Punditry

Via Jimmy Akin’s blog:

Recently I was contacted by the Vatican’s department of communications and asked to help gather online input to be submitted to the upcoming Synod of Bishops.

They provided me with a link to an online survey, and they are interested in hearing from a wide range of people who may or may not be active Catholics.

If you would like to share your thoughts on various matters with the Vatican, here is the link. The deadline is August 15.

TAKE THE SURVEY

I admire Jimmy’s restraint in passing this along without comment. I was expecting to cringe my way through a survey from the Vatican’s department of communications. But wow just wow.

Going through the questions, there was page after page of no good choices in the multiple selections to choose from. I felt like I was being corralled to answer questions with the answer they wanted.

Reading about people who have left the Church I constantly hear complaints about “Unclear or poorly time communication.” It seems to be such a common thread I hear on Catholic radio where people call in saying they would be Catholic if it weren’t for “Unclear or poorly time communication.” Oh wait, that is never a reason I have heard.

This list of nine reasons has some reasons that people actually use, but two of them are basically duplicates. They left off some of the more common ones.

St. Thomas Aquinas offered two objections to the existence of God. The ability of science to answer questions and the problem of evil. The view of science now trumping religion as a form of ignorance is very prevalent among the “nones”. The problem of evil is the underpinning of many other reasons. I have also seen prevalent how personal interactions with a church and people in it have often played more of a part than doctrine.

Still, this is a complex question and often not sorted down to a single reason.

This was the question that made my jaw drop. As JD Flynn quipped ‘How come none of the answers are “salvific?”’ I was looking for “None of the above.” All of the questions seem crafted for a view of the Church very individualistically. Ego-driven where the relationship to the Church is “What are you doing for me now?” Why aren’t you conforming to me? No sense of the community of believers, the kingdom of God, and the Mystical Body of Christ.

If I used their methodology to do a survey on their survey.

---

1. In your opinion, which of these attributes best define the survey from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communications.

Choose 3 options.

[A] Awful

[B] Disastrous

[C] Dreadful

[D] Horrendous

[E] Laughable

[F] Full of leading questions/choices

[G] Seriously was that a real survey?

---

Of course, there were questions and answers using “accompaniment” and LGBTQI related.

One refrain seemed to me to be:

---

In your opinion, what should the Church do?

Pick 1 option.

[A] Change doctrine now to fit the times.

[B] Change doctrine immediately to conform to the modern world

[C] Instantaneously change doctrine to be more inclusive.

[D] Swiftly rewrite doctrine to on the nature of the human person to conform to societal fads.

---

Those itching ears aren’t going to scratch themselves.

The theme is surrender to the world, not engagement.

Still, this did get me thinking about what questions a survey that had a better understanding of the nature of the Church would ask. This would be a very difficult task to craft such questions and be accessible to everyone as this survey wanted to be.

The phrase “All hands on deck” was one familiar to me in the Navy for an emergency situation and I see the current state of the Church as an “All hands on deck” one. Fewer and fewer people going to Mass. Fewer marriages, fewer baptisms, and pretty much every metric to try to measure a health Church are down. Also considering the general plunge in the number of priests and those in religious life.

I know I have found myself pondering what I would suggest to “fix” the Church. If only they did this and that specific thing! Too easy to ride your hobby horses right into the Sanctuary. Too many suggestions fall into the single cause fallacy. Like a post starting “One simple trick.” The challenges facing us are complex and daunting. I just know that agenda-driven surveys are not the answer.

Often news of the Church in the world is more like news of the world in the Church.

It’s to feel the contemporary situation at the ultimate level. I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. [1]

Sometimes I find the awkwardness of the Vatican to both drive me to laughter and then to my knees in prayer.

---

1. Flannery, O’Connor: “The Habit of Being”  ↩

Luke 22:14–23:56 ESV – Bible Gateway

While today’s passage is used for what is colloquially called Palm Sunday, it is in Chapter 19 where the entry in Jerusalem is described in explicit terms as a royal triumphal entry; people are greeting Jesus as a king who is coming in the name of the Lord.[1] Luke is the only one to mention the Pharisee’s reaction to the crowd and telling Jesus to rebuke his disciples. Jesus replies, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

Liturgically this is Passion Sunday, so the passage used starts with the establishment of the first Mass, concluding with the death and burial of Jesus. Since this covers so much territory, I will highlight what is distinct to Luke.

