the call for the new Catechism, the only authentic and authoritative contemporary compendium of the Faith.

This sad situation has prompted many bishops and theologians, most prominent among them Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, to call for a reform of the renewal--meaning a return to the 16 documents of the Council and the authentic magisterial interpretation and implementation of the conciliar teaching. Such a reform of the renewal is primarily the work of personal conversion to the Truth, Who alone can set us free. Without a desire to grow in holiness grounded in the truth, no bureaucratic reform of ecclesiastical structures can lead to a genuine renewal of Christian life. And the only authentic measure of true renewal in the Church is the unchanging Gospel of Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The Council of Chalcedon

Mon, 8 Oct 2007 11:50:52 -0400

As we saw in the fourth part of this series, the Council of Ephesus in 431 affirmed that the Blessed Virgin Mary is truly the Mother of God (theotokos) because Our Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is both the Son of God and the son of Mary--but He is only one Son, not two. As St. Cyril explained, the divine and human natures of Christ co-exist in perfect unity without confusion. But Cyril's affirmation of this unity with diversity, though a good start, left many unanswered questions. And these ambiguities and the conflicts they engendered created the occasion for the fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in 451.

One of the fiercest foes of Nestorius (who had earlier rejected the title "Mother of God" for the Blessed Virgin Mary) was a monk named Eutyches, the superior of a large monastery in Constantinople. Eutyches argued that Nestorius had erred by introducing a division in Christ between the Son of God and the son of Mary, an error which could only be avoided by affirming that before the Incarnation there were two natures in Christ--a divine and a human--while after the Incarnation Christ had only one nature in one Person. Eutyches believed that he was defending the orthodox faith of the Church and providing the only explanation of the relationship between the human and the divine in Christ which could avoid introducing a division between the Savior's divinity and his humanity. Others disagreed.

Theodoret of Cyr, a respected bishop, learned theologian, and close friend of the Patriarch of Antioch, wrote that "we acknowledge such a union of Godhead and manhood that we perceive an individual person and know Him to be God and man." However, Theodoret also insisted that in this one Person there are two natures which remain distinct even after the incarnation. To explain this unity with diversity Theodoret had recourse to three terms from Greek philosophy: hypostasis, prosopon, and physis. The word prosopon had several meanings, one of which was the mask held before the face of an actor in a Greek drama. The Romans translated this term into Latin as persona, from which we get "person", and the Greek word physis was rendered by the Romans as natura, nature. Theodoret insisted that in Christ there is only one prosopon, one divine Person, but that within this unity of Person there exists a diversity of natures, one human and one divine.

One original meaning of hypostasis was the foundation of a building, that which stands underneath, and the Romans translated this word as substantia, substance understood as the actual, concrete being of something. Theodoret taught that the divine nature belongs to God the Son, the eternal Word, and that the human nature belongs to the son of Mary. God the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and the son of Mary, in his humanity, is consubstantial with all mankind. For these reasons, the Incarnate Word is one divine Person with two distinct natures which exist in perfect unity without confusion, mixture, or separation, and this one Person is a single substantial being, not two characters masquerading as one. Theodoret held that Eutyches' attempt to avoid division in Christ in fact eradicated Christ's true humanity and caused the human nature to be absorbed by the divine much as water absorbs a drop of honey. In order for Our Lord to be both true God and true man (a truth of the faith already solemnly defined by the Council of Nicaea), it is necessary that in his one divine Person Christ have both a divine nature and a human nature, both of which are preserved in the unity of the Incarnation: one prosopon, one hypostatsis, and two physes.

Eutyches objected that if Christ had two natures after the Incarnation, then there would be two persons. His refusal to admit the existence of two natures was in large measure a function of his inability to distinguish prosopon from hypostasis and those two concepts from physis. This disagreement with Theodoret led to a bitter dispute, with each side accusing the other of heresy. In 448, Patriarch Domnus of Antioch wrote to Emperor Theodosius II asking for a condemnation of Eutyches. The emperor responded by reaffirming the teaching of Ephesus and condemning the errors of Nestorius. Once again a bitter quarrel broke out between the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch; bishops were deposed, and charges of heresy and blasphemy filled the air. The emperor confined Theodoret to Cyr, and Eutyches wrote to Pope Leo warning him of a resurgence of the Nestorian heresy.

Late in 448, Bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum, who had been a bitter foe of Nestorius, formally accused Eutyches of heresy and asked Flavian, the Patriarch of Constantinople, to try him before the Home Synod, a standing assembly of bishops in the eastern capital. Flavian hesitated because Eutyches was the popular superior of three hundred monks and the godfather and principal counsellor of the eunuch Chrysaphius, Grand Chamberlain of the emperor. Compelled, however, by the mounting pressure to resolve this theological dispute, Flavian summoned Eutyches to explain his position to the Home Synod. After hearing his account of the relationship between the divinity and humanity of Christ, the Synod convicted Eutyches of heresy, deposed him as monastic superior, and suspended him from the priesthood. Eutyches immediately appealed to Pope Leo and defended the orthodoxy of his doctrine. He was supported by the eunuch Chrysaphius and Dioscurus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, and they enlisted the aid of the emperor, who agreed to call a council in 449.

At the emperor's summons, about 170 bishops arrived in Ephesus--the site of the Ecumenical Council of 431--to consider the question of the humanity and divinity of Christ. The council was convened on 8 August 449, and the emperor appointed Dioscurus to preside over the assembly and refused that privilege to the legates of Pope Leo. Moreover, the papal representatives were forbidden to read the pope's letters to the assembled bishops. One of those letters was the now famous Tome of Pope Leo, a document addressed to Patriarch Flavian which summarizes the faith of the western Church in the humanity and divinity of Christ.

Of the 170 bishops present, 42 had been members of the Home Synod which condemned Eutyches; Dioscurus forbade them to participate as voting members of the council. With the opposition silenced and the papal legates ignored, the remaining bishops voted 111 to 19 to acknowledge the orthodoxy of Eutyches' doctrine and to restore him to the priesthood and his monastic office. Dioscurus then denounced Patriarch Flavian and demanded that the council depose him. Deacon Hilary, one of the papal legates (and himself a future pope), shouted at the assembly, "I dissent emphatically." Dioscurus convinced the imperial representative to order the soldiers in the church to arrest Flavian and Hilary, and after a violent scuffle, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the future pope escaped through the sacristy. Hilary avoided capture and escaped to Rome, but Flavian was arrested and imprisoned.

Back in Rome, Pope Leo was outraged. Hilary and Bishop Eusebius of Dorylaeum gave a full report to the pope on the chaos at Ephesus, and from his house arrest in Cyr, Theodoret wrote to Leo: "I await the sentence of your Apostolic See. I beseech and implore Your Holiness to comfort me in my appeal to your fair and righteous tribunal." Leo immediately convened a council in Rome which repudiated the council at Ephesus and annulled all of its acts. Pope Leo denounced the assembly in Ephesus as a latrocinium, a band of robbers, and it is known to this day as the Robber Council of Ephesus. Finally, the pope wrote to the emperor rejecting everything decided at the Robber Council and demanding a new council to be held in Italy. The emperor refused, insisted that the disputed council at Ephesus was legitimate, and appointed a new Patriarch of Constantinople, Anatolius. The pope denounced the new patriarch as illegitimate, and it seemed that a major schism was at hand. Then, on 28 July 450, Emperor Theodosius II fell off his horse while hunting and died.

At the death of Theodosius, his older sister Pulcheria immediately seized power and executed the eunuch Chrysaphius; she then married the Roman soldier and senator Marcian, making him the emperor. As it happened, both Marcian and Pulcheria supported Pope Leo and regarded Eutyches as a heretic. The troublesome monk was placed under house arrest, and the body of Patriarch Flavian, who had died in exile, was buried with a state funeral in Constantinople. Almost immediately, every bishop of the Robber Council recanted its doctrine; every bishop, that is, except two: the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem. Pope Leo thought that eventually even they would come around to the correct teaching, but the new imperial couple were not prepared to wait. Marcian summoned a council to meet at Nicaea in 451, and Pope Leo agreed.

By the end of August 451, several hundred bishops had arrived in Nicaea and were waiting for the council to convene. Still in Egypt, however, was Patriarch Dioscurus who attempted to derail the new council by declaring Pope Leo excommunicated for his refusal to accept the teachings of the disputed council of 449. In attempting to excommunicate the Pope, though, Dioscurus had finally overplayed his hand; even bishops who were sympathetic to his theological position acknowledged that he had exceeded his authority. Dioscurus realized that he had unintentionally weakened his position and raced to join the assembly in Nicaea, but because of concern over a military threat from the Huns, the emperor had decided to move the council before it ever began. He ordered the bishops to move to the ancient city of Chalcedon, just across the Bosporus from Constantinople. There, on 8 October 451 in the Basilica of St. Euphemia, almost 400 bishops began the fourth Ecumenical Council.

After the opening ceremonies, the papal legates insisted that Dioscurus be excluded from voting and that Theodoret of Cyr be restored. The assembled bishops agreed to both propositions, and Theodoret was greeted with cheers when he entered the church. The papal legates, two bishops and one priest, presided over the Council and directed its deliberations, and the Council Fathers met in several solemn sessions from 8 to 31 October.

At the first session, the acts of the Robber Council were read and condemned. Then the statement of the Home Synod which had condemned Eutyches was read and approved, and Flavian's letter to the emperor was acclaimed as an orthodox statement of faith. The Patriarch of Jerusalem finally relented, leaving only Dioscurus and a few bishops from Egypt continuing to reject two natures in Christ. They argued passionately that they were simply following the teaching of St. Cyril, who had defended the unity of Christ's humanity and divinity against Nestorius, but this defense was rejected by the other Council Fathers.

On 10 October at the second session, the Council Fathers had read aloud the Creeds of Nicaea and Constantinople, the second letter of St. Cyril to Nestorius, and Pope Leo's Tome to Flavian--a document which explicitly teaches that there are two natures in Christ's one divine Person. When the Tome was finished, the Council Fathers declared: "This is the faith of the Apostles and Fathers; this is the faith of us all. Peter has spoken through Leo."

At the third session on 13 October, Dioscurus was tried and convicted of heresy and condemned for attempting to excommunicate the pope. After the deliberations were complete, one of the papal legates proclaimed: "Leo through us and the present holy Synod, together with St. Peter who is the rock of the Church and the foundation of orthodox faith, deprives Dioscurus of his episcopal office and of all priestly dignity." The Patriarch of Constantinople was the first to concur in this decree, and all bishops were obliged to assent to the sentence as a condition for remaining in the Council.

On 17 October at the fourth session, eighteen Egyptian bishops continued to refuse to accept Pope Leo's Tome and to assent to the deposition of Dioscurus. They argued that if they accepted the doctrine of two natures in Christ, then they would be murdered back in Egypt for repudiating the teaching of St. Cyril. This stubborn defense of only one nature in Christ gave rise to the Monophysite heresy, from the Greek words for "one nature", which continues in Egypt and the Near East to this day in schismatic churches.

At the fifth session on 22 October, Patriarch Anatolius offered a statement of faith to resolve the dispute, but the papal legates objected that it did not reflect the teaching of Pope Leo. An argument ensued, and the papal legates insisted that if another document was not prepared, then the Council would be suspended and reconvened in Italy. At length, a committee of twelve was appointed to draft a new definition of faith; the members of the writing team were the three papal legates and nine eastern bishops. The document they submitted began by affirming the authority of the teaching of the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Ephesus and then moved to a solemn Definition of Faith which incorporated elements of St. Cyril's second letter to Nestorius, Flavian's Confession to the emperor, and Pope Leo's Tome. In the Definition, the Council Fathers proclaim that, "We all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ...of one substance with the Father as touching the Godhead, of one substance with us men as touching the manhood...to be acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union, but rather the characteristic property of each nature being preserved, and concurring into one Person and one subsistence, not as if Christ were parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, Word, Lord, Jesus Christ..."

This second formula was accepted by the Fathers, and on 25 October 451, in the presence of the emperor and empress, the papal legates and 452 bishops signed the Definition. The Council Fathers thought their work was finished, but the emperor asked them to remain for a few days to consider several matters of ecclesiastical discipline. Thirty canons were debated and approved, and most of them dealt with clerical discipline. Bishops, for example, were ordered not to sell ordinations or wander around in dioceses other than their own. Priests were ordered not to enter the civil service, and monks were ordered to stay in their monasteries. And under pain of excommunication, all clerics and monks were ordered to observe perpetual celibacy.

One of the canons, however, was extremely controversial, and the papal legates refused to accept it. Canon 28 conferred several privileges on the See of Constantinople equal to those of Rome, gave the Patriarch jurisdiction over the Metropolitan Archbishops of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace, and named Constantinople second in honor after Rome on the basis of the eastern capital's political importance. The papal legates, however, protested that precedence in the Church did not come from political position but from Apostolic authority, reminded the Fathers that the canons of Nicaea had fixed the hierarchical order of the patriarchates, and restated the longstanding Roman rejection of the third canon of Constantinople which had attempted to give that See the highest place of honor after Rome. With this dispute unresolved, the Council closed on 31 October 451.

Emperor Marcian and Patriarch Anatolius both wrote to Pope Leo asking for his confirmation of the conciliar Definition and disciplinary canons. Leo delayed for several months while he considered his response. On 22 May 452, Leo annulled everything at Chalcedon which contradicted the canons of the Council of Nicaea, especially all privileges for Constantinople; he also rebuked the Patriarch for worldly ambition and reminded him that he possessed the See of Constantinople only at the pleasure of the Pope. In February 453, the emperor wrote to Pope Leo complaining that the heretics were benefiting from the papal delay in confirming the doctrine of the Chalcedon. Marcian suggested that the pope separate the Definition of Faith from the canons, and Leo agreed. On 21 March 453, Pope St. Leo the Great solemnly confirmed the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon on all matters of faith but again rejected Canon 28 and chastised Patriarch Anatolius. For his part, the Patriarch wrote back acknowledging that the validity of conciliar decrees depended upon the pope's agreement but gently suggesting that Constantinople merited a place of honor above all the churches but that of Rome.

The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon thus proved to be both an instrument of unity and the occasion for further conflict. Even as the Church agreed upon a fundamental dogma of the faith, the seeds were sewn for the bitter feud between Rome and Constantinople which would split the Church in the eleventh century.

After Chalcedon and before the schism which divided the Greek East from the Latin West there were three other councils which are acknowledged as ecumenical by Catholics and Orthodox alike. They are the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-81, and the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. These councils dealt respectively with the Monophysite heresy, the Monoenergist and Monothelite heresies, and the iconoclast heresy. As with their four predecessors, these councils were all preceded by angry arguments, surrounded by bitter quarrels, and followed by passionate disagreements over the correct interpretation and implementation of what each council taught. Such disputes were frequently not resolved until decades or centuries after the controverted council, and this pattern continued through all of the twenty-one councils recognized as ecumenical by Catholics. In the sixth and final part of this series, we will examine the Second Vatican Council in the light of this tendency towards confusion and conflict following a council of the Church.

Recommended Reading: An excellent one-volume introduction to this subject is The First Seven Ecumenical Councils by Leo Donald Davis, published by The Liturgical Press; Collegeville, Minnesota.

The Council of Ephesus

Sat, 6 Oct 2007 06:14:17 -0400

As we saw in the third part of this series, the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 decisively refuted the Arian heresy and confirmed the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed. The whole Church now accepted the faith of the Bishops of Rome and Alexandria and confessed that God the Father and God the Son are consubstantial (homoousios). Even before the Council, however, the Emperor Theodosius in 380 admonished all Christians to believe that which "the Apostle Peter had taught in days of old to the Romans, and which was now followed by Pope Damasus and by Bishop Peter of Alexandria." This is worth noting because explicit appeal is made to the authority of the Bishop of Rome and to the orthodoxy of the Bishop of Alexandria--two points which are key to understanding the third Ecumenical Council, held in 431 at the ancient city of Ephesus in modern Turkey.

"In Antioch the disciples were for the first time called Christians" (Acts 11: 26). The Church in Antioch was, after that in Jerusalem, the most ancient and noble of all the local churches. Founded by St. Peter and taught by St. Paul, the Church in Antioch was justifiably proud of its apostolic origins and dignity, and in the early centuries of Christianity, Antioch was a fertile center of monasticism, sacred liturgy, and sacred theology. Moreover, long before the advent of Christ, Antioch was a famous center of pagan learning, so it naturally also became a center of Christian scholarship. By the late third century there was already a flourishing school of Biblical studies at Antioch, and it was there that the young Arius went to study under Lucian. But though ancient and prominent, the Church in Antioch was not without an intellectual rival.

Alexander the Great founded a port city in Egypt in 331 B.C. and named the place after himself. Alexandria quickly became the trading and cultural capital of Africa and by the time of Christ was perhaps rivaled for status and wealth only by Rome. Alexandria was home to a large community of diaspora Jews who produced the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. Moreover, according to tradition, St. Mark the Evangelist established the Church in Alexandria and was buried there, and St. Paul regularly relied upon an Alexandrian Jewish Christian, Apollos. In the late second century, a learned convert named Pantaenus founded perhaps the first school of Christian philosophy which was later run by Clement of Alexandria and Origen, two of the most important thinkers in the early Church. Clearly, though not of apostolic origin, the Church in Alexandria was a force to be reckoned with.

Although an oversimplification, it is a commonplace among historians to describe all philosophers as basically disciples of either Plato or Aristotle. Likewise it is said that in the early Church all Christian thinkers followed the school of thought of either Antioch or Alexandria. The school of Antioch was regarded as Aristotelian, rational, and historical; its thinkers followed a rigorous philological method and preferred a literal interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures based on careful textual criticism. By contrast, the school of Alexandria was thought of as Platonic, speculative, and mystical; its teachers preferred an allegorical interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures which looked in the Old Testament for types and figures of Christ. While these two approaches were not necessarily contradictory, they often led to intellectual conflicts of competing methods, goals, and vocabularies, and it was just such a conflict which led to the Council of Ephesus.

