-“The Crucifixion”, Alonso Cano, 1638, 173 x 265 cm, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
“In order to perceive the true answer to the “why” of suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love, the ultimate source of the meaning of everything that exists. Love is also the richest source of the meaning of suffering, which always remains a mystery: We are conscious of the insufficiency and inadequacy of our explanations. Christ causes us to enter into the mystery and to discover the “why” of suffering, as far as we are capable of grasping the sublimity of divine love. In order to discover the profound meaning of suffering . . . we must above all accept the light of revelation. . . . Love is also the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. This answer has been given by God to man in the cross of Jesus Christ. (Salvifici Doloris, 13)” -Pope St John Paul II
“…the thing I’ve been thinking about the most since my time with Colbert is loss. The losses he’s experienced in his life, yes, but really the meaning we all make of our losses. Deaths of loved ones, the phases of our children’s lives hurtling by, jobs and relationships we never imagined would end. All of it. Among other things, our lives are compendiums of loss and change and what we make of it. I’ve never met anyone who’s faced that reality more meaningfully than Stephen Colbert. I suppose, more than anything, that’s what this story is about…
…he is the youngest of eleven kids and that his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, the two closest to him in age, were killed in a plane crash when he was 10. His elder siblings were all off to school or on with their lives by then, and so it was just him and his mother at home together for years.
…He was completely traumatized, of course. And one way of contending with the cruel indifference of the universe is to be indifferent in return. But he was also raised in a deeply Catholic intellectual family (his father had been a dean of Yale Medical School and St. Louis University and the Medical College of South Carolina). And so his rebellion against the world was curiously self-driven and thoughtful. He refused to do anything his teachers required of him, but would come home every day and shut himself in his room and read books. “I had so many books taken away from me,” he said. “I read a book a day. Spent all of my allowance on books. Every birthday, confirmation, Christmas—books, please, stacks of books.”
He barely graduated from high school and then went to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia only because a friend had applied there. He studied philosophy; he joined the school’s theater troupe. After his sophomore year he transferred to Northwestern’s theater program, where he was purely focused on drama. “I was doing Stanislavsky and Meisner, and I was sharing my pain with everyone around me,” he says in an interview that appears in Judd Apatow’s book Sick in the Head. “It was therapy as much as it was anything.”
And then he met Del Close, the legendary improv teacher and mentor and champion of the idea that improvisational comedy, when performed purely, was in fact high expressive art.
“I went, ‘I don’t know what this is, but I have to do it,’ ” he said. “I have to get up onstage and perform extemporaneously with other people.” He was part of the same Second City class that included Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello and Chris Farley. “Our first night professionally onstage,” he said, the longtime Second City director Jeff Michalski told them that the most important lesson he could pass on to them was this: “You have to learn to love the bomb.”
“It took me a long time to really understand what that meant,” Colbert said. “It wasn’t ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time.’ It wasn’t ‘Laugh it off.’ No, it means what it says. You gotta learn to love when you’re failing.… The embracing of that, the discomfort of failing in front of an audience, leads you to penetrate through the fear that blinds you…
…He said he trained himself, not just onstage but every day in life, even in his dream states, to steer toward fear rather than away from it. “I like to do things that are publicly embarrassing,” he said, “to feel the embarrassment touch me and sink into me and then be gone. I like getting on elevators and singing too loudly in that small space. The feeling you feel is almost like a vapor. The discomfort and the wishing that it would end that comes around you. I would do things like that and just breathe it in.” He stopped and took in a deep yogic breath, then slowly shook his head. “Nope, can’t kill me. This thing can’t kill me.”…
…That day after he got back from Michigan, we eventually got around to the question of how it could possibly be that he suffered the losses he’s suffered and somehow arrived here. It’s not just that he doesn’t exhibit any of the anger or open-woundedness of so many other comedians; it’s that he appears to be so genuinely grounded and joyful.
He sat silently for a while and then smiled. “Yeeeahhhh,” he said. “I’m not angry. I’m not. I’m mystified, I’ll tell you that. But I’m not angry.”
There were such depths in the way he said “mystified.”
It was hard to talk about these things, he said. “I want to answer in ways that are not pat. And so I want to take a moment and think of a way to answer that isn’t pre-packaged.”…
…Instead he said, “So my reaction when I hear that question isn’t”—he shifted into a somber, sonorous voice—“ ‘Oh, I don’t want to talk about that.’ It’s that I don’t want to say this—ready?” He snapped his fingers and locked eyes with me in a pose of dramatic intensity. “MY. MOTHER.” His face softened. “But the answer is: my mother.”