After the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the disciples dispute among themselves as regards who is the greatest. I have to wonder just how attentive they were to what just happened. It seems they surmised something Momentive had happened and were involved in it. Yet, their sight is still shortened on their egos and not the establishment of a new covenant put into place and ratified by Jesus’ coming death on the cross and resurrection.

From Brant Pitre’s[1] commentary on this:

Literally in the Greek, what Jesus says here, “As my father covenanted the kingdom for me, so I covenant to you, that you may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” So, effectively what Jesus is doing is constituting (in the figure of the Apostles) a new Israel, where they will rule over this new Israel, sitting on twelve thrones.

Secondly, notice also that within these twelve Apostles who are going to reign over the new Israel, Simon Peter has pride of place. And it’s easy to miss that if you read it in English, but in Greek it’s really clear: when Jesus says, “Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to have you”, the Greek word there is “you” in the plural. So if you wanted to translate it into English: “Satan has demanded to have ya’ll.” (I’m from the South, we have a 2nd person plural, it’s called “ya’ll”, and that’s what the Greek word there is.) Satan has demanded to have “you all”. “But I have prayed for you (singular) that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen you brethren.” So what Jesus is referring to here is two things: First, the unique role that Simon Peter has as leader of the twelve apostles and as the one who strengthens the brethren. And I just bring this up because (obviously) there’s a long standing debate about the origins of the papacy and the authority of the bishop of Rome and that kind of thing, but I want to highlight the fact that in Luke’s gospel, according to Luke, at the Last Supper Jesus singles Peter out as the one who has a special mission to strengthen the other apostles after he turns back from his fall of denying Jesus, and that Jesus prays a special prayer for Simon (and Simon alone) that his faith may not fail.

We see multiple examples of Jesus’ humanity in that he is both fully God and fully man, and not God putting on a costume as a man. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he says, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” He requires strength for his coming ordeal. His guardian angel strengthens him, “And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.”

I had often heard that this was a condition called hematidrosis caused by great stress. I have also heard other claims about how this would make Jesus even more sensitive to pain. Actual cases of hematidrosis are relatively rare and are not necessarily connected to stress. Thomas W. McGovern, M.D. looks at these claims in his book “What Christ Suffered: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Passion.” Based on Luke’s description, he concludes that a bloody fluid was coming out of his skin. Jesus’ blood and sweat mixed on the skin, not in the skin within the sweat glands.

More importantly, there is a lot of imagery here tying the agony in this garden back to the events of the Garden of Eden. This is a constant theme in Luke that Jesus is the new Adam. Adam and Eve were cast out. He is going to have to labor by the sweat of his brow. Brant Pitre draws out further connection with Jewish tradition in that the Tree of Life is an Olive Tree and that Gethsemane means “oil press.”

Jesus is the new Adam, and he will go to the new tree of life which is the cross. And there he will be crushed, he’s going to offer his life, and his blood will undo the effects of the fall of the first Adam. And the oil that will flow from the new tree of life is an oil that brings healing and salvation to the whole world. Just as the first tree of life was supposed to give immortality, so the new tree of life (the cross) is going to undo the curse of death and bring everlasting life to the world.[1]

While all of the synoptic Gospels tell us about the carrying of the cross, only Luke writes about the women who lamented and wailed for Jesus on the way to Calvary. It is tough to imagine the physical state of Jesus at this point. The agony in the garden, his arrest, and possible severe mistreatment before the trial. How he was treated at the trial itself. More abuse after the trial, severe scourging, and even more mockery and abuse with the crown of thorns. Added to this is the crossbar (stauros or patibulum) placed across his shoulder he carried to the place of execution. Yet, his heart and mind are still focused on the sufferings of others. Luke also records Jesus’ prayer on the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

When I was reading over this, something in my own life came to mind. When my wife was in the very last days of her life in the hospice, she could not eat. Chipped ice was all that she could consume. In her pain and deep awareness of how little time she had left with us, she was still concerned about whether we had eaten yet. This is what it means to be Christ-like.