The years following the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople were filled with ecclesiatical conflict and, all too often, bloodshed--frequently the result of bitter rivalries between Alexandria and Constantinople. For example, Theophilus, the Patriarch of Alexandria, engaged in conspiratorial intrigue against St. John Chrysostom, the brilliant but abrasive Patriarch of Constantinople, whom Theophilus regarded as a dangerous rival for his precedence as second after the Bishop of Rome. In 403 while visiting in Constantinople and with the assistance of the Empress Eudoxia, Theophilus contrived to have John exiled from his see, thus precipitating even greater animosity between the two competing churches.The whole affair was watched closely by a young Alexandrian named Cyril, the nephew and successor of Patriarch Theophilus.

Cyril was born in the late fourth century somewhere in Egypt. Little is known of his early life, but it is certain that Cyril was educated in Alexandria and ordained to the priesthood by his uncle, Patriarch Theophilus. Upon the death of Theophilus a bitter struggle broke out over his successor, but Cyril was finally chosen and consecrated in October 412. Cyril was a prolific writer and an original thinker, and most of his writings--all in Greek--survive. The early years of his episcopate were filled with conflict and violence, usually with Arians and other heretics, and Cyril is sometimes described as the saint not all of whose deeds were saintly.

While St. Cyril was a student in Alexandria, a young man named Nestorius was studying in Antioch. After completing his studies in languages, philosophy, and theology, Nestorius entered the monastery of Euprepios near Antioch and was later ordained to the priesthood there. He eventually became superior of the monastery, and his fame began to spread. In 428 Patriarch Sisinnius of Constantinople died, and the clergy and monks of the eastern capital were bitterly divided over his successor. When they could reach no agreement, Emperor Theodosius II--grandson of the Emperor Theodosius who convoked the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople--selected Nestorius to become the new patriarch. Nestorius went to Constantinople with several of his Antiochian colleagues and was consecrated on 10 April 428, sixteen years after St. Cyril had become Patriarch of Alexandria and second only to the Pope in prestige in the Church. Almost immediately, the trouble began, and as before, the theological dispute began over a controverted word.

By the end of 428, Nestorius was publicly denouncing the use of the title Theotokos (literally God-bearer, or Mother of God) for the Virgin Mary. Nestorius preferred the term Christotokos (Christ-bearer) for the Blessed Virgin because he could not understand how any created woman could be the mother of God, the Creator, but in rejecting Theotokos, Nestorius was rejecting an already ancient usage. The title Theotokos was applied to Mary in a third century Greek prayer and was regularly used by Christian thinkers such as Origen, Athanasius, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Alexander of Alexandria--the first opponent of Arius. The battle joined by Nestorius seemed to be about the Blessed Virgin, but in reality the controverted question concerned the relationship between the divinity and the humanity of the God-man, Jesus Christ. And the basis for the fight lay in the differences between the Antiochian and Alexandrian schools, a split incarnated by Nestorius and Cyril.

The Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea affirmed that God the Father and God the Son are consubstantial, and they also confessed that this only and true Son of the Father became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was made man. Left unaddressed in the great Creed of Nicaea, however, was the exact relationship of the divinity and humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the years following Nicaea, therefore, theologians began to ponder this matter, and as with the first halting efforts to understand the Holy Trinity, errors were made. Thinkers such as Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Eustathius of Antioch, and Apollinaris all attempted to understand how the divinity of the Son of God and the humanity of the Son of Mary were related in Jesus Christ. This enterprise, broadly speaking, had two starting points: 1. Begin with Jesus, the man of the synoptic Gospels, and move towards understanding how He is also God; this approach was typical of Nestorius and the Antiochians, and 2. Begin with the divine Word of St. John's Gospel and move towards understanding the complete consequences of the Incarnation; this approach was preferred by Cyril and the Alexandrians. In contemporary terms these approaches would be characterized respectively as Christology from below and from above.

As with the composition of the Nicene Creed, theologians were forced to adopt terms from Greek philosophy to explain the ambiguities of Scriptural truths. Words such as physis (nature), prosopon (individual identity understood as person), and hypostasis (individual being or substance understood as person) became the center of the controversy over the relationship between divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ. Nestorius was a careful student of this dispute and sought to reach an orthodox understanding of the co-existence without confusion in Christ of a divine and human nature. And it was precisely his attempt to maintain real unity and true diversity of these two natures in Christ which led Nestorius to deny that the Blessed Virgin Mary could be Theotokos, God-bearer. It is true, said Nestorius, that Jesus Christ is both true God and true man, but the Virgin Mary gave him only his human nature and not his divine nature. She is therefore the mother of the man who is the Messiah (Christotokos), but not the mother of God. Nestorius thought he had found a satisfactory explanation of this matter, but Cyril maintained that Nestorius was a heretic.

In 429 and early 430, Cyril and Nestorius exchanged letters and jibes, and the clergy and people of both Alexandria and Constantinople began to choose sides in what they saw would be a clash of titans. Cyril fired the first shot by writing to Pope Celestine with an explanation of Nestorius' errors and asking for the Pope to intervene. In August 430, Celestine held a synod in Rome which denounced the teaching of Nestorius as heretical, affirmed that the Blessed Virgin is truly the Theotokos, and demanded that Nestorius recant his heresy and confess the faith of Rome and the Catholic Church. Cyril was then empowered by Pope Celestine to insure that Nestorius complied with his instructions within ten days of receiving the papal letter. Celestine's message to Cyril explicitly invoked his authority as the Bishop of Rome and Successor of St. Peter to render the judgement of Christ and ensure the integrity of the Church's faith by excommunicating the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Nestorius appealed to the Emperor Theodosius II for protection, and Cyril responded by holding a synod in Alexandria which again condemned the errors of Nestorius and warned him that he would be deposed if he did not recant. Cyril also sent two letters to Nestorius explaining how the divine and human natures of Christ co-exist in perfect unity without confusion and insisting that if Mary is not the Mother of God then there would be two Sons, the Son of God and the son of Mary, rather than one Son who is both God and man. Nestorius remained unmoved, and it seemed that the controversy would lead to chaos, but in November 430 the emperor convoked a council to meet at Ephesus the following spring with the announced task of resolving this dispute.

The opening day of the Council was set for Pentecost Sunday, 7 June 431. Cyril and his entourage arrived in Ephesus a few days early and found Nestorius already there with his retinue, including armed bodyguards. Though the protagonists were early, many other bishops were late, and Nestorius wanted to postpone the opening of the Council. Cyril delayed until 21 June but then announced that he acted with the authority of the pope and would therefore open the Council the following day against the wishes of the emperor. On Monday 22 June 431 in a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and in the name of the Bishop of Rome, Cyril the Patriarch of Alexandria opened the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus with about 160 bishops in attendance. Despite being asked three times, Nestorius refused to come.

On that first day, the second letter of Cyril to Nestorius was read to the Council Fathers, who voted that Cyril accurately explained the faith of Nicaea and that Nestorius' refusal to call Mary the Mother of God was blasphemous. The Council Fathers wrote that "Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has blasphemed, decrees through the Holy Synod here present that Nestorius is excluded from the episcopal dignity and every priestly assembly." Cyril sent him notice: "To Nestorius, new Judas. Know that by reason of your impious preachings and of your disobedience to the canons, on the twenty-second of this month of June, in conformity with the rules of the Church, you have been deposed by the Holy Synod, and that you now no longer have any rank in the Church."

Not surprisingly, Nestorius was stung by the harshness of his condemnation and protested to the Emperor Theodosius: "I was summoned by Cyril who assembled the Council, by Cyril who presided. Who was judge? Cyril. Who was accuser? Cyril. Who was Bishop of Rome? Cyril. Cyril was everything." The emperor received this protest and Cyril's report from the Council, and while he pondered what to do, Patriarch John of Antioch, an old friend of Nestorius, arrived in Ephesus. As the Antiochians approached Ephesus on 26 June, they learned about the Council's decision. When they reached their lodgings, John of Antioch convened his own Council, and forty-three bishops agreed to excommunicate Cyril and Bishop Memnon of Ephesus and to overturn the condemnation of Nestorius. These new decrees were also sent to the emperor in Constantinople, and on 29 June Theodosius ordered both Councils suspended and forbade any bishop to leave Ephesus. The emperor also sent an emissary to Ephesus to restore order. In early July while the two camps were still feuding, however, Pope Celestine's legates arrived from Rome.

The pope sent two bishops and one priest in his name and gave them instructions not to join the debate but simply to preside as judges and defer to Cyril in all theological matters. On 10 July the Council reconvened, and the next day the papal legates approved the decrees of 22 June and concurred that Nestorius was legitimately deposed. Then one of the papal legates made an extraordinary speech: "There is no doubt, and in fact it has been know in all ages, that the holy and most blessed Peter, prince and head of the Apostles, pillar of the faith, and foundation of the Catholic Church, received the keys of the kingdom from our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, and that to him was given the power of loosing and binding sins: who down even to today and forever both lives and judges in his successors.The holy and most blessed pope Celestine, according to due order, is his successor and holds his place, and us he sent to supply his place in this holy synod, which the most humane and Christian Emperors have commanded to assemble, bearing in mind and continually watching over the Catholic faith. For they both have kept and are now keeping intact the apostolic doctrine handed down to them from their most pious and humane grandfathers and fathers of holy memory down to the present time." The bishops present accepted this declaration and took the legates' approval of their decisions as papal confirmation of the Council.

Throughout July and early August the Council continued to meet in Ephesus. The proceedings of the synod of John of Antioch were condemned, and John was solemnly warned not to interfere further with the Council's work. The Nicene Creed was again confirmed as the best orthodox confession of faith, and six disciplinary canons were passed to deal with the practical consequences of Nestorius' excommunication. Any bishop or priest who supported Nestorius or the Council of John of Antioch would be excommunicated, and all priests deposed by Nestorius or his followers were restored.

In early August, the imperial representative arrived from Constantinople and attempted to restore peace. He failed. After much intrigue, including bribes offered to the imperial court, the Emperor agreed to hear the appeals of eight delegates from each side, but before this meeting occurred, Nestorius finally gave in. Nestorius announced that if peace could be restored and the true faith defended, then he would resign as Patriarch and accept the orthodoxy of the title Theotokos. Theodosius jumped at the opportunity, accepted Nestorius' resignation, and in September sent him back to his monastery in Antioch under armed guard. After several more skirmishes, Cyril returned to Alexandria, John went home to Antioch, and a new Patriarch, Maximian, was consecrated in Constantinople. Pope Celestine received the conciliar decrees, but died the next year. He was succeeded by Pope Sixtus III, who rebuilt the fourth century Liberian Basilica in Rome (Santa Maria Maggiore) and dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.

After returning to Antioch, Patriarch John accepted the condemnation of Nestorius and sent to Cyril a formulation which confessed that Mary is Theotokos. Cyril responded with a letter to John which began, "Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad, for the wall of division is broken down." But all was not settled. Theological disputes raged anew over the relationship of Christ's divinity and humanity, and they would not be resolved until the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Moreover, though Nestorius finally accepted that Mary is truly the Mother of God, not all of his followers did. With the encouragement of the Persian shah, Nestorian belief in Mary as simply Christotokos was embraced by several oriental bishops. The dioceses led by those bishops eventually formed a schismatic church which has survived through the centuries and today is known as the Assyrian Church of the East. In November 1994, Pope John Paul II received in Rome the Assyrian Patriarch, who signed a joint theological declaration accepting the orthodoxy of the title Theotokos. After 1564 years the faith defended by St. Cyril, proclaimed by the Council of Ephesus, and confirmed by Pope St. Celestine still confesses that because Jesus Christ is both true God and true man, the Blessed Virgin Mary is truly the Mother of God.

The First Council of Constantinople

Wed, 3 Oct 2007 08:09:45 -0400

As we have already seen, the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) was convoked to address the controversy over the teaching of Arius, the charismatic priest from Alexandria, Egypt. Arius taught that the Son of God, the Logos, was a perfect creature of God, but not God Himself. The council, on the other hand, taught that God the Son is begotten of, but not created by, God the Father and that the Son is of the same substance as the Father. The Greek word used by the council in its Creed was homoousios, a term from philosophy rather than from the Sacred Scriptures. This usage, though agreed to by the Fathers of the Council, was controversial because it clarified the meaning of revealed truth by the use of human reason. Consequently, after the close of the Council, many bishops rejected the Creed composed at Nicaea on the grounds that the use of philosophical rather than scriptural language was unorthodox, and this rejection became the basis for the continuing controversy over the teaching of Arius and the exact relationship of the Father and Son in the Godhead.

Between the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381, both ecclesiastical and secular history are filled with the stuff of spy novels: secret alliances, international intrigue, bitter feuds, treachery and betrayal, murderous plots, salacious schemes. These curious tales of fourth century skullduggery are populated by popes and bishops, emperors and generals, but instead of stolen plutonium or lucrative weapons contracts, the contest of this story is over philosophy and theology. Is God the Son of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father, or only of similar substance (homoiousios)? And on one iota, literally, an Empire might rise or fall.

At the center of this swirling maelstrom was a man, like Arius, from Alexandria; his name was Athanasius; he was born to a Christian family in Alexandria about A.D. 295 and was well versed in languages, philosophy, and the Sacred Scriptures. In 318 he was ordained a deacon by Bishop Alexander, the first great opponent of Arius, and became the bishop's secretary. In that capacity, Athanasius accompanied Alexander to the general Council of Nicaea; he was therefore an eyewitness to the conciliar deliberations and decrees. In 328, just before his death, Bishop Alexander appointed Athanasius to be his successor, and in that same year, Athanasius became the Bishop of Alexandria. He remained Bishop of Alexandria until his death in 373, but of his 45 year tenure, Athanasius spent almost 20 years in exile. Fives times he had to leave Alexandria, often fleeing for his life. He was falsely accused of heresy, embezzlement, treason, murder, and sacrilege (among other crimes), and twice his diocese was occupied by rivals to the title of Bishop of Alexandria. The reason for these indignities? Athanasius insisted always on the orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed and was a bitter foe of the Arian heresy. This opposition roused the hatred of the heretics and made Athanasius the principle target of their schemes to overthrow the Nicene faith and install Arianism as true Christianity.

Athanasius, though the longest-lived and most durable, was by no means the only opponent of Arianism. Pope Liberius and St. Hilary of Poitiers were both exiled by imperial decree because of their support of the Nicene Creed, and the venerable old Bishop Ossius--one of the architects of the first Council of Nicaea--was placed under house arrest for one year for the same reason. These extraordinary events, which may seem unbelievable to the modern, secular mind, occurred because the fortunes of the Church were so closely bound to the person of the emperor. Recall that the Emperor Constantine--not a bishop--was the principal agent in the convocation of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.The exact relationship between the emperor and the Church was for many centuries rather ambiguous; indeed, until the eventual disappearance of all Roman emperors and claimants to their mantle (Holy Roman Emperors, Byzantine Emperors, Tzars, various western monarchs etc.) this relationship remained ambiguous and constituted in many ways a grave difficulty for the Church. But in the fourth century, the reality of the emperor's power and influence over the Church--whatever its theoretical status--was an inescapable fact. During the life of Constantine, the emperor's influence was usually benign and frequently salutary, but after his death, trouble followed.

Constantine the Great died in 337, twelve years after Nicaea. He was succeeded by his three sons (who murdered all of their uncles and all but two of their cousins): Constantine II, Constantius II, and Constans. The three brothers divided the empire among themselves, but began to fight with each other almost immediately. Constans defeated and executed his brother Constantine and ruled the western empire; Constantius ruled the East. For a mixture of political and theological reasons, Constans in the West generally supported pro-Nicene bishops, while in the East Constantius usually supported anti-Nicene bishops, while tolerating pro-Nicene belief. In 350, however, Constans died, and Constantius was left sole emperor. From that time on his support of the anti-Nicene party became more and more pronounced.

In 353, Constantius convoked a council at Arles, in modern France, which--under great pressure and imperial threats--condemned Athanasius and set the stage for the persecution of Pope Liberius, St. Hilary, and Bishop Ossius. Over the next several years, Constantius bullied into submission almost every bishop in the Church, and all but a stouthearted few acquiesced in the exile and condemnation of Athanasius and the Arian assault on Nicene orthodoxy. One notable exception was the one hundred-year-old Ossius. In 356 Ossius wrote to Constantius, saying in part: "I was a confessor at the first, when persecution arose in the time of your grandfather Maximian (303); and if you persecute me, I am ready now too to endure anything rather than shed innocent blood and betray the truth...Do not intrude into ecclesiatical matters, and do not give commands to us concerning them; but learn from us. God has put into your hands the kingdom; to us he has entrusted the affairs of the Church; and as he would steal the Empire from you would resist the ordinance of God, so likewise fear on your part lest, by taking upon yourself the government of the Church, you become guilty of a great offense." The enraged Constantius placed the old bishop under arrest, and for one year Ossius was pressured and harassed almost constantly. Finally, in 357, Ossius signed the Second Formulary of Sirmium, a compromise document which rejected the term homoousios but which also attempted to avoid the Arian heresy. The language was so vague, however, and the rejection of Nicaea was so clear, that the Arians claimed victory after the fact. In 358, on his deathbed in Cordoba, the noble Ossius recanted his support for the decree of Sirmium and reaffirmed his support for Athanasius.

At just about the time Ossius was rebuking the emperor, Constantius sent troops after Athanasius. On the night of 8 February 356, soldiers burst into the Church of Theonas in Alexandria where Athanasius was leading a prayer vigil. A fight broke out in the church, and the assembled priests and people surrounded Athanasius with a wall of flesh, forcing him to flee into hiding in the desert. Though uncommonly dramatic, this narrow escape was nothing new to Athansius; by 356 he had already been in exile twice, and he had a well established network of support among the laity and the lower clergy. For the next six years, Athanasius eluded capture by moving covertly from one safe house to another; he even made several secret visits to Alexandria, where his see was occupied by the Arian bishop George of Cappadocia.