He lifted his arms as if to take in the office, the people working and laughing outside his door, the city and the sky, all of it. “And the world,” he said. “It’s so…lovely. I’m very grateful to be alive, even though I know a lot of dead people.” The urge to be grateful, he said, is not a function of his faith. It’s not “the Gospel tells us” and therefore we give thanks. It is what he has always felt: grateful to be alive. “And so that act, that impulse to be grateful, wants an object. That object I call God. Now, that could be many things. I was raised in a Catholic tradition. I’ll start there. That’s my context for my existence, is that I am here to know God, love God, serve God, that we might be happy with each other in this world and with Him in the next—the catechism. That makes a lot of sense to me. I got that from my mom. And my dad. And my siblings.”
He was tracing an arc on the table with his fingers and speaking with such deliberation and care. “I was left alone a lot after Dad and the boys died…. And it was just me and Mom for a long time,” he said. “And by her example am I not bitter. By her example. She was not. Broken, yes. Bitter, no.” Maybe, he said, she had to be that for him. He has said this before—that even in those days of unremitting grief, she drew on her faith that the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from our joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? Imagine being a parent so filled with your own pain, and yet still being able to pass that on to your son.
“It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,” he said. “Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.” He smiled in anticipation of the callback: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that’s why. Maybe, I don’t know. That might be why you don’t see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It’s that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”
I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.
I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien’s mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn’t mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”
He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I’m grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.
“It’s not the same thing as wanting it to have happened,” he said. “But you can’t change everything about the world. You certainly can’t change things that have already happened.”…
…The next thing he said I wrote on a slip of paper in his office and have carried it around with me since. It’s our choice, whether to hate something in our lives or to love every moment of them, even the parts that bring us pain. “At every moment, we are volunteers.”
-by Sean Barry, SJ
“It’s strange to think of being grateful for difficult moments and experiences…And we also can find gratitude in the harder moments of loss and rejection…The surest way to find gratitude in these difficult moments is through prayer. That’s how we find “God in all things,” as the Jesuit motto goes. St. Ignatius taught that God is present and active within all people, things, and circumstances. In some instances, that is easy to see. At other times, it can be hard to see (or even imagine) God present in the messiness of our lives. Our task is to trust God’s presence is in the midst of each imperfect moment, and to lean into that reality through prayer, especially using the Ignatian Examen.
When I finally am able to find God at work in the midst of a situation, I can be grateful for some part of it. And this does not mean that I’m grateful for pain or hurt, either that I experienced or have caused. What it does mean is that I’m grateful for the good that has come out of these moments.
And so, whether or not it seems counter-intuitive, I can be grateful for those hard moments as well as the easy and beautiful ones. It is not always straightforward, especially since life and the world can be hard and full of brokenness and pain. And yet, if God is present in all things, then eventually, even if it takes years and a lot of processing, I can be grateful for even the difficult moments.”
“We could say that suffering . . . is present in order to unleash love in the human person, that unselfish gift of one’s “I” on behalf of other people, especially those who suffer. The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for, so to speak, another world: the world of human love; and in a certain sense man owes to suffering that unselfish love that stirs in his heart and actions.” (Salvific Doloris, 29)
“To suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ. In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering, which is man’s weakness and emptying of self, and he wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self.” (Salvific Doloris, 23)
“Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace. To this grace many saints, such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and others, owe their profound conversion. A result of such a conversion is not only that the individual discovers the salvific meaning of suffering but above all that he becomes a completely new person. He discovers a new dimension, as it were, of his entire life and vocation.” (Salvific Doloris, 26)
Love, Praise Him & His holy will, His Providence,
Matthew
-by Br Thomas Davenport, OP, prior to joining the Order, Br Thomas earned his PhD in Physics from Stanford.
“I figured it would come up eventually, but it took until the end of the very last class. I had wrapped things up, giving a few tips about the final and a reminder about the optional review session. As the students packed up to leave, I reminded them that I would be skipping town the day after the final exam, returning here to Washington, DC, and to my studies for the priesthood, but that I would still be accessible by email. Although I mentioned these details at the first class, five long weeks of three-hour physics sessions must have clouded their memories. The fact that I was not yet an ordained priest, and not a full-time member of the faculty at Providence College, where this summer course took place, seemed like brand new information to these students. As a result, they seemed more fascinated, and more willing (though still sheepish), to ask the question I get fairly often in one form or another: “How does a physicist find his way to the Dominicans?”
