Theology

Kathy Pluth the writer of a new booklet of hymns wrote to me to promote her little booklet of hymns. Judging by the following sample I am very impressed by her style and find this hymn for the Eucharist not only theologically deep, but beautiful as well.

How Light the Bread of Angels
Kathleen Pluth

1. How light the bread of angels upon the human tongue!
This precious weight of glory that binds the Church in one!
The flesh with all its passions could never match the bliss
Of mind and heart and memory caught up in heaven’s kiss.

2. How blessèd is this banquet, Christ’s sweet and costly meal.
The love within the Godhead mysteriously revealed:
When God the Son gives glory to God the Father high,
As God the Holy Spirit effects the sacrifice.

3. Forth from His wounded body, the water and the blood,
The glad’ning stream of heaven swells to a mighty flood.
It winds throughout the ages and flows into the hearts
Of saints He makes from sinners with skillful healing arts.

4. This food, so light, refreshing, shall speed our pilgrim way,
Until that happy morning when dawn turns into day.
Upon the holy mountain, within God’s holy hall,
The Father and the Spirit, and Christ, our all in all.

© 2005 CanticaNOVA Publications

This sample can be used free of charge if the authors name and copyright notice are attached and you can go to their site to see the music that goes with the meter of the hymn.

There is an interesting comment thread over at Mark Shea’s blog in response to his question:

What (or who) is it you enjoy about being Catholic?

I find it hard to pin down, because there’s so much I enjoy. I like the humanness of the place. I like belonging to a communion of slobs like me (a big relief when you are coming from a tradition whose emphasis on holiness takes on a sort of quasi-Darwinian quality).

I like the balance. I like the breadth. I like the Dickensian love of *characters* that the Church has. The Church has a soft spot for kooks. I like the ability the Church has to love Nature without worshipping it. I love the coolness of the Blessed Sacrament sanctuary on a hot day. I love the warmth of the sanctuary on a cold night in winter. I love being able to take my sins to confession and then forget about them. I love meals in common with our friends. I love that sex is a sacrament. I love that eating is a sacrament. I loved the sound of my friend’s voice the morning he made his first confession and I asked him how it went: "I feel…. clean!" he said. I love being able to pray for my Dad, who has been dead for 20 years. I love that Chaucer was Catholic. I love being able to say that the smell of salt air on Puget Sound is what the freedom of the Spirit is like, and knowing that there is a real sacramental connection there and not simply a subjective projection on the idiotic face of matter.

I commented that amazement that something both wonderful and true would have me as a member. Unlike Groucho who quipped he would not join a club that would have him as a member, a sinner like myself only glories and rejoices in being part of the Bride of Christ – his Church.

Besides where else can you go to receive something so awesome as the Body and Blood of Christ followed by something so mundane as coffee and donuts afterwards?

The blogger at The Evangelical Atheist wrote to tell me about a new carnival and asked me to participate in the God or Not carnival.

GOD or NOT is a rotating monthly carnival. On the first Monday of every month, it will be hosted by a different blog, alternating between theist and atheist sites. Any theist site is eligible. It need not be Christian. Each carnival will have a different theme, featuring posts that deal with a given religious issue. The theme for each carnival will be chosen by the previous host with approval of the carnival administrator.

At one time I also described myself as an evangelical atheist and I thank God I was not blogging at the time. This carnival is an interesting idea, but I will not be participating. My skills do not fall along the way of philosophical disputes and I am not sure I would be able to really contribute anything. It does make me ponder whether this type of carnival will be anything more than two sides talking past each other. Though I certainly respect truth-seeking atheists over I-don’t-know-and-I-don’t-care agnostics. Having to defend your beliefs is one of the best ways to seek the truth. The problem is of course we all have our beliefs that we sometimes will fight to prevent things like truth getting in the way of holding them.