For six long years, every triumph seemed to be Arian. In 360, a group of bishops assembled in Constantinople by the emperor overthrew the Nicene Creed and explicitly rejected the term homoousios; their justification was that the word was offensive to the Christian people. In November of 361, however, the Emperor Constantius--who was even then involved in a losing war with his cousin Julian the Apostate(one of the two who survived the murderous frenzy in 337)--died of a fever. Less than two months later, on Christmas Eve 361, a mob of Alexandrians murdered the Arian usurper George of Cappadocia, and Athanasius returned in triumph to the city. The triumph, however, was brief.

After becoming sole emperor, Julian announced to a stunned empire that, though he had been baptized, he was not truly a Christian and that he intended to restore pagan religion to preeminence. In October 362, because of his fierce opposition to the Apostate, Athanasius had to flee once more. Julian died in June 363, and Athanasius returned to Alexandria. But in February 364, the pro-Nicene Emperor Valentinian made his brother Valens co-emperor and gave him control of the East. Unlike his brother, however, Valens was an Arian, and Athanasius was forced into exile for the fifth and last time. When Athanasius left Alexandria, the Christian citizens began a protest of passive resistance, sabotage, and outright mutiny. After four months of chaos, Valens relented and restored Athanasius to Alexandria. The courageous bishop then lived in peace until his death in 373; he spent those remaining years continuing to support the Nicene cause by writing against the Arians and encouraging his brother bishops to remain true to the Nicene Creed. Although he did not live to see the Nicene faith vindicated by the Council of Constantinople, Athanasius provided invaluable service to the Church through his moral and physical courage and his unwavering support for the true faith. At an hour when nearly every bishop was either cowed into submission by fear of imperial power or seduced by error, Athanasius bore constant witness to the truth, and his constancy helped save the Church from universal apostasy.

But though Athanasius was a principal player in this drama, he was not the only one. Apollinaris, son of an Alexandrian priest and a boyhood schoolmate of the Emperor Julian, would add new doctrinal challenges to the orthodox faith, and St. Gregory Nazianzen (c.330-c.390), for a short while Bishop of Constantinople, would refute the errors of Apollinaris and Arius and make a strong defense of the Nicene faith. In addition, Gregory's close friend and brother bishop, St. Basil the Great of Caesarea (c.329-379), became the most vocal and effective defender of the orthodox faith after the death of Athanasius. Indeed, Sts. Basil and Gregory stand together among the most influential figures in the history of the Church, shaping as they did the Church's theology, monastic life, spirituality, and sacred liturgy--especially in the East--for all ages after them.

While Gregory and Basil were at work in the East, St. Ambrose was laboring in the West. Ambrose was born around 339 to an aristocratic Roman family and received the finest education of his day. He entered the imperial civil service and rose rapidly to become governor of the provinces of northwestern Italy. In that capacity, Ambrose lived in Milan, then the capital of the western empire, and it was at Milan in 374 that his life changed dramatically and forever. When Ambrose arrived in Milan, the bishop there was an Arian. Upon the bishop's death, the Catholics and Arians in Milan began a bitter, often violent, quarrel about whether the next bishop would be a Catholic (pro-Nicene) or an Arian (anti-Nicene). In his attempt to settle the dispute, Ambrose inadvertently endeared himself to both groups, and he was unanimously chosen by both factions to become the next bishop. Although he had grown up in a Christian family, Ambrose--then 35 years old--had never been baptized. Accordingly, he was baptized and several days later ordained to the priesthood. Then, on 7 December 374, Ambrose was consecrated Bishop of Milan.

Only after his episcopal consecration did Ambrose undertake the study of sacred theology, but once he began his task, he proved a quick student. From the outset of his episcopate, Ambrose was an implacable foe of Arianism, and he became a principal figure in the consolidation of the Nicene faith in the West. In 378 at the Council of Sirmium, Ambrose deposed six Arian bishops in the West and convinced the Emperor Gratian that Arianism was heretical and incompatible with Christianity. At Ambrose's behest and with his guidance, Gratian promulgated a series of laws in 379 and 380 which proscribed Arianism in the West.

In 380, the Spanish general Theodosius became emperor in the East. Although he was baptized only upon becoming emperor, Theodosius had been well catechized in his youth--especially about the dangers of the Arian heresy. Once of his first imperial decrees was an order to all citizens to profess the faith of the Bishops of Rome and Alexandria, meaning the Nicene Creed; Theodosius admonished all Christians to believe that which "the Apostle Peter had taught in days of old to the Romans, and which was now followed by Pope Damasus and by Bishop Peter of Alexandria." He next deposed the Arian Bishop of Constantinople and appointed St. Gregory Nazianzen to that office. In early 381, Theodosius decreed that all Christian churches and other buildings would be returned to Catholics and that all Arians would be dispossessed; he also forbade all heretics to meet publicly anywhere within the empire.

In the spring of 381, Theodosius and Gratian jointly invited bishops from the East to meet in Constantinople to deal the death blow to Arianism. This assembly, later recognized as the second ecumenical council of the universal Church, met from May to July 381 in the imperial palace; approximately 150 bishops attended. The original written record of the proceedings no longer exists, but citations of those acts in other documents testify to the principal points agreed upon by the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople.

After their deliberations, the Council Fathers promulgated four declarations or canons. The first canon declared that the Nicene Creed is the orthodox statement of Christian faith and condemned Arianism and several other heresies. The second canon instructed all bishops to restrict their official activities to their own dioceses. The third canon insisted that "the Bishop of Constantinople shall have primacy of honor after the Bishop of Rome because Constantinople is the new Rome". And the fourth canon condemned Maximus the Cynic--a false claimant to the see of Constantinople--and declared invalid all his ordinations.

Although the bishops gathered at Constantinople spoke of the Council of 381 as ecumenical, it was not universally recognized as such until the Council of Chalcedon in 451, largely because the Pope was not in attendance and did not even send a legate in his place. Moreover, both Pope St. Damasus I (Pope from 366 to 384) and Pope St. Leo the Great (Pope from 440 to 461) rejected the legitimacy of the third canon, which declared Constantinople first in dignity after Rome; the basis for this objection of both popes is the omission of this canon from the letter of 382 to Pope Damasus informing him of the acts of the Council. The third canon aside, however, the First Council of Constantinople is accepted as ecumenical by the Catholic Church.

In the aftermath of the Council, St. Ambrose presided at a regional council of western bishops in Aquileia, Italy. That council also condemned Arianism as a heresy and deposed two of the last Arian bishops in the West. Meanwhile, Theodosius continued to move against pagans and Arians, thus reversing the losses of the fifty years of chaos and firmly establishing Nicene Christianity as the sole religion of the empire.

The principal effect of the First Ecumenical Council of Constantinople and of the strenuous labors of orthodox bishops in both the East and the West was the final and complete repudiation of Arianism and the universal acceptance of the Nicene Creed and its philosophical language. An unintended effect, and one little noticed at the time, was a development in Rome. In 382, Pope Damasus convoked a council at Rome to consider the confusing affairs of ecclesiastical squabbling. Perhaps dismayed at the aggressive and independent action of bishops throughout the Church and certainly concerned about the pretensions to precedence of the Bishop of Constantinople, that Roman Council of 382 taught that "the holy Roman Church has been set before the rest by no conciliar decrees, but has obtained primacy by the voice of our Lord and Savior in the Gospel: 'Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church.'" From that time forward, Pope Damasus referred to Rome as the Apostolic See and employed the imperial "we"; he also began to address other bishops as his sons rather than as brothers. Subsequent popes followed Damasus' example, and the stage was set for future conflict with the East. Even as peace emerged in the Church over one problem, future trouble was guaranteed.

The Council of Nicaea

Tue, 2 Oct 2007 08:18:10 -0400

The Acts of the Apostles recounts in Chapter 15 how the Apostles gathered in Jerusalem around A.D. 52 to resolve the dispute over whether or not Gentile converts to Christianity first had to be circumcised and taught to observe the Law of Moses. That gathering was a deliberative assembly which claimed the authority of the Holy Spirit (Acts 15: 28) to teach the whole Church on the disputed point, and it became the model for the meetings of bishops which began very early in the Church's history.

The earliest known gathering of bishops to coordinate a response to a common problem was in A.D. 175 in Asia Minor; the bishops of the region met to discuss their response to the heresy of Montanism, a movement begun by a pagan convert named Montanus whose followers considered themselves a spiritual elite inspired by the Holy Spirit to restore the Church to her original simplicity. In the years following that meeting, several gatherings of bishops occurred from Spain to Syria. In 190, for example, Pope Victor called for a series of synods to resolve the controversy over the date of Easter, and at the turn of the third century, a synod in Greece discussed the canon of the New Testament. Throughout the third century, synods or regional councils of bishops met in Gaul, Spain, Italy, Africa, Palestine, and Cappadocia, and in some places such synods became regular annual events.

Such episcopal convocations met to address a bewildering array of difficulties, but they all had this much in common: they were deliberative assemblies of bishops intended to address theological and disciplinary problems, and the participating bishops were equal participants who submitted to the leadership of the senior bishop present. Moreover, the terms "synod" and "council" were used interchangeably to describe such regional or provincial assemblies throughout the second, third, and early fourth centuries.

During the years when the custom of such councils was taking shape, the world was changing rapidly and violently. The Roman Empire emerged from the smoldering ruins of the Republic and the transitional Dyarchy, an arrangement in which power was shared between the Princeps (or First Citizen) and the Senate with its associated bureaucrats. When once the Roman Empire proper was formed, though, it was frequently divided by savage civil wars. In the closing years of the second century, the Emperor Diocletian, who preferred to remain on the empire's eastern frontier rather than in Rome, created an administrative division between the East and West and entrusted the governance of the western half of the empire to another "Augustus", Maximian. This arrangement created a rivalry between the East and West which led to fundamental instability in the empire, a situation which invited war.

Between the years 305 (the year Diocletian retired to his palace in modern Yugoslavia to tend his garden) and 324, the empire was split between East and West, and the heads of the two halves were frequently at war. In A.D. 312, Constantine defeated Maxentius, his last rival in the West, at the Milvian Bridge, a span across the Tiber just north of Rome. After that victory, Constantine was absolute master of the West, and in 324 he defeated Licinius, his only rival in the East, and won control of the whole empire. No sooner had Constantine achieved military victory, however, than he discovered a new threat to the unity of the empire: the fierce controversy surrounding the disputed teaching of a priest from Alexandria, a man named Arius.

In 313, Constantine met with Licinius, the co-emperor of the East, in Milan; there they issued the Edict of Toleration which ended the bloody persecution of Christians which began under Nero. This proclamation permitted the Church to live boldly in the light of day and to engage in vigorous and sustained public discussions of Christian doctrine in a way which had not been possible before. Almost immediately, therefore, theological disputes which already had long histories emerged into public for the first time, and like fire suddenly given great quantities of oxygen, some of these disputes exploded into intellectual conflagrations.

One of the oldest and most complex of these theological controversies concerned the very heart of the Christian religion: the Holy Trinity. As the spiritual descendants of Judaism, Christians were heirs to the radical monotheism of Israel; "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods besides me." (Ex 20: 2-3). But as the disciples of Jesus, Christians were also recipients of the fullness of revelation, including the startling disclosure that in Himself the one true God is a communion of three, a Trinity: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

From the earliest days of the Church, Christians pondered the mystery of God's Unity and Trinity and began attempting to explain more precisely the relationships among the Persons of the Trinity. These labors, understandably obscure and abstruse, led to many errors in the early years, and most of those who tried to describe the relationships within the Trinity ended in heresy. During the second and third centuries men such as Marcion, Montanus, Theodotus the Shoemaker, Theodotus the Banker, Paul of Samosata, Praxeas, Sabellius, Noetus of Smyrna, and even the great theologians Tertullian and Origen all stumbled into error in their attempts to explain something about the Trinity, usually the relationship between the Father and the Son, or Logos (Word), Who became man as Jesus. At the same time, men such as Irenaeus of Lyons, Hippolytus, and Novatian, partially in response to erroneous explanations of the Trinity, were groping towards an adequate expression of the Church's faith in God Who is both One and Three. Although the efforts of such early thinkers led to mistakes (some greater than others), gradually the Church was moving towards the truth about the Trinity--if only by excluding explanations which were unacceptable. Into this intellectual ferment came the priest from Alexandria, Arius.

Arius was born in Lybia between 250 and 256, and he apparently studied in Antioch under the brilliant teacher Lucian, who was martyred in 312. Arius was well educated and well spoken, an urbane and very popular figure in Alexandria, which in his day was one of the ancient world's greatest cities and centers of learning. While still a student, Arius sided with the losers in a quarrel over the legitimate succession of bishops in Alexandria, but he reconciled with the winner, Alexander, and was eventually ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood. Bishop Alexander entrusted Arius with the care of the most important parish in the diocese, that of the Baucalis near the sea port. From that office, Arius exercised great influence both in Alexandria and throughout the Mediterranean, and through his personal popularity, Arius was able to give wide circulation to his ideas about the Trinity.

Arius was apparently concerned to defend the absolute transcendence and unicity of God, Who is immaterial and therefore indivisible. Moreover, Arius was irrevocably committed to the Old Testament understanding of a single God Who created everything else out of nothing by an act of His sovereign power rather than by some emanation from Himself, an idea common to many pagan religions. The combination of these ideas led Arius to conclude that the Logos (Word) of God was created by the Father to be the instrument of all other creation. The Word, or God the Son, is a perfect creature to Arius, but a creature nonetheless. Were this account true, then only the Father would be truly God, and the Son and Holy Spirit would then be divine only through adoption by the Father. In such a case, the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity would become merely a descending hierarchy with the Father extending His grace to the Son and the Holy Spirit, rather than a communion of co-equal and co-eternal Persons, Who together are the one, true God.

By 318, Arius's views on the Trinity had become widely known and warmly received by many clergy throughout the Church. About that time, Bishop Alexander convoked a meeting of all the deacons and priests of Alexandria to discuss Arius's doctrine of the Trinity. Arius accused his bishop of heresy, and the bishop returned the favor. Around 320, Bishop Alexander convoked a council of bishops from all of Egypt and Lybia; one hundred bishops attended, and eighty of them voted to condemn Arius and send him into exile to avoid causing a schism. Two of the bishops at that council, however, continued vigorously to support Arius, and with their help, the controversial theologian escaped to Palestine and was welcomed by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea.

From his new base in Palestine, Arius continued to teach his doctrine of the Trinity, and he received the support of several bishops in the region. Notable among his opponents, however, were the influential bishops of Jerusalem and Antioch. Meanwhile, Bishop Alexander was sending out letters from Alexandria to bishops throughout the Christian world informing them of the condemnation of Arius and enlisting their support to exclude the defiant priest from ecclesial communion. Many bishops complied with Alexander's request; many did not. Bishops on both sides began to refer to their opponents as dangerous heretics, and the entire Church quickly began to line up for or against Arius. The stage was thus being set for a potentially disastrous schism throughout the empire, and under these circumstances the controversy came to the attention of the Emperor Constantine who, though a Christian, was concerned more with preserving peace in his newly unified empire than with the resolution of an obscure theological dispute.

At this point, Constantine enlisted the aid of Bishop Ossius of Cordoba, a man of considerable talents who earned fame in his native Spain by being a major force in the Council of Elvira in 309-310. In 312, Ossius became a member of Constantine's court and remained his principal ecclesiastical counsellor until 326. In 324, Constantine sent Ossius to both Alexander and Arius with letters asking them to reconcile their differences and restore peace to the Church. When it became clear that this was not possible, Ossius convoked a synod of bishops at Antioch in late 324. This council, which began in early 325, was attended by fifty-nine bishops who condemned the errors of Arius and promulgated a statement of orthodox belief in the true divinity of God the Son. All but three of fifty-nine bishops present voted against Arius, and the three dissidents, including Eusebius of Caesarea, were excommunicated until and unless they professed the true faith. As it happened, the regional Council of Antioch was but a preview of the Church's first Ecumenical or General Council at Nicaea.

Realizing that the Arian controversy could rend the empire, as well as the Church, into pieces and relying upon the counsel of Bishop Ossius, Constantine decided in late 324 to convene a general council of bishops finally to resolve the dispute. He first intended to summon the bishops to Ancyra but later chose the town of Nicaea, the site of an imperial palace, as the location of the Council, and it began either on 20 May or 19 June 325 and ended around 25 August 325. The exact number of bishops at the Council is unknown, but evidence indicates that there were approximately three hundred in attendance. The vast majority of bishops were from the eastern half of the empire, but there were representatives from the West. The Bishop of Rome did not attend personally; instead, Pope Sylvester sent two delegates, the Roman priests Vitus and Vincentius, to speak for him and to preside over the Council in his place. Because of Bishop Ossius's position in the imperial court, he was permitted to preside with the two papal representatives.

The Council Fathers were primarily concerned with refuting the errors of Arius and providing a compelling statement of the orthodox faith. Several bishops who were sympathetic to the views of Arius offered a statement of faith which the majority rejected as blasphemous and heretical. Then Eusebius of Caesarea, who had been provisionally excommunicated at the Council of Antioch, offered the baptismal creed of his diocese--the oldest surviving statement of orthodox Christian faith. The Council Fathers agreed that Eusebius's creed was correct, but the majority insisted that it did not go far enough to refute the Arian heresy decisively. After much debate, the Council Fathers took a Syro-Palestinian baptismal creed as the basis for an expanded statement of the fundamental features of the Christian faith, but the majority agreed that in order to prevent any heretical misinterpretation of the creed, it was necessary to find language which absolutely declared the divine nature of God the Son and eliminated all ambiguities in the Scriptural language of the early creeds. To accomplish this end, the bishops turned to terminology from pagan Greek philosophy, specifically to a word with a long intellectual history: ousia, which can be translated as being or substance.