The combination of physics and faith is surprising to most people, and a Dominican who studies and teaches physics can seem incongruous. In fact, you could argue that it might have seemed incongruous to St. Dominic himself. In the earliest extant copy of our Constitutions, which date back to the 1220s when St. Dominic first organized the Order with his brethren, there is an explicit prohibition that students:
‘shall not study the books of pagans and philosophers, even for an hour. They shall not learn secular sciences or even the so-called liberal arts, unless the Master of the Order or the general chapter decides to provide otherwise in certain cases. But everyone, both the young and others, shall read only theological books.’
(Ed. I recall reading similar prohibitions against secular subjects when I was a novice. I think, rather than a denial of secular subjects, this wisdom is best understood not to get one’s priorities mixed up, as perhaps Martha did, and Mary, her sister, didn’t.) This seems to place the Dominican physicist, as well as the Dominican economist, English professor, historian and even the Dominican philosopher, in a tough position. It almost appears that the very notion of an institution like Providence College, where Dominicans have taught almost every subject over its nearly century-long history, is an aberration in the designs of our founder.
In some ways, this prohibition on non-theological disciplines seems to fit with the character of St. Dominic, who, in a beloved phrase from the earliest brethren, “always spoke either to God or about God.” Blessed Jordan of Saxony even mentions favorably in his biography of the founder that early on Dominic was anxious to move beyond the liberal arts and into theology, “as if he were reluctant to waste his limited time in these less fruitful studies.” There always is, and should be, a primacy for the Divine in any Dominican, and no Dominican priest escapes formation without rigorous theological training. But it is hard to claim that we all live up to the lofty example set by our founder.
Thankfully, and perhaps mercifully, the ideal of Dominican life is rarely imagined as the close imitation of all aspects of St. Dominic’s life. Rather, the ideal is to follow the way of life he established in the organization and governance of the Order, including the wisdom to allow for dispensation and development over time. While much has remained the same over 800 years of Dominican life, a wide range of things have changed, and the prohibition on secular studies was one of the earliest to be debated and amended. Within a few years of those earliest Constitutions, the Order expanded exponentially, in large part by attracting students and masters of the very secular studies that were initially prohibited and by inspiring these men to devote their lives to theology and preaching. While they generally set aside their earlier pursuits, many saw the value that the secular knowledge they had gained could bring to their preaching and teaching.
The early prohibition reflected not only the temperament of St. Dominic but also the concerns of the Church, which was suffering because of inadequate theological formation among the clergy and a growing tension with those interested in the rediscovered works of ancient Greek authors like Aristotle, which were sometimes pitted against the authority of established doctrine. It would, in fact, take the next generation of Dominicans, especially St. Albert the Great and his student St. Thomas Aquinas, to show how these seemingly dangerous secular studies in logic, natural philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics could, when read in service of the Church and her teachings, bolster and strengthen the very theology that was the accepted “Queen of the Sciences.”
Although St. Dominic may not have explicitly envisioned Dominican physicists, economists, historians, or even Dominican philosophers, I would like to think it is a development he is happy to see. His very inspiration for founding the Order was to defend the goodness of the created order against the heresy of the Albigensians (who maintained that the physical world was evil). In a modern world that too often fails to see how God is connected to the many created things that fascinate us, be it nature, art, money, or any other pursuit, (Ed. and gets its priorities too easily mixed up between creature, which we can see, and Creator, which we can’t) there is a value in having a few Dominicans who can make the appropriate connections and reveal the Divine plan behind it all. Sometimes, to truly speak about God, you have to begin with whatever topic your listeners–whether they are parishioners, students, or strangers–are open to, (Ed. AMEN!!!! Truth speaks to truth, cor ad cor loquitor!) a truth St. Dominic would clearly embrace.”
“Lord, what will become of sinners?”-St Dominic in prayer and tears
“The chapel was still and dark as we filed in, hushed, almost on tiptoe. The first sight we registered in our dim surroundings was the glow of the golden monstrance that framed Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. It was my first silent retreat, held at a convent, with several other young ladies attending. We had just finished our silent meal (unfortunately made up of such indiscreet foods as raw carrots and celery) and were about to start a lengthy period of Eucharistic Adoration.
I knelt reverently in front of the Host before sliding into my pew. After everyone finished her initial settling-in, the silence around us grew thick and almost palpable, only occasionally disturbed with the sound of a covered cough or creak of a kneeler. Closing my eyes and bowing my head, I tried to project an image of someone thoroughly engrossed in prayer, an image in keeping with the circumstances.