I was a very dogmatic atheist whose dogma of course included that miracles were impossible. This reminds me of the line used in the Song of Bernadette. "To those who believe in God, no explanation is necessary, to those who do not believe in God, no explanation is possible." I will give a case in point from my own life. I had just returned home from a couple of weeks at sea. This was also the time of my life that I was really working to build up my atheistic zeal by reading many books on atheism. My wife related to me a very frightening story. She had gotten some medicine from the Navy clinic and had a severe allergic reaction to it. So severe that she was almost unable to move. She told me she prayed to Jesus and Mary and that she was really worried about our two kids and that something might happen to her and she would not be able to take care of them. She had this old Rosary that she had brought with her from the Philippines. It was a plastic one and what use to be a full Rosary. That is with 15 decades on it before our late Holy Father added a new mystery. She told me that it started to glow so bright that the room was lit up at night time. Afterwords whe was able to move and go to the clinic where they told who she had had a sever alergic reaction.
My kids who were in 5th and 6th grade at the time chimed in telling me that they had seen this also. I of course was totally willing to disbelieve the witness of my family and said it must have somehow been car headlights lighting up the room or some other possible explanation. I did not credit for even one second that this could have happened even though I knew my wife was not prone to exaggeration or the fact that under my influence our children did not grow up with religion being talked about (other than negatively.)

Fast forward a couple of years later when I was on my way into the Catholic Church, I myself witness something strange with this same Rosary. Over the years we had always had it hanging on the bedroom wall. One night it started visibly glowing. I didn’t quite know what to make of it. We all saw it doing this and while I was now willing to believe in miraculous events it does not mean I stop being a skeptic. As St. Paul said to test all things. So over the week it would glow at night I tried to do some testing. For example when it wasn’t glowing I would turn on all the lights and put the Rosary next to a bright light for a while. Then I would move it into a dark area to see if it would glow. I figured that possibly it used some luminescent material and that charging it up since the plastic beads were green that I could duplicate the glow. I was never able to duplicate the glow on my own. I wasn’t sure why in about 18 years that we had this on the wall that it never glowed before if it was luminescent, but I wasn’t going to rule it out. I moved it to another wall to see if somehow light was being reflected onto it at the location it was in. Still a couple of nights later it glowed again. Now I am not going to say it was truly a miraculous event and that there was no scientific explanation to it. I am inclined to believe it was possibly miraculous, though if it was I am not quite sure why God would have done it. Possibly to show me how arrogant I was to not have believed my family. All I do know is that the difference between now and then is now I am free to believe that it was miraculous. Being a believer does not mean that you have to believe in any alleged miraculous event, only that you can believe it. Even well known apparitions such as Fatima the Church only says that it is worthy of belief not that we have to believe it. As an atheist my freedom was severely restricted in this regard.

The problem with atheist dialogue is that faith is not just the consequence of evidence pointing to God. In my initial conversion experience I was arrogant enough to believe that I had read myself into the Church. As if it was intellectual arguments alone that had led me to belief. I remember one day reading St. Paul in 1st Corinthians say "no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit." I was awe struck by this realization in that it both humbled me and made me realize that the Holy Spirit was not some distant theological construct, but a person that had led me to faith. This is not to say the intellectual arguments are worthless in this regard. When I first heard the proofs of God as taught by St. Thomas Aquinas on the G. Gordon Liddy show they surprised me, but didn’t make me a theist on the spot. They did open up a small chink in my godless armour that I tried to cover it up with renewed atheistic faith. Sometimes reason can remove some of the rocks in rocky soil so that we faith might be able to break through.

Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves. Fides et Ratio

A one winged bird is deformed and will not get off the ground. Trying to fly with reason alone won’t work, just as a blind faith with no intellectual underpinnings will not fly for long or will eventually send you crashing to the ground. As St. Peter said "Always be prepared to make a defense to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence."

I am still amazed at times to have received faith, though it does not make me feel superior to those who have not yet received it. One of my favorite parables is the laborers in the vineyard where they were all paid the same amount regardless of whether they started work in the morning, midday, or even at the end of the day. I know that in God’s providence that he wants to give everyone faith and who am I to say when they are to receive it or even to ultimately reject it? Only that I should strive towards holiness and that my actions will not be a stumbling block towards others.

Now if anybody out there has the abilities to contribute something to this new carnival, please consider doing it. As for me I will lend prayer support and intercede with St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein) for some good to come out of this debate and not just both sides trying to make points. St. Edith Stein had also once been an atheist and as a phenomenologist well understands intellectual debates. This might not have been the response The Evangelical Atheist wanted, but it will have to do.