Greek philosophers from before Socrates had used the word ousia to describe the fundamental nature of being itself, and the term had been used by Christians before the Council of Nicaea, but usually by heretics. After a fierce argument about using non-Scriptural language to explain the Christian faith, the bishops embraced the term homoousios (from homo meaning "same" and ousia meaning "substance" or "being") to explain that God the Son has exactly the same nature as God the Father. In other words, God the Father and God the Son are of the same substance or being, as the creed explains, because the Son is eternally begotten, or generated, of the Father. The Second Person of the Trinity is the eternally only-begotten Son of the Father, not a creature made by the Father as Arius taught, and the Son is therefore "consubstantial" with the Father.

This creed was solemnly promulgated by the Council and decisively refuted the heresy of Arius. The controversy, however, did not end. In large part because non-Scriptural language was used to state the faith of the Church, the orthodoxy of the creed was challenged by many bishops until the next General Council in 381 at Constantinople. More importantly, though, the Arian heresy did not simply wither and die. Many Christians, including bishops, priests, and laity, were sympathetic to Arian ideas, and after the Council there was a strong reaction against the orthodox statement of faith. Arianism had a long and often bloody history in both the East and West, eventually spreading to Germany, and finally expiring in Spain at the end of the seventh century. During those almost five centuries of controversy, the basic Arian ideas took the form of several different heresies and carried into error countless thousands of people. Only with the constant effort of the Church's best minds and greatest saints, including men such as St. Athanatius (who attended the Council of Nicaea as a deacon and was later Bishop of Alexandria) and St. Augustine, was Arianism finally defeated. So, despite the solemn teaching of a General Council of the Church, peace and unity of faith were not obtained for almost five hundred years. Nonetheless, the indispensable starting point was the creed composed at the Council of Nicaea. That text was the first dogmatic definition of the Church and constituted an explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture by recourse to Sacred Tradition.

That creed, which we call the Nicene Creed and still sing or say every Sunday and holyday of obligation, goes on to confess that the co-eternal Son was made incarnate of the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, that His death is our redemption, that He rose from the dead, and that this God-man is Jesus Christ, the one Lord. The text of this creed was probably introduced into the western liturgy by the regional Council of Toledo in 589; that text, however, was a Latin translation of the Greek original and included a small addition which resulted in major theological disputes, namely that the Holy Spirit "proceeds" from both the Father and the Son, rather than only from the Father. This matter continues to divide Catholic and Protestant Christians from Orthodox Christians, but much progress towards understanding and accommodation has been made in the past thirty years. After 1670 years, the teaching of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea still occupies the minds of Christians and points us to the Truth, Who alone is our salvation.

Post Conciliar Confusion

Mon, 1 Oct 2007 12:10:43 -0400

Almost fourteen years ago I wrote a series of six essays about Ecumenical Councils for The Catholic Answer, a journal published by Our Sunday Visitor and then edited by Fr Peter Stravninkas, who suggested the series as a response to the nearly constant disputes of that time about the meaning and consequences of the Second Vatican Council. The text of the first part of that series follows below, and I will post the other parts in the coming days.

For the past thirty years, Catholics have heard a great deal about "the Council," with phrases such as "That thinking is pre-conciliar" or "The Council changed all that" being commonplace in Catholic journalism and conversation. And almost always "the Council" being referred to is the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (Vatican II in shorthand), which met in the Patriarchal Vatican Basilica of St. Peter the Apostle from 1962 to 1965. That Council was convoked by Pope John XXIII, who died during its first year, and was concluded by Pope Paul VI, who promulgated all of the conciliar decrees.

The II Vatican Council included more than 2000 bishops from around the world, met in four general sessions of about three months each in the Fall of the years 1962 to 1965, and enacted sixteen documents touching almost every area of life in the Church. The Council also gave the impetus to the reformation of canon law for both the Latin Church and the Eastern Churches and led to the reorganization of all major administrative structures in the Church, including the Roman Curia. And most recently, the universal Church has a new catechism for the first time since the sixteenth century--a direct result of "the Council". In other words, the II Vatican Council dramatically effected the way Catholics live their faith in the modern world and changed the face of Catholicism in a way no other force had for centuries.

The II Vatican Council was the most observed, reported, documented, and commented upon council in the Church's history. For all that, though, the legacy of Vatican II, almost thirty years after the Council's close, is still a hotly contested matter. For example, the sacred liturgy is today, in all too many parishes, seminaries, and religious communities, a battlefield instead of the foretaste of the heavenly liturgy which the Council envisioned. At the same time, however, great progress has been made towards healing the man-made divisions in Christ's Church. These, and similar examples, are frequently adduced by ecclesial partisans on opposing sides of every contemporary controversy to show either that the Council was a great success or that it was a dismal failure, but what both sides usually take for granted--whether blame or praise is to be assigned--is that "the Council" is the engine of change.

Now, it would surely be a mistake to ignore or undervalue the significance of the II Vatican Council in the life of the Church in the second half of the twentieth century. But it would likewise be an error (the logical fallacy of post hoc, ergo propter hoc) to attribute every development in Catholicism since 1965 to the work of the Council. This second mistake is a common trap for traditionalists and progressives alike and for the same reason: historical myopia.

Many Catholics today speak of "the Council" in a way which suggests that the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican is the first and only such event in the life of the Church; these observers point to Vatican II--again, either with admiration or disgust--as a unique, pivotal point in the history of Christianity. When speaking in this way, frustrated progressives usually intend to say that Vatican II constitutes a radical repudiation of everything in the preceding two millennia, while disgruntled traditionalists frequently seek to discredit the Council by separating it from the patrimony of the earlier councils. Both approaches fail to take our history seriously and consequently lead to misinterpretations of Vatican II.

In order to avoid this trap and arrive at a balanced understanding of recent developments in the Church, we need to place Vatican II in historical perspective. And to do that we must ask some fundamental questions: What are ecumenical councils? What authority do they have? How many have there been? What is their purpose? What were their effects?

What are ecumenical councils? The English word "council" comes from the Latin concilium, meaning a deliberative assembly, and "ecumenical" comes through Latin from the original Greek oikumene, meaning the whole inhabited world. Thus, "ecumenical council" signifies a deliberative assembly from the whole (Christian) world. Such a council, however, is composed only of Bishops who gather to discuss the relevant matters and teach authentic Christian doctrine as successors of the Apostles.

Only the Roman Pontiff can convoke an ecumenical council. Several councils were organized by persons other than the Bishop of Rome, but they did not attain the status of true ecumenical councils until and unless the Pope recognized them as such by issuing a formal convocation. The Roman Pontiff also presides at ecumenical councils either personally or through a legate, and he alone can suspend a council, dissolve it, or transfer it to another meeting place. Finally, the Pope alone determines what will be discussed by a council and what procedure will guide the deliberations.

Ecumenical councils differ from other assemblies of bishops, such as provincial councils, and from synods at the diocesan, provincial, national, or international level. Examples include the three plenary Councils of Baltimore held in the nineteenth century to determine policies for the Church in the United States and the regular meetings of the Synod of Bishops which was established after Vatican II to foster unity between the Pope and the bishops of the world and to assist the Pope in directing the affairs of the universal Church. Such assemblies of bishops are useful for the effective administration of life in the Church in certain territories or even for specific subjects for the universal Church, but they are generally concerned primarily with disciplinary matters and are not truly universal assemblies of bishops, nor do they have the same authority as ecumenical councils.

What authority do ecumenical councils have? The bishops of the Church, as the successors of the Apostles, are the sole authentic teachers and interpreters of the Christian faith and the only legitimate pastors of the Christian faithful. Together with the Successor of St. Peter, the Pope, and only in communion with him, all the bishops of the Church exercise the threefold office of teaching, sanctifying, and governing. In other words, the episcopal ministry, like that of the Apostles, is by divine institution collegiate in nature, and the most obvious exercise of this collegiate ministry occurs in an ecumenical council. Although individual bishops, other than the Bishop of Rome, do not enjoy the privilege of infallibility, they are, when assembled in a legitimate ecumenical council, "for the universal Church, teachers of and judges in matters of faith and morals, whose decisions must be adhered to with the loyal and obedient assent of faith" (Lumen Gentium, 25). Put simply, a legitimate ecumenical council teaches infallibly in all matters of faith and morals and binds all the Christian faithful to assent with faith to that teaching.

How many ecumenical councils have there been? Catholics recognize twenty-one true ecumenical councils. Identified by the place (or places) and year (or years) in which they met, the twenty-one ecumenical councils are: I Nicea, 325; I Constantinople, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451; II Constantinople, 553; III Constantinople, 680-81; II Nicea 787; IV Constantinople, 869-870; I Lateran, 1123; II Lateran, 1139; III Lateran, 1179; IV Lateran, 1215; I Lyons, 1245; II Lyons, 1274; Vienne, 1311-12; Constance, 1414-18; Basel-Ferrara-Florence, 1431-45; V Lateran, 1512-17; Trent, 1545-1563; I Vatican, 1869-70; II Vatican, 1962-65.

Missing from this list is the so-called Council of Jerusalem, the assembly of the Apostles in Jerusalem around A.D. 52(Acts 15:28). This gathering is not counted in the list of ecumenical councils because it was a meeting not of bishops, but of the Apostles themselves, and it is therefore unique in the history of the Church. The bishops of the early Church, however, consciously imitated this extraordinary assembly of the Apostles by gathering in solemn convocations to reach common decisions on matters of faith and discipline, and this practice gave rise to the first acknowledged ecumenical council in Nicea in A.D. 325.

What is the purpose of ecumenical councils and what are their effects? The answer to these questions is different for almost all of the twenty-one councils, but a cursory glance at conciliar history shows some common elements. Ecumenical councils have generally been called to respond to a particular crisis (e.g. the Protestant revolt) or to resolve a specific theological dispute (e.g. Does Jesus Christ have only a human will, only a divine will, or both?). And in most cases, the immediate effect of a council was chaos and confusion; indeed, in many instances, decades or centuries were required for the matter addressed by a council finally to be settled. For example, the violent dispute over the veneration of icons was addressed definitively by the II Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 787, which taught that venerating icons was not idolatry, but the matter was not settled peacefully for almost one hundred years. And more recently, the teaching of the Council of Ephesus in 431 on the unity of the humanity and the divinity of Christ and on the status of Mary as the Mother of God was officially accepted by the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East only in November 1994--a span of over 1500 years! In other words, the success or failure of an ecumenical council cannot be measured in minutes; it must be judged by the ages.

What is special about the first seven councils? The first seven ecumenical councils (from I Nicea in 325 to II Nicea in 787) are the only ones recognized as such by both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. All of these councils, sometimes called the Sacred Seven, were held in the East, and the teaching of all of them is universally accepted as authentic Christian doctrine by the Catholic Church and all of the Orthodox Churches. Moreover, the teaching of these seven councils is also generally accepted by most Protestants. In other words, these councils teach all of Christendom and occurred before the tragic separation between the Greek East and the Latin West tore a gaping wound in the body of Christ's Church. The patrimony of these councils, therefore, constitutes a common ground of unity in faith and worship for all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, and a study of these teachings can only promote growth towards a renewal of true and full communion among all Christians. Moreover, a clearer view of our frequently tumultuous past and the part played in it by these first seven councils may help contemporary Christians understand better the true meaning and effect of "the Council" of our time, the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican.

This Series The following four articles in this series will examine some of the controversies which were addressed by the Sacred Seven Councils and the effects of conciliar teaching in the life of the Church, and the sixth and last article will attempt to apply these lessons from history to our understanding of the nature, purpose, and consequences of Vatican II.

Recommended Reading A splendid general introduction to the history of the first twenty ecumenical councils is The Church in Crisis: A History of the General Councils, 325-1870 by Philip Hughes (New York: Hanover House, 1961).

A Gender Gap in the Church?

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:16:00 -0400

I recently had an exchange with some Anglicans seeking refuge from the wreckage of the Episcopal Church which touched on the unresolved debate within Anglicanism over the ordination of women to the priesthood. This reminded me of an essay I wrote over ten years ago on these questions, the text of which follows:

Even a cursory glance at most newspapers and magazines, both Catholic and secular, suggests that there is a wide gulf of misunderstanding and mutual suspicion between men and women in the Church--especially between women and the aging, all-male, celibate hierarchy. The basic story line runs thus: The all-male priesthood is the last redoubt of absolute patriarchal authority left in the Western world, and those in power--particularly in Rome--will do anything to preserve their positions of prestige and prevent women from breaking this last irrational barrier to their full participation in public life. The story continues by pointing out that every major Protestant communion now has female clergy and by suggesting that Rome's failure to respond to this simple demand of justice is yet another indication that Catholicism--as all reasonable people know--is and always has been a force of oppression and domination. So runs the standard story, but is it true?

In order to answer this question, it is necessary first to examine the complex movement of feminism. Actually, feminism is not one movement; it is, rather, several different projects which all relate in some way to the role of gender in human life. Feminism is at once a popular cultural movement, an intellectual school of thought, an economic project, and a personal creed. And although it is a relatively new phenomenon in human affairs, feminism has had enormous influence--for good and ill--in reshaping human society, especially Western civilization.

Feminism, for example, has led in most Western nations to universal suffrage, rapidly expanding economic and educational opportunities for women, greater participation of women in civic life and all cultural enterprises, stronger legal and moral sanctions against sexual and physical abuse of women, and a general recognition of the human dignity of women and of their right--equal to that of men--to protection under the law from all forms of injustice.

On the other hand, feminism, in some of its forms, has also contributed to the acceptance of no-fault divorce and the consequent destabilization of the family, the promotion of radical individualism which depicts the human person as an imperial, autonomous Self free from obligations to all others, and the acceptance of abortion on demand--a project which casts the rights of women against the rights of children and their fathers.

In short, feminism has brought forth a mix of blessings and curses which on their face are contradictory. Why? Several reasons explain these curious contradictions, but the one I want to examine is this: Secular feminism and Christian feminism each has its own cultural, economic, political, philosophical, and theological assumptions and conclusions, many of which are mutually exclusive.

Secular feminism, in common with most forms of secular thought, considers the world of human affairs without any reference to God. There is no appeal to God as the origin and end of life, as the author of nature and the source of all law and authority. Consequently, the human person becomes the only arbiter of good and evil, the sole source of all meaning and purpose. Each person must decide for himself what is "good for me" and becomes authentically himself only when he exercises his radical "right" to self-determination. Thus does the "right to choose" become the only moral absolute, and anyone who dares assert that a particular choice is in itself evil and unacceptable is therefore accused of intellectual fascism and judgmental intolerance of the other's "choice".

To this general secular mentality, radical feminism brings ideas related specifically to gender. One assertion of this type of feminism is that gender is a quality of the person which touches one's identity just as all other "merely" biological qualities do. The color of one's skin, hair, and eyes, the size and shape of one's body and limbs, and one's biological sex are--according to this view--qualities which describe the outward appearance of the person but do not in any way constitute his essential identity. And just as we now condemn any discrimination between persons on the basis of race as the injustice of racism, so must we reject any discrimination between persons on the basis of gender as the injustice of sexism.

Another assertion of secular feminism is that all distinctions between men and women are cultural, not natural. That is, all important differences between the sexes are the product of human choice, not something given in nature, and what is made by human choice can be changed by human choice. For example, in Italy most bank tellers are men; in America most bank tellers are women. This shows that the association of jobs with gender (e.g. grammar school teachers, nurses, and secretaries are women; soldiers, farmers, and auto mechanics are men) is simply the product of culturally relative, man-made choices which can be undone by conscious choice and should be undone if injustice is the result. So, for example, reserving service in the army to men alone would be unjust to women who choose for themselves to be soldiers, and in the interest of justice the government must permit women to join the army and enroll at West Point and in other officer training programs.

So far, so good. But secular feminism then goes one more step: all distinctions between male and female are unjust because men and women are equally human, and the law can be concerned only with human rights: not male human rights and female human rights, not black human rights and white human rights, just plain human rights. Standing behind this assertion is the assumption that the human person is a mental or spiritual being who possesses a body much as a carpenter possesses a hammer; both the body and the hammer are merely instruments used by the owner. To secular feminism, the body is no more the person than the hammer is the carpenter, and this concept of the human person has radical consequences. For example, if two persons fall in love with each other and want to commit themselves to each other in a relationship recognized by the state as a legal partnership, then it does not matter whether one is male and one is female any more than it matters whether one is red-headed and the other blond or whether one is white and the other black. If the body and its gender are merely superficial qualities of the person and if all distinctions between the sexes are the product of culture and not nature, then homosexual marriage is illegal and considered immoral only because of the injustice of sexism, just as racism until the recent past was used unjustly to divide society. As soon, therefore, as all vestiges of sexism are swept away by cultural changes, then true equality for all persons will be the result and human society will be vastly improved, including a provision for homosexual marriage. And to secular feminism, no force is a greater enemy of such "progress" than orthodox Christianity, especially the Catholic Church.

Which brings us to the Christian part of Christian feminism. Given the understanding of the human person and the basis of gender distinctions described above, the secular feminist concludes that the only reason women cannot yet be priests is that the Catholic Church is run by sexist misogynists who are dedicated to impeding the legitimate progress of women. Such feminists cannot believe that there are others reasons why women cannot be priests because of their assumptions about human nature, assumptions which are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1: 27) Thus does Sacred Scripture reveal that man is created by God in his own image and that this creature is divided by God into two sexes. This divinely given difference, however, is not meant to divide us; Genesis goes on to explain that the distinction between the sexes is the foundation of our complementarity and that the union of male and female in marriage is the divinely chosen foundation of both personal fulfillment and the propagation of the human race.

From this revelation emerges an anthropology--a doctrine of man--which sees the human person as by nature bodily and therefore "sexed" or "en-gendered." The distinction of gender is, therefore, not merely superficial--as race, hair color, and finger length truly are. Because the human person is a substantial unity of body and soul, it is more the case that the person is a body than that he has a body. The body and its gender are not merely instruments to be used as the person chooses. Rather, the body and its gender disclose something essential and objective about the nature of the individual person both to himself and to others. I could dye my hair purple, for example, without changing my personal identity, but if I were a woman rather than a man, I would not be me. I am a body united with a soul, and my body is male. I am therefore a man, not a woman, and no choice of mine can undo my maleness. By God's design, gender is an essential--not superficial--quality of the human person which touches every personal relationship in the most intimate way. And this distinction between male and female is not the product of human choice or cultural change; it is given by God in the nature he created. Now enter the feminist part of Christian feminism.