The dialog between the thieves on either side of Jesus is also only in Luke. One thief is railing against Jesus, while the other says that we deserver our fate, but not Jesus. He then speaks, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And in response, Jesus says something that’s powerful, but also puzzling: “Amen, I say to you, this day you will be with me in paradise.”

I have heard Jesus’ reply parsed in several ways since emphasizing different words can change the meaning. The meaning is argued over regarding the necessity of baptism or the doctrine of Purgatory. So I was interested to see that this might also be another Lucan reference to the Garden of Eden as per Brant Pitre[1]

The Greek word there, Paradeisos , doesn’t occur very often in the Bible. The first time it occurs, one of the few times it occurs, is in the book of Genesis 2 and 3, when it’s describing the paradise of God. Literally, the word paradise means “a garden” or “an orchard”; in other words, the Garden of Eden.

Jesus’ final words on the cross are also unique to Luke. “Father into your hands I commit my spirit” is quoted from Psalm 31.

Sources

• The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
• Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
• What Christ Suffered: A Doctor’s Journey Through the Passion: Thomas W. McGovern, MD
• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

---

1. Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre  ↩

Luke 13:1–9 ESV – Bible Gateway

Jesus and his disciples continue on their journey to Jerusalem after leaving Galilee for the last time. This section of today’s Gospel is unique to Luke.

Overall we are given a sense of urgency and that if we do not repent, we will perish. The first two examples Jesus gives would have at some point been topical events. These two events also seem to have a connection to the future. The impending destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 provides context to this. While we do not have any details of the event that led to the slaughter of the Galileans, it seems to have happened in the Temple and is entirely in keeping with Pilate’s violent putting down of any rebellion. St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, “or these were followers of the opinions of Judas of Galilee, of whom Luke makes mention in the Acts of the Apostles, (Acts 5:37.).”[1]

There is also a symbolic reference to the temple regarding the tower’s collapse in Siloam. “A tower (see Luke 13:4; 14:28) often represents the Jerusalem temple (see Matt 21:33; Mark 12:1) on account of Isaiah’s song of the vineyard (Isa 5:1–2)”[2]

It seems Jesus is making a couple of points in these two examples regarding the urgency of repentance. The Galileans and those killed in the tower collapse would not have expected this to be the day of their deaths. This comes to all men, to the good and the bad. What befell them was not because they were worse sinners than those around them. We can’t put our repentance on a schedule. Later on, we will give up those comfortable sins when it suits us. We know that growing in holiness involves suffering; what we usually forget is that not advancing in holiness will involve more suffering.

Catechism 1431 Interior repentance is a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart, an end of sin, a turning away from evil, with repugnance toward the evil actions we have committed. At the same time it entails the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace. This conversion of heart is accompanied by a salutary pain and sadness which the Fathers called animi cruciatus (affliction of spirit) and compunctio cordis (repentance of heart)

The parable of the fig tree also hinges on this. The Catholic Commentary of Sacred Scripture[2] puts this parable rather succinctly:

However, in the context of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and in view of the biblical background, the parable first of all refers to Israel. The tree is planted in an orchard—that is, a “vineyard” (NRSV and other versions), a common image for Israel in the Old Testament (see Isa 5:1–7, which also mentions a tower and inhabitants of Jerusalem, as Jesus just did in Luke 13:4). The owner may represent God, but since the gardener addresses him as sir (kyrios), he may also represent Jesus the “Lord” (kyrios, 12:41–42; 13:15). The three years may even refer to the length of Jesus’ public ministry … Identifying Jesus with the one who comes in search of fruit on a fig tree also correlates with the tradition of Jesus actually doing such a thing (Matt 21:19; Mark 11:13), at the time that he cleansed the temple. Luke is undoubtedly familiar with this tradition but instead includes the similar parable to teach the same lesson about the impending judgment on Jerusalem and its temple.

In John 15, Jesus uses a similar image where he talks about “I am the vine and you are the branches, and every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit will be cut down (or cut off) and thrown into the fire.”[3]

Father Jordan Schmidt, OP, in an article about this passage gives some background on the fig tree and how this parable also applies to us in the life of the Church.