…both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. It is the basic pattern of man’s destiny only to be allowed to find the finality of his existence in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty. Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sided from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both sides from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is this share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him. – then-Cardinal Josef Ratzinger "Introduction to Christianity"

HARRISBURG, Pa. – A mother cannot be barred from having her minor daughter baptized simply because her former husband – the girl’s father – objects to the sacrament being administered in a Russian Orthodox church, a Pennsylvania appellate court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the Superior Court overturned a judge in Mercer County, on the Pennsylvania-Ohio border, saying there was not sufficient evidence that a baptism would harm the child to warrant the court’s intrusion into the dispute.

"It is quite the leap of logic to convert (the father’s) ire … at the prospects of (his daughter) receiving the sacrament of baptism to proof of a `substantial risk’ of harm," Senior Judge Zoran Popovich wrote on behalf of the panel in a ruling issued Monday.

David and Jana Hicks were married in a Presbyterian church in 1987 and later attended evangelical and Pentecostal churches in Ohio and Pennsylvania. They divorced in 1998, according to court papers.

The parents have since shared custody of the girl, who was not identified in the court documents. She attended Roman Catholic services – and, since 2001, Russian Orthodox services – when she was with her mother and continued going to an Assembly of God church in Hermitage, Pa., when with her father.

Neither parent objected to the multidenominational religious training until the father learned that the mother planned last year to have the girl baptized at a Russian Orthodox church in Cleveland. The mother also was engaged to a Russian Orthodox man and has since married him, according to her attorney, Stephen Mirizio.

After the father contested the planned baptism in court, Mercer County Common Pleas Judge Thomas R. Dobson ruled in June that the girl could not be baptized in any church without her parents’ mutual consent but that she could decide for herself when she turns 13. The judge said he picked the age somewhat arbitrarily, but that, "13-year-olds, as a rule, are mature enough to make that decision."

Dobson said the girl, who is now 9, would be harmed by stress resulting from her parents’ religious differences.

"The choice of which religion to have their daughter baptized into is viewed by the parties as a battle for the immortal soul of the child," he said. "Neither party appears willing to lose to the other party. … No good can come to any child placed into such an emotional situation." [Source]

I wonder what David Hick’s view on baptism is. If he sees it only as a sign with no real meaning as many Protestants do then I wonder what his theological difficulty would be? Assemblies of God mainly concentrates on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit as evidenced by speaking in tongues. They don’t see water baptism as regenerative, but do require full immersion for a "valid" baptism so maybe he sees this as problematic. To claim harm from a baptism, even if you consider it an invalid baptism, seems rather strange.

Canon Lawyer Pete Vere has an excellent article on the evolution of the Church’s understanding of marriage from both a canon law and theological perspective.

This also reminds me how more states are offering a Covenant Marriage as an option. When a couple opts for the "covenant" marriage, they agree to waive their right to the no-fault divorce. In the event that the marriage does fall apart, only adultery, abuse, abandonment or a lengthy separation will allow a divorce to take place. Strangely they refer to a marriage which can end in a no-fault divorce as a "traditional" marriage.

I would love to be a state employee that issues marriage licenses in these states. I don’t think I would last very long before being fired though. Especially since when a couple asks for a licence for a "traditional" marriage I would have to reply "do you want fries with that?"

One of the cool things about reading the Gospels are the accounts of Jesus’ interactions with the Apostles. For example this verse from Matthew 16.

Jesus said to them, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sad’ducees."And they discussed it among themselves, saying, "We brought no bread."

There are many instances where the Apostles just had no idea was Jesus was saying and engaged in their own form of scriptural literalism. This comforts me to no end that Jesus chose as disciples not theological savants, but regular men who could be quite dense at times. This doesn’t make me feel intellectually superior to the Apostles, just right at home with them. That these were men you could easily have a beer with without feeling out of place. Peter in response to the mystery of the Transfiguration wants to start a building project. How many times do we in response to grace go off in the wrong tangent? At Mass after receiving Communion how often do our minds reflect on anything but what is right there before us. I am quite comfortable reading especially about the foibles of St. Peter and can quite easily identify them with my own spiritual life. After the resurrection Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. Peter replies in the affirmative three times to cancel out the threefold denial on the day of the crucifixion. That what it comes down to is not how well you know the intricacies of theological arguments, but how much you love Jesus. Of course loving Jesus can help you delve deeper into these mysteries. You can see this progress in St. Peter as he went from the man who blurted out whatever first came to him to the Peter who wrote 1 Peter and 2 Peter and the Peter that became a martyr for the faith.