A legitimate Christian feminism reminds us that despite our gender difference grounded in nature, men and women are equally human, share equally in God's likeness and image, and are equally the bearers of human rights and duties. Where the true rights of women are denied, injustice truly is present. When women are hated or slighted simply because they are women, misogyny is at work. The human and personal dignity of men and women is equal, and men and women are equally redeemed by Christ. In sum, before God men and women are morally equal and before the law they should be equally protected from injustice, but this does not mean that they are the same, that they are interchangeable, hat they are undifferentiated. And for this reason, not all distinctions between the sexes are unjust. Christian feminism must identify these proper, just distinctions of our nature and help us appreciate them and their consequences.

The most obvious and the most important distinction of gender is in the procreation of children. Only women can conceive and bear children; only men can provide the seed which makes the conception possible. There are no generic parents or parenting; women are mothers and men are fathers. Even when, in the absence of the father, the mother must perform functions in the family that are traditionally associated with fatherhood, she remains in her being and in her relations with her children a mother. The reverse of is true of fathers. A mother who teaches baseball and a father who stays home to nurture infants are still, respectively, a mother and a father. In other words, being comes before doing, and to a certain extent "being" what we are determines what we "do" and how we do it. Many human occupations, such as nurse and mechanic, are related to gender by custom rather than by nature, and the function of the job can be performed equally well by male or female. Family relations, however, and all intimate friendships are not simply the arrangement of culture and custom. At their most profound level, familial relationships are grounded in nature, which for man is to say in his gender differentiated bodily existence. Which brings us to women priests.

Jesus Christ, the eternal Word made man, reveals that the one true God is a Trinity of Divine Persons: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the very heart of Christ's teaching is that God is our loving Father. Not our mother; our Father. Moreover, Christ founded a Church on earth to continue proclaiming the Gospel until he returns in glory, and he entrusted the task of teaching, sanctifying, and governing that Church to twelve apostles, all hand-picked by Christ and all men. These men in turn and St. Paul with them transmitted to other men after them the power and duty to teach, sanctify, and govern the Church in Christ's Name with the aid of the Holy Spirit. Thus by divine election was the Sacrament of Holy Orders instituted for the welfare of the whole Church.

In the Old Covenant there were many priests who offered sacrifice for the sins of the people. In the New Covenant there is only one priest, Jesus Christ. Moreover, he is both the priest who offers the sacrifice and the sacrifice which is offered. In baptism, all the Christian faithful--male and female alike--become sharers in the priesthood of Christ. This is the royal or common priesthood of the baptized which enables them to offer to the Father the sacrifice of broken and contrite hearts, the sacrifice of holy lives. Because we are baptized into the death and Resurrection of Christ, we become children of the Father by adoption and heirs to the Kingdom of God. Without distinction, men and women who follow the way of the Cross become equally capable of imitating Christ in the daily struggle to die to self and live for others; this is the fundamental equality of all Christians and the basis for full membership in the Church--a membership conferred by reception of the three sacraments of initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist.

But in addition to the common or royal priesthood of baptism, there is another sacramental participation in the priesthood of Christ. This form of Christian priesthood is ordered to the royal priesthood but is essentially different from it; this is the hierarchical or ministerial priesthood which is validly conferred only on baptized males in the presbyterate and the episcopate. Bishops and priests are made sharers in the priesthood of Christ in such a way that they are able to stand in the place of Christ and act in his Person. It is the restriction of this ministerial priesthood to men only which secular feminism finds so offensive and irrational for the reasons touched on above. Let's examine two of them: cultural conditioning and function related to role.

No one disputes that Christ chose only men to be his apostles. The question is, Why? Was he prevented by local prejudice and custom from sharing apostolic authority with women? Or was his choice of men alone solemn, free, deliberate, and normative? It is frequently suggested that because Christ lived in a primitive, misogynist culture, his message would have been ignored if he had chosen women to be his messengers; therefore, he chose only men. But now, continues this argument, our culture is more advanced and we see that women and men are equal; there is, accordingly, no reason why women cannot take their rightful place among ordained leaders in the Church.

But here is the problem: Christ was not restrained by the cultural defects of his day. Indeed, he regularly violated unreasonable taboos of all kinds to demonstrate both his sovereignty and our need to live in the truth. His friendship with Martha and Mary, his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, his healing of the woman with a hemorrhage, his treatment of the woman caught in adultery, and his reliance upon Mary Magdalene to be the first witness of the Resurrection all indicate that Christ's attitudes about women were not the product of his time and place. To suggest that Jesus was not free to choose only the persons he wanted to be his apostles or that he did not truly know who would make the best apostles is hubris of the worst kind. It suggests that the Incarnation would have served humanity better by coming in California in our time than in the exact time and place chosen by God.

So much for cultural conditioning; now for function related to role. The ministerial priest stands in the place of Christ and acts in his Person for the Church. Christ is both Head of the Church and the Bridegroom of the Church; the priest who re-presents Christ sacramentally must therefore be able to act as the Bridegroom as well as the Head. If you were casting a movie about Richard Nixon, you would cast Anthony Hopkins, not Barbra Streisand, to play the title role. Likewise, in the sacred liturgy, he who stands in Christ's Person must have a natural resemblance to Christ's humanity, which is now and always male. This is not to say that women are not fully Christian, completely redeemed, or equally able to imitate Christ in the struggle for holiness; of course they are and can. Indeed, women frequently manifest Christ's holiness far more clearly than their brothers in the Church. Nevertheless, the sacramental economy takes human nature and created realities as its starting point. Bread and wine, oil and water: this is the stuff of which sacraments are made. And embodied, en-gendered human nature is also an essential feature of the sacraments. For this reason and because the Church is the Bride of Christ, a female priest (were such possible) would essentially be in a lesbian relationship with the Church. Some will object that this is taking sacramental symbolism too far; secular feminists will respond, "So what?" But faithful to the Scriptural teaching about human nature and the Church's constitution, we must be concerned more about what the priest is than about what he does. A woman may preach well and run a parish well, but that no more makes her able to be an icon of Christ the Head and Bridegroom of the Church than playing baseball well transforms a mother into a father. And it is no accident that the Catholic faithful call their priests, "Father".

Even if we grant all of the above, however, the question still remains, Did Christ intend the choice of only men to be normative and binding for the ministerial priesthood in all times and places? Before answering that question, though, we must first ask a separate question, Who has authority in the Church to decide such things? For Catholics, the answer is clear and simple: only the Bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome are authentic and authoritative teachers of the Faith. When the Pope and the College of Bishops, or even the Pope alone, teach in a matter of faith or morals, then all Christians are obliged to give religious assent of intellect and will to that teaching. The assistance of the Holy Spirit is given to prevent the Pope and Bishops from teaching error in a matter of faith or morals either when that teaching is extraordinary (as in an ecumenical council or a dogmatic papal proclamation ex cathedra) or when it is universal and ordinary teaching. And this authority to teach was exercised by Pope John Paul II precisely to answer the question posed above: Is Christ's choice of only men for the ministerial priesthood binding on all times and places? Yes.

On 22 May 1994, Pope John Paul II promulgated an apostolic letter entitled Ordinatio Sacerdotalis. In his letter, John Paul II quotes from a 1975 letter of Pope Paul VI addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury in which Pope Paul wrote: The Church "holds that it is inadmissible to ordain women to the priesthood for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church." Pope John Paul continues by recalling the 1977 Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood, Inter Insigniores, and his own 1988 Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, on the dignity of women. Then after acknowledging that some theologians mistakenly believed that this matter was still open to debate, John Paul concludes with these remarkable words: "in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Luke 22: 32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful."

Lest any doubt remain on this matter, on 28 October 1995 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a clarification at the direction of the Pope which declares that the restriction of the ministerial priesthood to men belongs to the Deposit of Faith: "This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium." Rome has spoken; the case is closed.

But is it? All Catholics of good will accept this matter as definitively decided, and yet agitation continues. At first glance, the controversy seems to be evidence of a gender gap, a gulf of misunderstanding between men and women. On closer inspection, however, one sees that the great divide is not a gender gap; it's a doctrine gap. The difficulty is not between men and women; still less is it between women and the hierarchy. The problem is that there are not a few people in the Church, both men and women, who have been seduced by the errors of secular feminism and who therefore reject the authentic teaching of the Catholic Faith. These same dissidents then describe their disagreement with the Church as a gender gap and ascribe it to bad faith, crass ignorance, and misogyny on the part of the hierarchy. Their diagnosis, however, is based on confusing secular feminist assumptions with the truth about human nature, a truth supported and defended by authentic Christian feminism and Christian anthropology.

Unfortunately for the Church, many of these gender dissidents are in positions of ecclesiastical power. Scarcely a diocese, seminary, religious community, or parish has escaped from the machinations and protests of those who are sincerely, though wrongly, convinced that the Church is on the losing side of this cultural conflict. They seek to change the Church's teaching, indeed her very constitution, and much damage has been inflicted. The constant skirmishes over the use of feminist language (described as "inclusive") are a ubiquitous, if silly, example of the consequences of this doctrine gap.

The doctrine gap, though not a true gender gap, does appear to be something of a generation gap. Many senior and middle-aged clergy and religious profess to be shocked and frightened by the "insensitivity" of most of the younger clergy to these questions. What the seniors take to be signs of misogyny or other forms of masculine insecurity, however, is usually simply a difference in belief as outlined above. The secular feminists generally attempt to turn every dispute into a personality problem (“He's rigid.”) congenial to the therapeutic mentality, rather than face the possibility that an objective, reasonable difference exists and that they might be wrong. These disputes are commonplace in almost every setting where the two generations meet in the Church: seminaries, religious houses, and parishes. And in the crossfire, many lives have been badly damaged and countless vocations destroyed. Who can doubt that the spread of the Gospel is impeded by this sad spectacle?

How can this doctrine gap be bridged? How can all of Christ's faithful live in peace and mutual respect? In his letter to all the conferences of bishops explaining the doctrinal force of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) pointed the way: "The singular originality of the Church and of the priestly ministry within the Church requires a precise clarity of criteria. Concretely, one must never lose sight of the fact that the Church does not find the source of her faith and her constitutive structure in the principles of the social order of any historical period. While attentive to the world in which she lives and for whose salvation she labors, the Church is conscious of being the bearer of a higher fidelity to which she is bound. It is a question of a radical faithfulness to the Word of God which she has received from Christ, who established her to last until the end of the ages. This Word of God, in proclaiming the essential value and eternal destiny of every person, reveals the ultimate foundation of the dignity of every human being, of every woman and of every man.”

Truth, Beauty, and Renewal

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 08:25:56 -0400

Each year the priests of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont gather for a couple of days of prayer, study, and fraternity, and this year I was invited to be their speaker. I flew from Greenville to Burlington on Labor Day, 3 September, and had a quick tour of the See City from Father Benedict Kiely, diocesan director of continuing education for priests. Then, after stopping to visit a beautiful parish and meet its excellent pastor (Father Thomas Mosher at Our Lady of the Snows, Woodstock), we went on to the site of the assembly, Lake Morey Inn on the shores of a small but exquisite lake in east central Vermont.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I spoke to the presbyterate three times, and the overall title of my talks was “The Truth of the Gospel, the Beauty of the Liturgy, and the Renewal of the Parish.” My primary goals were to explain the key features of the project I call “Evangelical Catholicism” and to persuade the brethren to consider incorporating those principles into their work of being parish priests. My proposal touched upon the cost of discipleship, the need for personal conversion, the shape of catechesis and preaching, the ars celebrandi of the sacred liturgy, the nature and purpose of liturgical prayer and sacred music, and the likely effects in a parish of shaping Christian life according to the Eight Principles of Evangelical Catholicism which I use at my parish in Greenville. From beginning to end, I made reference to the texts of the sacred liturgy (including the promises made by priests at their ordination), the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and the magisterium of John Paul the Great and Benedict XVI, and I regularly invited the priests present to express their own ideas about the matters under review, particularly their disagreements. The exchanges that ensued and the conversations which followed were never boring.

As I have experienced in my own diocese and in many other places, the reaction of the priests in Burlington was strongly correlated to their age. Men old enough to remember the Council or the years just after it often had great difficulty with my proposals, while most of the younger men (especially those of the John Paul generation) received my suggestions with eagerness. There were, of course, exceptions to this rule in all age groups, but the basic pattern is clear: presbyterates are most often divided over this galaxy of questions by age. My generous h0st, Father Kiely, described the visit and the reaction of his brothers on his own blog, (click for link) Owl of the Remove.

I enjoyed my trip immensely and found the priests of Burlington to be very fine men and dedicated stewards of the Mysteries. They and their bishop, +Salvatore Mantano, were most gracious to a provocative Southerner in their midst, and I was delighted to be with them for a few days in the beauty of their Green Mountains.

One of the most interesting parts of my journey came at the end, during the drive back to Burlington. The vicar general, Father Peter Routhier (a native Vermonter who could teach lessons on gracious hospitality even in Charleston, SC) drove me to the airport, but on the way we passed through the town of Barre and stopped at the Church of St. Monica where he had served as pastor. During his tenure in Barre, Father Routhier beautifully restored a noble church which had been vandalized in the usual ways after the Council, and I saw that the good work he did at St. Monica’s is the incarnation of the proposals we had been discussing by the quiet shores of Lake Morey: the Truth of the Gospel, the Beauty of the Liturgy, and the Renewal of the Parish. May the LORD of mercies richly bless the Church in Vermont and my new friends there.

Worship the LORD in the Beauty of Holiness

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 06:35:01 -0400

One of my dearest friends is Father Alvin Kimel, also called The Pontificator from his blog Pontifications (no longer open). We became friends over ten years ago when we were both serving congregations in Charleston, SC; he was rector of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion, and I was pastor of Divine Redeemer Catholic Church. Over the years we have often talked about the practical necessities and logistical hows-and-whys of improving the art of divine worship in Catholic churches. Fr. Kimel, who was ordained in December 2006 as a Catholic priest under the Pastoral Provision, once asked me to contribute an entry to his blog that would summarize some of the key elements of “re-enchanting” the sacred liturgy, and early one morning over two cups of coffee I fulfilled his request. The result was the text you find below, originally posted on Pontifications on 28 November 2005. I still receive requests for copies of that text, and so I have re-printed it here. The title of the essay is taken from Psalm 29:2.

One final word: Cradle Catholics born in or after the 1960’s often have great difficulty understanding why the sorry shape of worship in too many of our parishes is now an impediment to countless souls from entering into full communion with the Catholic Church...particularly Anglicans and Lutherans who are accustomed to splendid music and reverent worship. This difficulty, I believe, comes from not grasping that the “living room liturgy” to which legions of Catholics have now grown attached is not the only way to pray; indeed, it is arguably not an appropriate way to pray at all. But this truth about the nature and purpose of the sacred liturgy has become very difficult for many people to understand; after all, people who live in old shacks still come to think of them as home. But the experience of sloppy worship so common in the past 40 years is an aberration in the long sweep of Christian history, and I believe that we are coming gradually to a recovery of rightly ordered prayer in keeping with our own ancient tradition and contemporary teaching. The principles and practical steps described below, all of which are solidly grounded in the documents of the II Vatican Council and subsequent liturgical norms, are offered in service of that recovery. Here is the original essay:

Worship the LORD in the Beauty of Holiness

I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, and there I learned to worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness. When I became a Catholic, one of the most difficult adjustments for me was learning to accept the generally wretched state of the sacred liturgy in most parishes: banal language, casual atmosphere, mediocre secular music, ugly buildings badly decorated. In all too many places, the result is simply unspeakable. But this need not be.

The Catholic Church gave us Chartres and Canterbury; she gave us plainchant and Palestrina. The Catholic Church saved the language of Cicero, and gave birth to the Christian poetry of the West. The cultural and artistic riches of the Western Church are still in our storehouse; we need only deploy them in a way adapted to the present structure of the Roman Rite.

I have been a priest for more than twelve years, and in that time I have served four parishes, one college chaplaincy, and one seminary. In all of those posts, the following characteristics were observed (mutatis mutandis), and the results were splendid. I offer these suggestions for those who seek to “re-enchant” the sacred liturgy for the purpose of leading those who worship more deeply into the Paschal Mystery.

For the building and its contents

1. The tabernacle MUST be on the rear wall of the chancel and on the central axis of the church. Putting the LORD anywhere else turns everything else on an angle, and no ideological justification will change the way in which this simple fact destabilizes the liturgy.

2. The priest’s chair should face the ambo, not the congregation, and it should ideally be located on the opposite side of the altar from the ambo. When he is seated, the celebrant (like the congregation) should be facing the proclamation of the Word of God; to have him face the people from his chair makes him the focus of attention and invites him to behave like a talk show host.

3. Right angles are preferable to oblique ones. The eye senses rest when it follows one line to a 90 degree angle with another line; it senses motion when any other angle is present. One of the reasons many of our churches do not feel like peaceful houses of prayer to most folk is that the entire building and all of its furnishings are constantly “in motion”.

4. The altar candles should rest on the mensa (the top surface), not on the floor around the altar. The passion for the “naked altar” is bizarre, pagan, and antiquarian for its own sake. Yes, the rubrics do allow for the candles to be on or near the altar, but I believe that placing them on the mensa has an immediate effect towards the re-enchantment of the liturgy.

5. Avoid kitsch in all its forms, including most especially the trendy and sentimental, in decorating the church. Most churches look like someone’s Italian or Irish grandmother has just finished sprucing up the place. Is it any wonder we have such trouble convincing our men that religion is not women’s work? The sanctuary is the home of the Son of Man; let’s make it look like a place in which most men would be comfortable spending a little time.

For the sacred music

1. Stop balkanizing the Mass schedule with different types of music. This trick comes from Protestant church growth strategies, and it teaches our people that divine worship is just a matter of personal taste. Yes, progressive solemnity can distinguish one Mass from another in a large parish (low Mass, sung Mass, solemn Mass, etc.), but the basic approach to matters musical should remain essentially the same.