The fig tree had been cultivated by human beings since at least 5000 B.C., making it one of the earliest domesticated plants. The types of figs that came to populate Israel and Judah were particularly beneficial because, in contrast to similar types of figs grown in Egypt and Cyprus, the figs found in the Judean countryside would produce good, edible fruit even without human labor. Nonetheless, Judean farmers adopted the practice of planting their fig trees within an orchard or vineyard, thus providing the trees with a steady water supply and protection against grazing animals. This enabled them to produce as many as six harvests in a single year. These trees thus came to be known for their fecundity, and all inhabitants of the region were dependent on them for their abundant fruit.
…
Like that tree, we have been given two great benefits: First, we are planted in the fertile vineyard of the Church; and, second, we are watered and fertilized through the power of the sacraments. Therefore, Christ, much like the vineyard owner, expects us to produce the fruit of good works in our lives — it is required, not optional.

Theophylact comments:

Theophylact, Archbishop of Ohrid, A.D. 1078. Or the master of the household is God the Father, the dresser is Christ, who will not have the fig tree cut down as barren, as if saying to the Father, Although through the Law and the Prophets they gave no fruit of repentance, I will water them with My sufferings and teaching, and perhaps they will yield us fruits of obedience.[1]

Sources

• The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz
• Navarre, Saint Luke’s Gospel (2005)
• Peter Kreeft, Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass Readings Year C
• Catholic Productions, Commentaries by Brant Pitre
• Photo by Ben White on Unsplash>

---

1. Catena Aurea: Commentary on the Four Gospels, Collected out of the Works of the Fathers: St. Luke  ↩
2. The Gospel of Luke, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Rev. Pablo T. Gadenz  ↩
3. Catholic Productions, Brant Pitre  ↩

I want to be able to emulate G.K. Chesterton’s charism of gratitude.

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” (A Short History of England » Ch. 6: The Age of the Crusades)

“And they specially affected one idea; which I hope it is not pompous to call the chief idea of my life; I will not say the doctrine I have always taught, but the doctrine I should always have liked to teach. That is the idea of taking things with gratitude, and not taking things for granted.” (Autobiography, XVI.—The God with the Golden Key)

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” (early notebook, mid 1890s)*

“The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?” (Orthodoxy, “The Ethics of Elfland”

Note: Often you see the above quote with “God” substituted for “Santa Clause.”

Plus this zinger:

“The Americans have established a Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the fact that the Pilgrim Fathers reached America. The English might very well establish another Thanksgiving Day to celebrate the happy fact that the Pilgrim Fathers left England.” (Chesterton in America “And What about the Quakers?”)

I guess I have gotten to the part of my life where I am more excited about All Souls Day than All Hallows Eve.

Sure I enjoy the cultural baggage tied up with Halloween as I am a long-time horror movie junkie. And there are favorite books I like to revisit at this time of year. (The Haunting of Hill House, Something Wicked This Way Comes, etc).

Still, I am now more prone to praying for the dead than watching The Living Dead. Looking more forward to the blessings of the graves on Tuesday and Mass in our historic church afterward. It really is a blessing that my parish has a cemetery adjacent to the historic church. I wish all parishes could have one on property. There is of course the Memento mori aspect, but praying for the dead should be a constant reminder for all of us. It puts a lot of things more into perspective, especially the salvation of souls as an ongoing mission.

Plus I am also thinking more of All Saints Day and all the unknown saints. That praying for the dead, in God’s plan, contributes to their eventual (however time works in aeviternity) being in the beatific vision. One of my intercessions with passed-on loved ones is for them to pray for me and others that we draw closer to Christ, just as they are.

There are many tragedies involved with the Protestant Revolt, but the loss of the idea of praying for your loved ones is a major one. Of asking them to pray for you and others. We seemed to have lost so much intercessory power by this being so. Thankfully God is not limited by our stupidity (which I am personally thankful for).

So tomorrow we can be thankful for those who died in friendship with God and enjoy the beatific vision. Along with the day after that for those on the path of purification towards that.

Part of this musing was sparked by Amy Welborn’s post ‘Unhappy Reformation Day!’