In today’s Gospel reading from the Gospel of Luke:

"Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, `God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, `God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."

I found it interesting that the words used to describe the Pharisee’s prayer was "prayed thus with himself." That his prayer was not offered to God in humility and thankfulness but was a prayer to himself for moral superiority. On the other had the publican did not boast but only asked for mercy. The word contrition comes from the Latin contritio–a breaking of something hardened. When I first found the source of the word contrition I saw just how apt this was. That this breaking of something hard into pieces is usually our pride. The Council of Trent defined contrition as "a sorrow of soul and a hatred of sin committed, with a firm purpose of not sinning in the future." The movie Love story had the most twisted definition of love with its tag line “Love means never having to say your sorry.” This one is straight out of the Devil’s cathechism where charity only means self-love.

Even when at times during our conversions when God removes some large rocks of sins we start to notice something else. Sometimes when you go outside and remove a large rock what you find revealed underneath a swarm of maggots and worms. It is the same thing with ourselves that when big sins are repented of and removed through God’s grace that we notice (for sometime first time) many other sins, faults, and imperfections. Sometimes these sins seem harder to dispatch then maybe there more serous predecessors. That we try to stamp them out but they squiggle away just our of reach. As in the garden when we try to dispose of these maggots we don’t try to remove them all at once but to stomp they out individually till they are gone. Again through God’s grace and perseverance we need to do the same thing to our own garden of faults.

We also can walk away justified like the publican when we remember our faults and put our trust in God’s mercy and not self-appointed righteousness. The good the the Pharisee had to boast of was through grace and instead he should have been deep in thankfulness and prayer for those who were not yet in God’s grace. Being a Catholic I can sometimes catch myself displaying the attitude of the Pharisee when reading about the Anglican communion and especially the whole Bishop Gene Robinson debacle. "Lord I am glad I am in your Church and not the church of other men, I fast, pray the rosary, and give to the poor." While I fully believe the the Catholic Church is the Church that Jesus established on earth it is not through personal merit that I wound up in his Church. So I try to remember to be greatly thankful for being a Catholic and pray with Jesus in his high priestly prayer "that they may be one."

SecretAgentMan has a great post on the Communion of Saints and about canonization.

In an article by Father Richard P. McBrien called The lessons of Pope Cornelius.

There is a lesson to be learned, even today, from Pope Cornelius’s pastoral style. He reigned at a time of controversy and internal conflict in the church, which has proved to be all too common throughout its history and into our own time.

The issue then was whether those who had been baptized by heretics or by schismatics (those who had broken communion with the church but without denying any of its doctrines) were required to be rebaptized upon entering or returning to the Catholic Church.

On one side were those, including Cornelius, who favored a pastorally compassionate approach. Rebaptism should not be required. An act of contrition and some sign of repentance were deemed sufficient.

How is not having a rebaptism a pastoral approach. Scripture clearly speaks of one faith, one baptism – and not rebaptism is not a pastoral action but in fact a theological one. This was not a pastorally compassionate approach but a position consistent with the faith of the Church.

He goes on to talk about the "rigorist" Novatian who I guess from the context of the article is suppose to parallel Catholic conservatives today

Because of Novatian’s persistent and divisive opposition, Cornelius excommunicated him and his followers, but not on his own authority alone. He convened a synod that was attended by 60 bishops and many priests and deacons. The synod supported the excommunications and also the pope’s policy of readmitting to full communion, after appropriate contrition and "the medicines of repentance," those who had lapsed during the Decian persecution.

Cornelius sent copies of the synodal decisions to various bishops, including the rigorist, pro-Novatian bishop of Antioch in order to persuade him to end his support for Novatian and to accept the pastorally moderate approach adopted by the majority of churches.

In the very unlikely event that the Holy Father called such a synod today to excommunicate known heretics I wonder just how long after that that Fr. McBrien would be calling this compassionate pastoral action? When the majority of his companions at the National Catholic Reporter were excommunicated for their undeniable false teachings (I can dream can’t I). I think the lessons to be learned by Pope Cornelius are not the lesson that Fr. McBrien would have us learn. That a Pope at times needs to act to eliminate false teachings and pastoral action action does not always mean with approval of all the Bishops. In this case the majority of Bishops were against Novatian and the Pope wrote multiple letters to the Bishop of Antioch who was wavering in his support. This Pope held firm to the faith though he was later exiled and died a martyr.