2. If the choir is visible to the congregation, move them to a place where they will not be. This is absolutely essential to celebrating liturgy as worship rather than liturgy as entertainment. Yes, Anglicans more or less successfully replaced priests with lay choirs in the chancel, but for several different reasons, that simply does not work in the contemporary Roman Rite. The ideal place, of course, is a loft for organ and choir at the rear of the church. Failing that, at least move them to the back of the church.

3. Sing only sacred music. Much of what is now marketed as “liturgical music” is not sacred at all, and congregations addicted to that pablum are not capable of entering the liturgy as a participation in the worship of the Heavenly Jerusalem. Sacred music is a happy marriage of text and music, and both halves are necessary to re-enchant the liturgy.

4. If you sing hymns, sing the whole hymn. Stopping after the second verse because Father is at his chair makes as little sense as reciting half the Creed. And no “closing hymn” is needed. “The Mass is ended, go in peace” means what it says. Where possible, the priest and ministers should depart the sanctuary to an organ postlude or something comparable.

5. The Anglican, Methodist, and Lutheran traditions have given us an extraordinary treasury of hymnody, most of which can be used in the Catholic liturgy with little or no adaption. This music has proven itself to be durable, effective, and sacred. Do not be afraid of using hymns from this patrimony because they are “Protestant”. In truth, these texts are far more orthodox and “Catholic” than most of the tripe published by Catholics in the past two generations.

6. Plainchant was, is, and ever shall be the music best suited to the Roman Rite. Teach your musicians and your people some simple chants, and sing them well. Even those who struggle with Latin grammar will not need to be taught that this is sacred music.

For the congregation

1. Silence is indispensable. No talking before Mass. Teach the people to be comfortable with prolonged sacred silences during the liturgy by explaining that we’re not just waiting for the next thing to happen; we’re waiting together for the LORD.

2. Teach the people all the gestures proper to them, e.g. profound bow in the Creed, striking the breast at the Confiteor, kneeling at all appropriate times, etc. If the liturgy is just talking, talking, talking, then half the human person is left out of worship.

3. Emphasize coming early and stigmatize leaving early. Being casual about being on time renders the entire activity casual. Ditto for clothing. Same for the eucharistic fast.

4. Give constant, clear, and firm instruction about who should and who should not receive Holy Communion. Nothing desacralizes the sacred liturgy more than sacrilegious Communions, and the people need to be told this regularly. If you are not in full communion with the Church, if you are married outside of the Church, if you are in serious sin (including missing Mass on a Sunday or a Holy Day) and have not yet been to Confession: DO NOT EAT AND DRINK YOUR OWN CONDEMNATION. Reasserting that the Most Holy Eucharist is the most sacred reality on earth and not to be profaned by unclean lips will go a long way towards sorting out the McChurch atmosphere that poisons our souls.

For the priest

1. Say Mass as though the people were not present. This means that the priest is thinking about, speaking to, and turned towards God Most High. Paradoxically, it is this benign neglect of the people that gets the person of the priest out of the way and invites the people into the most intimate participation in the sacred mysteries. This is now counter-intuitive to most priests, who were taught that their first, last and constant job is make the people “feel welcome”, but it is absolutely and unconditionally true: say Mass as though the people are not there, and they will start to say things like, “That’s the first time in 40 years I feel like I’ve been to Mass.” Guaranteed.

2. Naturally, when speaking to the people, the priest must look at them. But except when speaking directly to the people, the priest’s entire attention (shown by posture, direction of eyes, etc.) must be directed away from the people and towards the Throne of Grace. For example, the Collect is not addressed to the congregation. Why face the people when you are speaking to the great I AM? And in the Eucharistic Prayer, the words “Take this all of you..” are NOT directed to the congregation, so when you say those words, Father, DO NOT look at the people. The entire Anaphora is directed to God the Father, so do not look at your congregation when you are speaking to the Ancient of Days.

3. Eliminate the words of introduction in the entrance rite. Simply cut them out completely. This little interlude is one of the worst mistakes in the 1970 Missal; it’s like pulling the emergency brake on a train moving at 80 mph: the whole thing comes crashing to a disturbing halt. Give one homily, and give it when you should … in the homily. No off the cuff remarks, no improvisation after Holy Communion.

4. To the maximum extent possible, hide your personality under the chasuble. Who the celebrant is ought to be as nearly insignificant as possible. The priest’s job is to pull back the veil between God and man and hide himself in the folds, and this task is made nearly impossible by the ever expanding personality of “The Presider” who feels compelled to intrude his personality into every part of the sacred liturgy. The people aren’t there to see us, Father, and if they like our jokes, then we can let loose at cocktail parties. But not in the liturgy.

5. Sing the liturgy. Most parishes sing around the liturgy, but the liturgy is meant to be sung. Unless a priest is truly tone deaf (and even then he can learn to sing recto tono), he should sing, at least at Solemn Masses, nearly every word out of his mouth. From “In the Name of” to “The Mass is ended” and including most especially the Eucharistic Prayer (in whole or at least the words of the institution narrative), the priest should sing the liturgy. In the Christian East, it was once clear that a man who could not sing had no priestly vocation. I wouldn’t go that far, but singing the priestly prayers is an essential part of the sacred liturgy, and when it is done well, the re-enchantment of the liturgy is literally at hand.

6. Remember that every liturgy leaves chronological time and enters kairotic time. In chronos we say Good Morning; in liturgical kairos we say Dominus vobiscum. If we do not depart from the texts of the Church, then we stand a fair chance of taking the people with us into the never ending liturgy of the New Jerusalem. This is also why SLOW walking, talking and gestures are important. Same with hiding street clothes under sacred vesture. Ditto for the athletic shoes of the altar boys.

7. Yes, that’s altar boys, not androgynous altar servers. Want to encourage young men in the parish to think about the priesthood and all the men to take seriously their responsibilities for masculine headship? Then restrict the service of the altar to boys and young men.

What’s This About?

Remember that the cult of the ugly and the mundane was forced upon the Church in the service of an ideology. And if 40 years ago there was any doubt that this ideology is the enemy of the Gospel of Christ, there can be no doubt now. A bare ruined choir is all that is left in many corners of the vineyard, but even (and sometimes especially) in the ruins, God can make all things new. In the service of this renewal, or re-enchantment:

1. Take Cardinal Mahony’s pastoral letter on the celebration of parochial liturgy and throw it on the fire. Watch it burn. Now go take a hot shower.

2. Reject the ideology that got us here. Root and branch, cut it out of yourself. Empty seminaries, despoiled religious orders, plummeting Mass attendance, and wholesale immorality among clergy and laity alike are probably pretty good clues that the vocation to holiness which is our baptismal second birthright is getting obscured along the way.

3. Read good books that will help you understand the real nature and purpose of the sacred liturgy. Two excellent places to start are The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Ratzinger (who now goes by a new nom de plume) and Looking at the Liturgy by Aidan Nichols, O.P. For the mechanics of celebration, start with Peter Elliott’s Ceremonies of the Modern Roman Rite and Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year.

4. Now approach the altar in Spirit and truth, and worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.

The Church’s Book and the Sacred Liturgy

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 08:33:07 -0400

The 2005 Aquinas/Luther Conference at Lenior-Rhyne College was devoted to the topic “The Authority of Scripture, Hermeneutic, and Magisterium”, and I was invited to give a lecture on the Catholic understanding of these questions. Below is the text of my presentation, with the extensive footnotes of the original document changed here to brief text notes.

Ego vero Evangelio non crederem, nisi me Catholicae Ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas. (I would not believe the truth of the Gospel, unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me to this.) In phrasing his position thus, St. Augustine placed the question of authority in general and of the Catholic Church’s authority in particular squarely at the center of the credibility of the Gospel and therefore of Holy Scripture. And this should not surprise us. After all, the Lord Jesus neither wrote nor commanded to be written any of the saving doctrine which he preached with his own lips. Rather, invoking the messianic authority received from his eternal Father, the Lord Jesus launched the Church, through the office of the Apostles, on a comprehensive mission of teaching with authority; and so, Jesus said to the eleven “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 behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20) This mission of teaching with authority is clearly meant by the Savior to extend to every nation and to endure until the Day of the Lord, and so the exercise of apostolic teaching authority must be considered an intrinsic part of the Church’s fidelity to her Lord’s command. In other words, the questions of who has authority to teach, of where that authority comes from, and of how that authority is exercised are inextricably bound up with the transmission of the Gospel from generation to generation, and in some sense, it is not possible for the Church to obey Christ’s Great Commission without answering these questions in a satisfactory way. Even more, we may say that knowing with certitude the nature and authority of Holy Scripture depends upon first knowing with certitude that the Church teaches with a divinely given and guaranteed authority, hence St. Augustine: I would not believe the truth of the Gospel, unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me to this.

In the Catholic Church, this apostolic teaching authority is called magisterium, from magister or teacher, and the Church believes that this teaching office is exercised after the death of the last Apostle only by the bishops who are in communion with the Bishop and Church of Rome and that only through this office is the Gospel transmitted through time without addition or subtraction. The Second Vatican Council formulated this doctrine in Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, in this way: “Among the principal duties of bishops, the preaching of the Gospel occupies an eminent place. For bishops are preachers of the faith, who lead new disciples to Christ, and they are authentic teachers, that is, teachers endowed with the authority of Christ, who preach to the people committed to them the faith they must believe and put into practice, and by the light of the Holy Spirit illustrate that faith. They bring forth from the treasury of revelation things new and old, making it bear fruit and vigilantly warding off any errors that threaten their flock. Bishops, teaching in communion with the Roman Pontiff, are to be respected by all as witnesses to divine and Catholic truth. In matter of faith and morals, the bishops speak in the name of Christ and the faithful are to accept their teaching and adhere to it with a religious assent” (Lumen Gentium, 25).

That is the settled and irreformable Catholic doctrine on the apostolic authority of bishops as the only authentic teachers of the Gospel, but please note that so far we have not touched directly on the nature and authority of the Bible. Both in the quotation from St. Augustine and in the passage from Lumen Gentium, the focus is on the relationship between the authority of the Church and the transmission of the Gospel. And for our purposes here, we may stipulate that by “The Gospel” is meant all that God has revealed to the human race for our salvation; that is, the Gospel is “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). The next question to be explored, then, concerns the relationship between the Gospel and the books of the Old and New Testament that we call Holy Scripture.

For the best contemporary statement of Catholic belief on this question, we turn again to the Second Vatican Council, this time to Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, which teaches that “Those divinely revealed realities which are contained and present in Sacred Scripture have been committed to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For holy mother Church, relying on the belief of the Apostles, holds that the books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author and have been handed on as such to the Church herself....Therefore, since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writes must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (Dei Verbum, 11).Notice that the Council asserts that the divinely inspired books of Holy Scripture are handed on to the Church herself. In this phrase we find the foundation of the Catholic teaching on the complex relationships among Sacred Scripture, sacred tradition, and the magisterium of the Church. Touching again on the teaching office, Dei Verbum maintains that “the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved by an unending succession of preachers until the end of time. Therefore the Apostles, handing on what they themselves had received, warn the faithful to hold fast to the traditions which they have learned either by word of mouth or by letter and to fight in defense of the faith handed on once and for all. Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the people of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes” (Dei Verbum, 8).

Next, moving on to the nature of Sacred Tradition, the Council teaches that “This tradition which comes from the Apostles develops in the Church with the help of the Holy Spirit. For there is a growth in the understanding of the realities and the words which have been handed down...The words of the holy fathers witness to the presence of this living tradition, whose wealth is poured into the practice and life of the believing and praying Church. Through the same tradition the Church’s full canon of the sacred books is known, and the sacred writings themselves are more profoundly understood...”(Dei Verbum 8).

And finally, the three pieces of the puzzle are put together in this way: “Sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture form one sacred deposit of the word of God, committed to the Church. Holding fast to this deposit, the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers...But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed.

“It is clear, therefore, that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church...are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others, and that all together and each in its own way under the action of the one Holy Spirit contribute effectively to the salvation of souls”(Dei Verbum, 10). My own analogy to illustrate the nature of these connections is this: if the Bible is our text book for learning the Christian faith and life, then sacred tradition is our classroom, and the Church is our teacher.

This review of the Second Vatican Council on the questions of Scripture, tradition, and magisterium has been at the service of establishing what I mean by asserting that the Bible is the Church’s Book. The Bible, it is true, has God as its principal author, but having been handed on to the Church herself and entrusted for authentic interpretation only to the successors of the Apostles, the Bible is in every way the Book of the Church, by the Church, and for the Church. And among the consequences of this claim is that those who are not a part of the Church are therefore not able to understand the Bible, at least not fully. In the same way, those who are not in full communion with the Church by reason of heresy or schism are, it seems to me, also impeded from understanding fully the truths contained in Holy Scripture. And this, in turn, would mean that anyone attempting to interpret the Scriptures correctly would of necessity first have to be an orthodox Christian in full communion with the Church. Accordingly, anyone who does not believe all that the Church teaches to be revealed by God or who is not living according to those revealed truths is not capable of correctly interpreting the Bible, no matter how proficient in the biblical languages or the archaeology of the ancient Near East he or she may be. Let me illustrate this point by analogy to the difference between the sciences of sacred theology and religious studies.

As found in the course catalogues of secular universities (and all too many Christian schools), religious studies is a scientific discipline which has as its object of study the set of human beliefs and behaviors we call religion. According to the structure of this discipline, neither the professor nor the student of religious studies need have any personal religious beliefs; in principle, an atheist can hold the highest chair in any department of religious studies precisely because his own religious convictions and practices are of no greater importance to his professional work than is the religion of a biologist studying paramecia or of a physicist investigating the strong and weak nuclear forces. But this is not possible in the science of sacred theology.

For St. Thomas, theology is simply sacra doctrina, and as Aidan Nichols has pointed out, “In Thomas’s use of the phrase sacra doctrina, it would be a great mistake to think that the word sacra is just some loosely used pious adjective. It bears its proper meaning of ‘divine’. Only God is the Teacher or Doctor in this sacra doctrina, just as only He is the Taught or Doctrine” (Nichols, Discovering Aquinas, p.170).

Expanding on this understanding of theology as sacra doctrina, Romanus Cessario explains that “By definition Christian theology results from intelligent reflection upon the revealed Word of God. As such it embraces within its range of concerns everything which has to do with God himself and the real world He created. Still, because of man’s capacity for an authentic relationship with the blessed Trinity and the special destiny implied in the status of adopted sonship, the human person holds a privileged place among theology’s interests. As a result, the starting point for theology is the words and deeds of Jesus Christ as they have been recorded in the canonical Scriptures. These acta et gesta Christi hold a unique place in the life of the Christian Church precisely because of who Jesus is, a man, one like us, hypostatically united to the divine Logos. For Aquinas theology finds its starting point in the very depths of God’s Being where the Eternal Father speaks the personal Word which perfectly reflects the Godhead. In this St. Thomas reflects the clear Johannine teaching on the Trinitarian origins of all Christian life and thought, ‘Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee; for I have given them the words thou gavest me...’ (John 17: 7-8)” (Cessario, Current Theology at Fribourg, The Thomist, 1987, p.326).From these considerations, we can understand why it is not possible for an atheist, who may be a splendid professor of religious studies, to be a theologian. St. Anselm’s description of sacred theology as fides quaerens intellectum helps us grasp why only a true disciple of the Lord Jesus, only one, that is, with saving faith in the words and deeds of Jesus Christ as recorded in the canonical Scriptures, has the capacity to be a theologian. This means that neither the unbeliever nor the heretic can be a true theologian, and what is true of the theologian is true also of the exegete. Given the fragmentation of theology in our time and the dominance of secular literary criticism in scriptural hermeneutics, this claim will be surprising to many, and Nichols takes note of this: “What strikes the present-day theological student as curious about Thomas’s notion of sacra doctrina is the way it runs together the ideas of revelation, Scripture, Tradition, and theology” (Nichols, Discovering Aquinas, p.171). But this convergence, though perhaps odd to present-day students, is a settled feature of the Catholic Church’s understanding of the nature and purpose of scriptural exegesis. Once again, the Second Vatican Council: “since God speaks in Sacred Scripture through men in human fashion, the interpreter of Sacred Scripture...should carefully investigate what meaning the sacred writers really intended and what God wanted to manifest by means of their words.

“To search out the intention of the sacred writers, attention should be given, among other things, to ‘literary forms’. For truth is set forth and expressed differently in texts which are variously historical, prophetic, poetic, or other forms of discourse. The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred write intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture...But, since Holy Scripture must be read and interpreted in the same spirit in which it was written, no less serious attention must be given to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture if the meaning of the sacred texts is to be correctly worked out. The living tradition of the whole Church must be taken into account along with the harmony which exists between elements of the faith. It is the task of exegetes to work according to these rules toward a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture, so that through preparatory study the judgment of the Church may mature. For all of what has been said about the way of interpreting Scripture is subject finally to the judgment of the Church, which carries out the divine commission and ministry of guarding and interpreting the word of God” (Dei Verbum, 12).These words of Dei Verbum echo in many ways two passages of St. Thomas. The first concerns the necessity and purpose of exegesis, where St. Thomas writes that: “The truth of the faith is contained in Holy Scripture diffusely and in different ways, some of which envelop it in obscurity. That is so much so that to extract from Sacred Scripture the truth of the faith much study and application are required, to which most people, absorbed as they are by other concerns, are in no position to give themselves or to attend. That is why it was necessary to draw from the Scriptures and to formulate as a summary something absolutely clear which could be proposed to the faith of all. Nonetheless, it is not a question of things added to the Holy Scriptures but of things drawn out of them” (Summa Theologiae, IIa, IIae, q.1, a.9, ad. I). The second passage of St. Thomas concerns what happens when an exegete comes to a conclusion contrary to the teaching of the Church: “We must stand by the decision of the pope rather than the opinion of other men, even though they may be learned in the Scriptures. For the pope has the right and duty to determine concerning the faith, a determination he indicates by his judgment” (Quaestiones quodlibetales, 9, 16). Here again we see the unfolding of the Church’s belief “that sacred tradition, Sacred Scripture, and the teaching authority of the Church...are so linked and joined together that one cannot stand without the others” (Dei Verbum, 10).Early in the 1990's, two documents were published which were largely shaped by the hand of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, known to us now as Pope Benedict XVI, and which shed light on the practical consequences for the work of theologians and exegetes of the connections among Scripture, tradition, and the magisterium. The first of these was the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian promulgated on 24 May 1990 by Cardinal Ratzinger in his capacity as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and on the explicit approval of Pope John Paul II. This document reminds Catholic theologians that they are not professors of religious studies and that their work always takes place within the wider Church and under the authority of the Church’s pastors, who alone are charged by Christ the Lord with the authentic transmission of the Gospel. The second document was published on 15 April 1993 by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, and it is called The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church. This document includes a preface by Cardinal Ratzinger and was published along with an address by Pope John Paul II given during a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Leo XIII’s encyclical Providentissiums Deus and the 50th anniversary of Pius XII’s encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu, both of which are dedicated to biblical studies. While the Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian was addressed specifically to contemporary concerns of the day, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church was not written solely because of contemporary problems in the Church; rather, as Cardinal Ratzinger explains, “The problem of the interpretation of the Bible is hardly a modern phenomenon, even if at times that is what some would have us believe. The Bible itself bears witness that its interpretation can be a difficult matter. Alongside texts that are perfectly clear, it contains passages of some obscurity. When reading certain prophecies of Jeremiah, Daniel pondered at length over their meaning (Dn 9:2). According to the Acts of the Apostles, an Ethiopian of the first century found himself in the same situation with respect to a passage from the book of Isaiah (Isa 53: 7-8) and recognized that he had need of an interpreter (Acts 8:30-35). The Second Letter of Peter insists that ‘no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private interpretation’ (2 Pet 1:20) and it also observes that the letters of the Apostle Paul contain ‘some difficult passages, the meaning of which the ignorant and untrained distort, as they do also in the case of the other Scriptures, to their own ruin’(2 Pet 3:16). The problem is, therefore, quite old” (The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, 1993, p.29).

Ratzinger then explains why the document was published: “The Pontifical Biblical Commission desires to indicate the paths most appropriate for arriving at an interpretation of the Bible as faithful as possible to its character both human and divine. The Commission does not aim to adopt a position on all the questions which arise with respect to the Bible, such as, for example, the theology of inspiration. What it has in mind is to examine all the methods likely to contribute effectively to the task of making more available the riches contained in the biblical texts. The aim is that the Word of God may become more and more the spiritual nourishment of the members of the People of God, the source for them of a life of faith, of hope and of love...(cf Dei Verbum, 21)” (The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, p.33).The document then discusses, among other topics, the historical-critical method of interpretation, various forms of literary analysis, the role of human sciences in understanding biblical texts, philosophical hermeneutics, the senses of Scripture (the literal, spiritual, and fuller sense), and the task of the exegete in interpreting the Bible in the life of the Church. Having surveyed the landscape of this sacred science, the document concludes with this exhortation: “Through fidelity to the great Tradition, of which the Bible itself is a witness, Catholic exegesis should...maintain its identity as a theological discipline, the principal aim of which is the deepening of faith. This does not mean a lesser involvement in scholarly research of the most rigorous kind, nor should it provide excuse for abuse of methodology out of apologetic concern. Each sector of research (textual criticism, linguistic study, literary analysis, etc.) has its own proper rules, which it ought to follow with full autonomy. But no one of these specializations is an end in itself. In the organization of the exegetical task as a whole, the orientation towards the principal goal should remain paramount and thereby serve to obviate any waste of energy. Catholic exegesis dos not have the right to become lost, like a stream of water, in the sands of a hypercritical analysis. Its task is to fulfill, in the Church and in the world, a vital function, that of contributing to an ever more authentic transmission of the content of the inspired Scriptures” (The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, pp.129-133).All of the above, I believe, makes intelligible my claim that only an exegete who, no matter what his or her scientific credentials and scholarly standing, is in full communion with the Catholic Church is capable of providing a genuine interpretation of Holy Scripture, and among the consequences of such necessity is this conclusion: An exegete or theologian who offers an interpretation of Scripture that contradicts the doctrine of the faith taught by the magisterium of the Church and that must be accepted as definitive is, by that fact, excluded from full communion with the Church and therefore the voice of that scholar is not within the Church but without. This means that the Christian faithful should give no heed to arguments advanced by such persons and that in deliberations about Christian doctrine and discipline, the Church’s pastors should not be moved by novelties urged by exegetes and theologians from without the Church. Let’s take this to cases.

A quick survey of the relevant literature would reveal that various exegetes and theologians who still identify themselves as Catholic seek to justify by interpretations of Sacred Scripture the following false propositions which no Catholic can accept:

+ that the Blessed Virgin Mary bore children other than the Lord Jesus
+ that in his human intellect, the Lord Jesus had no knowledge before his Resurrection of his divine nature
+ that the miracles of the Lord Jesus described in the New Testament were not observed by the Apostles or other disciples but were later creations of the Church designed to teach a lesson
+ that women can and should stand in persona Christi and preside at the celebration of the Holy Eucharist and that by his own free and sovereign choice the Lord Jesus did not restrict the ministry of Word and Sacrament to men alone
+ that homosexual acts can be morally good and that the Church should bless or even sacramentalize relationships based upon homosexual acts
+ that the hierarchical constitution of the Church is not willed by the Lord Jesus but is a later corruption of and departure from the egalitarian community established by Christ

These six examples merely serve to illustrate that novelties based upon errant interpretations of Scripture are offered from time to time offered by scholars who identify themselves as Catholic, but this does not mean, as we have seen, that such positions can legitimately be held by Catholics or that the Church is obliged to give a sympathetic hearing to such arguments. But so far my analysis has concerned only Catholics. What about Lutherans? Or Anglicans? Or Presbyterians? In other words, what about Christians in communions that do not have and that reject as a matter of principle an authoritative magisterium capable of excluding from Christian doctrine and discipline an interpretation of Holy Scripture which is demonstrably false? Is there a theological mechanism available to such Christians which could justify, say, the repudiation as heretical of the proposition that homosexual acts can be morally good and that the Church should bless relationships based upon such acts?

One possibility would be to invoke the seven notes of true development of doctrine elaborated by John Henry Newman in An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. There Newman proposed seven tests that would distinguish mere novelty from a genuine development of Christian teaching, and the seven can be summarized this way. A true doctrinal development must:

1. Exhibit preservation of type.
2. Possess continuity of its principles.
3. Have the power of assimilation.
4. Show its logical sequence.
5. Anticipate its own future.
6. Conserve its own past.
7. Demonstrate chronic vigor.

Newman believed that the whole Bible discloses development of doctrine over time and that Christian doctrine admits of formal, legitimate, and true developments provided for by God in his eternal Plan of Salvation. One example of the self-evident existence of the development of doctrine is pointed out by St. Augustine, who insisted that the New Testament is concealed in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New (St. Augustine, Quaet. In Hept., 2, 73: PL 34, 623). But while Newman insisted that Christian doctrine does develop, he also held that no Christian doctrine could ever mutate into a contradiction of itself and that any effort to interpret Scripture or make a theological argument which resulted in such a contradiction was thereby revealed to be heresy. Using Newman’s seven notes or tests, therefore, I believe that even Christians who do not have an authoritative magisterium could provide a conclusive rejection of the novel and heretical suggestions, to return to the examples, that homosexual acts can be morally good or that women can be priests. Such a demonstration, of course, would be persuasive only to other Christians who accept the validity of Newman’s argument about the development of doctrine, and it is clear that many Christians in our day do not consider themselves bound to such an understanding of legitimate development. So, is there any other recourse for Christians seeking to demonstrate that theological novelties of the sort mentioned above do not constitute true or even possibly true developments of Christian doctrine? Yes, I think there is. And it is the sacred liturgy of Christian worship.

Let’s return to Dei Verbum. There the Council teaches that “the Church, in her teaching, life and worship (emphasis mine), perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes” (Dei Verbum, 7). Reference is also made to the description of the Church’s first days in the Acts of the Apostles, “Holding fast to this deposit (of the Word of God) the entire holy people united with their shepherds remain always steadfast in the teaching of the Apostles, in the common life, in the breaking of the bread, and in prayers...”(Dei Verbum, 10). And finally, Dei Verbum reminds us of the most privileged place for the proclamation and explanation of the Scriptures: “The Church has always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy (emphasis mine), she unceasingly receives and offer to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God’s word and of Christ’s body” (Dei Verbum, 21).

This conciliar teaching is echoed and amplified in The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, where the Pontifical Biblical Commission teaches that “From the earliest days of the Church, the reading of Scripture has been an integral part of the Christian liturgy, an inheritance to some extent from the liturgy of the Synagogue. Today, too, it is above all through the liturgy that Christians come into contact with Scripture, particularly during the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist.

“In principle, the liturgy...the high point of which is the Eucharistic celebration, brings about the most perfect actualization of the biblical texts, for the liturgy places the proclamation in the midst of the community of believers, gathered around Christ so as to draw near to God. Christ is then ‘present in his word, because it is he himself who speaks when Sacred Scripture is read in the Church’. Written text thus becomes living word” (The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, pp. 119-120).So, the proper and privileged place for the Church to hear and understand the Sacred Scriptures is in the sacred liturgy. But even more than that, the liturgical texts themselves help us to grasp the full meaning of the biblical faith we profess. This is what is meant by the ancient adage lex orandi, lex credendi (the law of prayer is the law of belief), which is based upon the teaching of Prosper of Aquitaine, a monk who served as secretary to Pope St. Leo the Great and who was a devoted student of St. Augustine. In a document called the Capitula Coelestini, Prosper offers an argument against the heretical Pelagian teaching on grace, in part, by an appeal to the sacred liturgy. He writes that “In addition to these inviolable decisions of the blessed Apostolic See, by which our most holy fathers, rejecting the arrogance of this harmful novelty, have taught us to attribute to the grace of Christ both the first steps of a right will and the necessary progress to a praiseworthy ardor and even the perseverance in these effort until the end, let us consider equally the rites of the priestly supplications which, transmitted by the Apostles, are celebrated in the same manner in the entire world and in the whole Catholic Church, in such a way that the order of supplication determines the rule of faith” (Prosper of Aquitaine, Capitula Coelestini, 8). The final clause of Prosper’s text is found in Latin as ut legem credendi lex statuat supplicandi, and Catholic tradition interprets this to mean that the content of prayer reveals the faith of the one praying. Combining these strands of lex orandi, lex credendi and the teaching that the proper place for the proclamation and explanation of Holy Scripture is in the celebration of the sacred liturgy, we find a real possibility for rejecting false teaching offered to the Church in the name of spurious interpretations of the Bible. The chair or cathedra from which the bishop exercises his teaching office is not, like that of the professor, found in a university or a library; the cathedra is found in a church, in a cathedral church. But even Christians who do not share the Catholic understanding of the unique role of bishops in transmitting the Gospel without corruption can still embrace and teach that the Christian community finds in divine worship a true font of teaching and theology. In fact, theologia prima is sacred theology offered by the worshiping community in the service of understanding more deeply the sacred mysteries of Christ celebrated and made present by the sacred liturgy.

Now using the six novel doctrines I mentioned above as tests, try to find any Christian liturgy of either East or West, from the Ascension of the Lord Jesus to the day before these novelties were proposed in the late 20th century, which gives a warrant for these new teachings as true developments of doctrine. It cannot be done, and one cannot find such liturgies because they simply do not exist. On the contrary, the liturgical texts we do have provide strong, clear, and constant warrant for the Church’s refusal to accept proposals to teach new doctrines that contract received and irreformable teaching. Take, for example, the Nuptial Blessing of the contemporary Roman Rite which speaks of God the Father’s eternal plan that the marriage of one man and one woman be the “one blessing not forfeited by original sin or washed away in the flood”. By itself, of course, such a text does not prove that homosexual marriage is an impossibility, but it does provide another dimension of a question much larger than the partisans of revision will admit.

In his masterful treatise on moral theology, Les sources de la morale chrétienne, the Belgian Dominican Servais Pinckaers, O.P. offers a neologism to describe the way in which some exegetes and theologians choose either categories of interpretation or principles of exegesis which restrict rather than enlarge the reader’s approach to a text. He calls this the intellectual error of “schizoscopia”, meaning a reading of a text that cuts off (schizein) from view (skopein) essential elements of the text’s content and meaning (Romanus Cessario, Current Theology at Fribourg, The Thomist, 1987, pp. 348-349). This tendency to “schizoscopia”, it seems to me, is a prerequisite for anyone attempting to persuade a Christian communion to accept as a legitimate development of doctrine something that flatly contradicts received and settled Christian teaching on that question, and any such communion which falls prey to this tactic has then enshrined “schizoscopia” in both the doctrine it teaches and the liturgy it celebrates. Such a cutting off from view for the Christian people of doctrine after doctrine can only serve to impoverish, and perhaps finally to starve, a Christian communion and lead those ensnared in that poverty to spiritual death. And surely that cannot be accepted by those who would follow Christ the Lord.

So, what remedy would I propose for Christians without an authoritative magisterium seeking to refute interpretations of Holy Scripture that contradict the received teaching of the Church? First, attempt to employ the seven tests described by Newman to see if a novel teaching constitutes a true development of Christian doctrine or a deformation of the same. Second, follow the wisdom of the early Church and test novelties by Prosper of Aquitaine’s adage: lex orandi, lex credendi. If the texts of the sacred liturgy, especially those of the undivided Church, cannot co-exist peacefully with a novel doctrine, then it should be assumed false until proven true. And if neither of those solutions should be sufficient to safeguard the deposit of faith given once and for all to the Church, then what? Against the skeptics and revisionists, I suggest that we stand with St. Augustine: I would not believe the truth of the Gospel, unless the authority of the Catholic Church moved me to this. It does, and so I do.

Is “Word Alone” An Evangelical Possibility?

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 09:44:31 -0400

Lenior-Rhyne College in Hickory, North Carolina is a small liberal arts school associated with the North Carolina Synod of the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and in 1991 the retired Lutheran Bishop of North Carolina, Dr. Michael McDaniel, established at Lenior-Rhyne a program called the Center for Theology, dedicated to serving the Church as an ecumenical resource through study. One means of fulfilling this mission is an annual “Aquinas/Luther Conference” which has drawn hundreds of pastors, theologians, students, and committed laity to a series of lectures which explore the continuing search for the restoration of unity among Christians. I have attended most of these conferences and have been invited to speak at three of them. In October 2001 I gave the banquet address to the Ninth Annual Aquinas/Luther Conference, and the text of my remarks is here:

On 10 December 1520, Father Martin Luther, still officially an Augustinian priest and a Catholic professor of Scripture, publicly responded to the papal bull Exsurge Domine, which demanded that he renounce his heretical teachings or face excommunication. Father Luther gathered a crowd of his students and colleagues just outside the city gates of Wittenberg, and to show his contempt for the arguments of his opponents, he heaped into a large fire the works symbolic of his enemies: the papal bull itself, books by several of his most vehement critics, a handbook for priests on how to hear confessions, and the Corpus Iuris Canonici, the Corpus of Canon Law which had served as the primary legal text of the western Church for five hundred years. A year after that bonfire of the vanities, Luther wrote: “It is impossible for the Gospel and canon law to rule at one and the same time. The latter restricts and drives away the Spirit; the former brings the Spirit with it. The latter entangles consciences; the former frees them. The latter teaches us nothing but mere childish, foolish, and ridiculous works, with which it eradicates and extinguishes faith; the former, however, teaches us faith.”

In light of Dr. Luther’s evaluation of canon law, you will naturally understand that it is only with great trepidation that I begin tonight by confessing that I am a canon lawyer. In this very room at another Aquinas/Luther Banquet some years ago, I was asked by a Lutheran pastor at my table, “Exactly what does a canon lawyer do?” I gave the stock answer: “We squeeze all the love out of the Gospel.” I am relieved to report that after two hours of often intense conversation about the Catholic understanding of Lutheranism, this same pastor, embracing me after the meal as a brother in Christ, said to me: “I’m afraid that you’re not a very good canon lawyer.” I hope to demonstrate that again tonight.

I have provocatively entitled my talk “Is Word Alone an Evangelical Possibility?”. As you might already have guessed, I believe that the answer is “No”, and I hope to persuade you to share that conviction. Before I begin that labor, however, I have to show you my hand; there will be no Jesuitical trickery tonight.

I was born in Elkin, North Carolina to a family of Brethren and Southern Baptists, and I grew up in an Appalachian WASP culture that was both very deep and charged with mystery but also rather narrow. I needed a bit more room than I thought that culture provided and so declared at age 13 to my startled family that there is no God. At 18 I fled the South like a burning building and went to Princeton University to stake my claim as a man of science and reason, to live unfettered by superstition in a world of intellectual freedom and personal liberty. What I found, instead, was a world of banal moral poverty and stultifying intellectual conformity, a world of slavery to one’s own passions and of rigid conformity to the dogmas of secular humanism enforced with greater ruthlessness than any Inquisitor of old ever imagined.

It was in this human desert that I heard, for the first time in my life, a Word of grace and truth, a Word of freedom and light, a Word of peace and love. I heard the Word of God announced with conviction and clarity, and I was moved by that Word to repent of my sins, believe in the Gospel, and follow the Word made flesh in the obedience of faith. From that day to this, my conscience (to borrow a happy phrase) has been captive to the Word of God, and I have lived in the sweet captivity of genuine liberty freely and rightly exercised. “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32).

Several years after my conversion to Christ, I was sent to Rome to study for the priesthood. I went, as most do, filled with romantic visions of living in the City of Peter and Paul, the City of martyrs and confessors, the heart of the Christian world. I found, instead, a chaotic and all too human City filled with (I thought) an unholy mix of the Christian and pagan, a mix in which the pagan seemed all too often the stronger. I was deeply troubled by what I saw. Here we have no lasting city, I know. But the Eternal City! Surely this would be different. Here, I thought, Christian virtue would shine clearly and constantly in the darkness of the world. At least, I believed, the bishops and priests of the Roman Curia and ecclesiastical universities would be living exemplary evangelical lives. My Roman education, however, introduced me, among other things, to the all too human frailties of churchmen and the realities of life at the heart of the universal Church. At length, a friend of mine, a wise Italian priest, explained it to me this way: “Rome is not a Christian city; it’s a pagan city occupied by a Christian army. Unfortunately, our officers are sometimes enticed to dabble in local customs. Thus has it ever been, and thus, in the Providence of God, it seems it shall ever be.”

St. Benedict came to Rome in the 5th century and was scandalized by what he found, but the experience led to his Rule and the transformation of Christian culture. Sts. Francis and Dominic came to Rome in the 13th century and were emboldened by the need for reform to spread their movements to the known world. And Martin Luther came to Rome in the 16th century and began to confirm what he feared most: that the Church had apparently abandoned the Gospel. But since the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe, something had to be done. If the Church was living without the Gospel, perhaps the Gospel could live without the Church. Or, to put it another way, if the Church were corrupt, then perhaps the Word alone could be preserved and proclaimed in all its power and purity without the sacraments which were so directly connected to a corrupt hierarchy.

The first thing to be said here is that while the Church is hierarchical, the hierarchy are not the Church. All the baptized constitute the Body of Christ which is the Church, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are given freely to all of Christ’s members, the laity no less than the clergy. Yes, it is true that from among the baptized some are called by Christ and set apart by the Sacrament of Orders to teach, sanctify, and govern God’s People. But Baptism, not Ordination, makes one a child of God, a member of Christ, and an heir of the Kingdom of Heaven. We pray for holy pastors, but even when they are few in number, the holiness of the Church lives on in the hidden lives of countless faithful Christians. So, even if the hierarchy, including the papacy, has from time to time been captive to something other than the Word of God, that does not mean the whole Church is corrupt or living without the Gospel.

Having said that, it must also be said that the apostolic office, instituted by the Lord Jesus himself, is absolutely essential to the Church’s life and that the bishops who succeed the Apostles have an indispensable task in the faithful transmission of the Gospel. Catholics believe that although the Gospel is given to the entire Church, only the bishops, as successors of the Apostles, are given the authority and sacred power to transmit and authentically interpret the Gospel from generation to generation. Moreover, this authority comes not from the personal holiness, intelligence, or learning of the bishops; it comes, rather, from their episcopal ordination. In other words, their authority to teach the Gospel comes from a sacramental gift of grace given to them by Christ the Lord.

So, to summarize this point: the faithful transmission of the Gospel is intrinsically and essentially connected to a sacrament. The temptation to believe that the Word can be transmitted alone, apart from the Church’s sacramental life, is grounded in--among other things--the very reasonable scandal one often takes from the human frailties of bishops. The shabby lives of Renaissance popes and absentee bishops should have inspired a passion for reform and perhaps even justified emergency measures to preserve the Gospel and prepare for the renewal of the Church’s life. But the frailties of bishops can never justify rejecting a part of the Gospel itself: namely, the apostolic office given by Christ and ordained to endure until the Day of the Lord.

Catholics believe that bishops succeed the Apostles by divine institution. But even Christians who reject that teaching do accept that the Lord Jesus personally chose and called the Twelve. And in the night on which Christ gave us the Holy Eucharist and the sacramental priesthood, what did these chosen Twelve do? When the hour for which the Word became flesh finally arrived, Judas betrayed Him, Peter, James, and John went to sleep, the lot of them ran away in terror, and Peter lied through his teeth to save his skin. In other words, infidelity, sloth, cowardice, and mendacity were part of the apostolic office from the very beginning. Should we be surprised, therefore, to find these qualities among bishops of every time and place?

The Lord Jesus chooses whom He will, and those who hold the apostolic office are, by the gift of Christ and not their own strength, made authentic teachers of the Gospel. This living teaching authority or magisterium is not above the Word of God; it is wholly subordinate to it. But the Gospel does not transmit or interpret or authenticate itself; only living teachers can hand on the living Word of God. The question, therefore, is not “Will Christians heed a magisterium?” The question is “Which magisterium will Christians heed?” The magisterium of the bishops in communion with the Successor of St. Peter? The magisterium of university professors? The magisterium of seminary faculties? The magisterium of church-wide assemblies? The magisterium of the New York Times? To paraphrase Winston Churchill, the episcopal office is the worst means of faithfully transmitting the Gospel, except for all the others.

Had it been given to me to live in the 16th century, I believe that my sympathies would have been entirely with Father Luther and his movement for reform. But if a Church without the Gospel is an abomination, a Gospel without the Church is a fantasy. The ordered, which is to say hierarchical, body of believers is the subject which both receives and transmits the Gospel, and apart from that communion of disciples, the Sacred Scriptures are simply another written record of ancient near eastern religion. That this communion of disciples has divinely instituted offices for teaching, sanctifying, and governing is the point at issue, and for evidence of this evangelical truth, we can do no better than heed St. Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop who learned the Gospel from St. John the Divine, apostle of the Word made flesh and evangelist of liberating truth. St. Ignatius, who was the second successor of St. Peter in the city where the disciples were called Christians for the first time, wrote to the Trallians around the year 110 AD and described the three-fold order of bishops, priests, and deacons in these words: “...let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the priests as the council of God and college of Apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a Church.” Notice: without the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon a local Christian community cannot even be called a Church. Without (as we would now put it) the Sacrament of Holy Orders, something essential to ecclesial life is missing. I have made this point with tedious insistence because, as a concerned friend and brother in Christ, I fear than many godly Lutherans are being tempted to an un-evangelical attempt to rescue the Gospel (once again) from a church apparently abandoning the Word of God.

We know the problems. Can a Christian community which condones abortion and homosexual conduct truly be evangelical? Can a Christian community no longer bound by the Augsburg Confession truly be Lutheran? Can a Christian community willing, in principle, to acknowledge lay celebration the Eucharist truly be a church? The Catholic answer to these questions is “No, no, and no”. And I suspect that most of the Lutherans here tonight would give the same answers. Movements like Word Alone and Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ are evidence that many Lutherans, pastors and lay alike, are convinced that something deeply wrong is unfolding in our day, and I agree. But I wonder if a kairos is not also at hand: a providential opportunity to think outside the box, to imagine possibilities once thought to be unthinkable.

Allow me to say here that in participating in seven of the nine Aquinas/Luther Conferences, I have been moved to ponder the ways in which confessional Lutherans--evangelical Catholics, if you like--are already in a greater degree of real communion with the Catholic Church than are some baptized, confirmed, and even ordained Catholics who reject part of the Gospel. Having explored this question carefully for eight years, I am convinced that it is possible to give an account, both theological and canonical, of how and why Dr. Michael McDaniel and I, to take one example, are in a greater degree of true communion with each other than are, to take another example, Father Charles Curran and I.

But the goal of ecumenism is not comity; it’s unity--full, visible unity. While we rejoice to call each other brothers and sisters in Christ, that is not enough. Despite the gains of the past forty years, we remain separated brethren, unable to share in the fullness of Word and Sacrament which together constitute the Church’s faith and life. Pope John Paul II has for twenty-three years made abundantly clear what the Catholic Church seeks: the complete restoration of full, visible communion among all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord as prayed for by the Savior Himself in the night before His death. Anything less than that is a contradiction of the Word of God.

But what would such fullness of communion look like? For my answer, I turn to a book Father Luther might find of interest: the Code of Canon Law promulgated by Pope John Paul II and sometimes called the final document of the Second Vatican Council. In the Code we find canon 205 which declares: “Those baptized are fully in the communion of the Catholic Church on this earth who are joined with Christ in its visible structure by the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments, and ecclesiastical governance.” Now, that’s a mouth full, but canon law properly understood is nothing other than juridic theology. This canon is an effort to translate into juridic language the Scriptural description of communion with Christ’s Church in its fullest degree. Speaking of the people who were converted to Christ on the day of Pentecost by the preaching of Peter, St. Luke tells us: “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”(Acts 2:41-42).

Notice, first Peter preaches. In the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter proclaims the plan of salvation, the Paschal Mystery, the Good News of the passion, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Next, those who hear the Word preached receive that Word with faith. Next, they are baptized. Next, they continue to receive the apostolic teaching with devotion. And finally, they share in the Eucharist and the whole life of prayer in the fellowship or communion of the whole Church, then contained only in Jerusalem but already universal in scope and mission. Word leads to Sacrament, and together (under the authority of the Apostles and their teaching office) Word and Sacrament bring about the fullness of communion which constitutes integral Christian living.

As you know, the Catholic Church teaches that five of the seven sacraments given to us by the Lord Jesus were lost to the Christian communities of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century and that only two sacraments remain to Protestants of every sort: Baptism and Marriage. And the reason for the loss of the other five is the end of the apostolic succession of true bishops, priests, and deacons in those communities. I must leave to wiser heads and other settings the unfolding of that tale. For tonight, however, whatever one may think of this teaching, I want to offer one word of hope and encouragement about an additional means of restoring what has undeniably been lost: full, visible communion of Word and Sacrament. And what is that word of hope? Preaching.

In its Decree on the Life and Ministry of Priests, the Second Vatican Council taught this: “The People of God is formed into one in the first place by the Word of the living God, which is quite rightly sought from the mouth of priests. For since nobody can be saved who has not first believed, it is the first task (the FIRST task, emphasis mine) of priests as co-workers of the bishops to preach the Gospel of God to all men. In this way they carry out the Lord’s command ‘Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature’.....By the saving Word of God, faith is aroused in the heart of unbelievers and is nourished in the heart of believers. By this faith, then, the congregation of the faithful begins and grows, according to the saying of the apostle: ‘Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ’ (Romans 10:17)” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, 4). Those words might have been written by Martin Luther, but they were written by the bishops of the Catholic Church and promulgated by the Bishop of Rome.

I do believe, as the Catholic Church teaches, that five of the sacraments given by Christ were lost to the Christian communities of the Reformation. But if I’m right, then a natural question arises: “How have the communions of the Reformation fostered real holiness of life among the People of God, a holiness which often far surpasses that of their Catholic neighbors with all their sacraments?” I believe that the answer to this question lies in understanding the real power of biblical preaching to awaken souls to the life of grace.

The proclamation of the Word of God, while not reckoned one of the seven sacraments, is nonetheless an action instituted and commanded by Christ. Moreover, the act of preaching is the operation of divine power moving through a human instrument. In these respects, preaching is like a sacrament, a sacramental. But it is also something more than what Catholics ordinarily mean by a sacramental, like the use of holy water to recall baptismal rebirth. Preaching the revealed Word of God is the mediation of an actual grace which moves the hearer by an interior motion of mind and heart towards the saving Word and thus towards union with the saving words and deeds of the Paschal Mystery and finally towards the sacraments which make the mysteries of Christ present to the believer. I believe that powerful, evangelical preaching both accounts for the ability of the Reformation traditions to awaken a genuine yearning for holiness in the hearts of believers and provides a path forward towards the restoration of full, visible communion for the children of the Reformation with the Catholic Church.

Is Word Alone an evangelical possibility? Not since the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. The urge to preserve the Gospel from corruption is a noble and evangelical response to the falling away from Scriptural truth by too many Christians and Christian communities, but any effort to proclaim the Gospel is incomplete and unfaithful to a divine command without the sacraments celebrated worthily and in their integrity. Faithful Christians in every communion are at a crossroads, but the way ahead, I submit, is not a retreat into congregational polity and quietist piety. The way ahead is the restoration of full, visible communion of all who confess that Jesus Christ is Lord with that Church which is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, a restoration which can begin only when pastors are fearless heralds of the Gospel but which can be complete only when pastors are also true ministers of the sacraments.

In the Roman Missal there is a Mass for the Spread of the Gospel, and the collect or opening prayer of that Mass succinctly draws together all of these strands. Let this prayer be our pattern of searching together for what Christ commands: genuine unity of faith and life which will lead the world to saving faith in Him.

“God our Father, you will all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Send workers into your great harvest that the Gospel may be preached to every creature and your people, gathered together by the word of life and strengthened by the power of the sacraments, may advance in the way of salvation and love.” This we ask through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.

To Think Theologically

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 09:34:31 -0400

In the Catholic Christian tradition, to think theologically is an exercise of reason reflecting on the data of divine Revelation for the purpose of understanding what is already believed by faith through grace.

To Think
Sacred theology is a unique human science which proceeds from what is known by faith in divine Revelation rather than by what is discovered through investigation or experimentation, and for that reason, theological method is different from the method of any other science. But all human attempts to know and understand anything, including God, must proceed according to the nature and structure of human reason. Therefore, the laws which govern all reasoning must be rigorously maintained to ensure the intellectual integrity of theology. Laws of reason such as the Principle of Identity and the Principle of Non-Contradiction are indispensable for the operation of right reason (ratio recta) without which rational discourse on any subject is impossible. That theology is a science in which reason is not sovereign or autonomous does not mean that theology can proceed without reason. To think theologically it is first necessary to think and to think rigorously.

To Think Theologically
The science of sacred theology (as distinct from natural theology or metaphysics) began to emerge as an ordered body of knowledge in the second century after Christ, and the classical definition of the project was given by St. Anselm of Canterbury: fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding. Sacred theology is, therefore, an attempt to understand what is first confessed as true because of the authority of God Who reveals Himself in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, which together constitute the single divine Deposit of Faith entrusted by Christ to His Church. Sacred theology begins with the acceptance of the Gospel by faith and must be referred to the Gospel at every point in order to ensure that the activity of reason is faithful to the data of divine Revelation.

Sacred Theology is Not Religious Studies
That theology begins with obedience of faith to the Gospel means, among other things, that unbelievers or heretics cannot be true theologians; only faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus can be true theologians. The personal beliefs of a professor of religious studies are theoretically of no greater significance to his science than are those of a biologist studying paramecia. The beliefs of a theologian, however, are absolutely essential and intrinsic to the integrity of his science, which is truly a sacred science the practice of which requires the theological virtue of faith and fidelity to the inspired and infallible Word of God.

The Role of Authority in Sacred Theology
Because Christ entrusted His Apostles with the sacred power to teach, sanctify, and govern in His place, the apostolic authority of the bishops who succeed the Apostles is intrinsic to the science of sacred theology. It is bishops, not theologians, who insure that the Gospel is transmitted authentically and authoritatively from generation to generation. Only after receiving the Gospel from the College of Bishops and its head (the Bishop of Rome) can theologians begin their enterprise of reflecting upon the data of Revelation to understand revealed truth more completely. For this reason, the exercise of episcopal authority in guaranteeing the content of the Gospel is not hostile or alien to the work of theologians. Indeed, the exercise of episcopal authority is the sine qua non of the possibility of sacred theology as a science distinct from metaphysics, and theologians are called to the same liberating obedience of faith which is the vocation of every Christian.

Sentire Cum Ecclesia
To be a theologian, in sum, requires that one be both a faithful disciple of Christ and a scholar prepared to think with the Church. Neither piety nor learning is sufficient to make one a theologian, but no one can be a true theologian without both genuine piety and deep learning.

Local Vocations

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 16:11:41 -0400

Since the summer of 2005, St. Mary’s has been blessed with three ordinations to the priesthood (Fathers Christopher Smith, Dwight Longenecker, and Michael Cassabon) and one entrance to religious life (Sister Catherine Anne Pelicano in the postulancy of the Nashville Dominicans), and there are evident signs among us of many other vocations to the priesthood and religious life, including our seminarian Jason Oakes, now finishing his undergraduate studies at the Pontifical College Josephinum, and four other men from the parish who have tried their vocation in recent years.

Given that decisions to enter the priesthood and religious life are all too rare in our time, it is natural to wonder why St. Mary’s should be blessed with these vocations. I believe that in any parish where sacrificial love, the obedience of faith, and the joyful gift of self are understood as essential features of authentic Christian discipleship, the priesthood and religious life will be understood as normal expressions of Christian faith and life. And when right worship and clear teaching are added to this mix, then young men and women know that becoming a priest or a religious is not for spiritual heroes or the superhuman among us. The choice to become a priest or a religious is a normal, everyday manifestation of the life of grace in the Church, and all Catholics should regard it as such. Yes, renunciation of many kinds is required, but authentic Christian living requires renunciations of many kinds from all the baptized, not just priests and religious. The young man or woman who leaves home, family, career, and self-direction for the service of Christ and the Church is simply responding to the call of the Lord Jesus first received at Baptism: Follow me.

Our seminarian Jason Oakes (third from the left) and the young men of the St. John’s Guild receive instructions from Mr. Jeremy Rodrigues (second from the left), seminarian at the North American College for the Diocese of Providence and Master of Ceremonies for Father Cassabon’s first Mass.

The First Solemn Mass of Father Michael Cassabon

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:24:07 -0400

On Friday 27 July 2007, Bishop Robert J. Baker ordained six men to the priesthood for the Diocese of Charleston, including one son of St. Mary’s: Father Michael Patrick Cassabon. On the following Sunday, Father Cassabon celebrated the solemn parish Mass at 11 am, and nine visiting priests concelebrated with him. It was a great day for the people of St. Mary’s and confirmation that the LORD answers our prayers to send more laborers to the harvest.

This was the third ordination from St. Mary’s in two years: In July 2005 Father Christopher Smith, who was received into full communion at St. Mary’s when he was a young teenager, was ordained for the Diocese of Charleston, and in December 2006 Father Dwight Longenecker, who with his family moved back to Greenville (where he had lived as a young man and attended Bob Jones University) from England to work as chaplain at St. Joseph’s School, was ordained under the Pastoral Provision.

The procession of concelebrants for Father Cassabon’s first Solemn Mass forms behind the church. Visit the website of St. Mary’s Church for a look at all the photographs and a video of the Mass.