But during the beginning of that period of prayer, I kept feeling annoyed and uncomfortable—the kneelers were hard, the stuffy chapel lacked air conditioning, my shoulder kept aching irritatingly. Most awkward to me was the utter and unfamiliar silence. This lack of outward distraction, so unlike what I was used to every day, only seemed to amplify my inward distraction. A few times I squirmed uneasily and almost felt like screaming with exasperation. Since it was so noiseless, why couldn’t I concentrate on the fact that my Lord and my God was here before me? Desperately gathering and dismissing, and re-gathering and re-dismissing, my scattered thoughts (everything from “she’s wearing an interesting top” to “I knew I would forget to mail that birthday card”), I struggled in frustration. I loved God—why couldn’t I “feel” it?
I was thinking this way and trying to concentrate on Our Lord for at least an hour. Silence continued to reign. I could almost hear the minutes, the seconds, heavily dropping away one by one.
However, the longer I knelt in that sacred place, the less distracted I became. The thoughts and noises left in my mind from the everyday world eventually slipped away and dissolved into the silence. My soul slowly became stilled in the tranquility, and as it quieted I became more aware of Christ before me. I raised my eyes and looked on Him, in the appearance of a white Host, bordered by the shining gold and jewels of the kingly monstrance. Right here before us was the center of the chapel, the convent, the world—this Light, piercing the darkness that seemed to spread across everything else we could see. My eyes could not leave His Face, His Beauty. Suddenly I realized that, previously, I had been thinking selfishly. It didn’t matter how I “felt” within or without the silence, because He was the only one who really mattered. This silence which I’d found so oppressive at first became a vehicle of God’s love. The prayers which I had been struggling to express unknotted themselves and wound together seamlessly to make a wordless canticle of praise. I melted in love before the Lord my God.
My first prolonged and completely silent adoration became a defining period in my life. I had never realized how, in such a way, God’s love could be found in the calmness. God is easier to hear in the silence, as we can focus on His direction rather than on the events of the world. Of course struggles and distractions remain, and it takes quite a while every time to become interiorly still and attentive. However, I have glimpsed the power of silence as an aid to prayer and understanding. While I know the great importance of beautiful music and spiritual reading, I am no longer afraid or scornful of simply kneeling in inarticulate praise and love.
In fact, as I knelt that quiet night in adoration, I found no need for words or activities of any kind. Jesus Christ was before me and His Love was around me. And in the silence, my soul was singing.”
By Jove, I think she’s got it! Yes, it does “work”, for lack of a better, more immediate word, that way.
“The most powerful thing we can do on this earth with our time is to spend it in Eucharistic adoration. Nothing can do more to change the world, to bring about peace, to convert hearts, to make reparation for the many evils committed. Spending time in prayer may seem, on the outside, to be a passive thing; however, it is anything but! Our world is in desperate need of hope, of renewal, of a ‘turning back’ to the things of God. By visiting Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, we take up the best weapon for the battles of our age and contribute to the healing of our culture. Cultivating a Eucharistic life of adoration also bears tremendous fruit in our own hearts and lives. We cannot spend time in the rays of His Eucharistic Presence without receiving His grace, His love, His mercy, His peace. As we gaze upon Him Face to face, we are transformed little by little into a closer reflection of His divine image.” —Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration
I love Mormons. I do. They are sincerely the nicest people I have ever met, consistently. I have been to the Temple in SLC. I have my copies of Book of Mormon and Pearl of Great Price. I worked for a lovely family of Mormons, the Humphries, in Stone Harbor, NJ, when I was in high school and college. They owned an ice cream parlor called Springer’s. They still do. It is the social heart for young adults in that beach resort town. They could not have been kinder to me. I went to their local stake with them.
I know it’s hard to believe that Matt would run up to people to talk about religion, shocking, I know, but whenever I see Mormons on mission, I do. I love them. They are the NICEST people in the world!!!
If you drive around the beltway in DC, you will have the pleasure, it is spectacular, of watching a golden statue rise from the leaf canopy in spectacular fashion. It is breathtaking, and obviously, dramatically, intentional. When I returned to the civil engineering firm in Cape May Court House where I was interning that Summer in college, I promptly told the secretary there, who is a Latter Day Saint, that I had seen the Angel Gabriel on top of the Temple in DC rise from the trees!!!!! She gently informed me it wasn’t Gabriel, it was Moroni. 🙂
“After my July 27th Catholic Answers Live appearance, I was directed to an open letter written to me by a Mormon English teacher. Most of his objections are addressed in my new booklet 20 Answers: Mormonism, but I felt it would be worthwhile to respond to this critic, Jamie Huston, on this blog.
What are your sources?
Huston begins by posing ten questions based on general observations of my responses given during the CA Live broadcast. His first five questions are basically variants of the same question, “Have you done your homework?” He asks:
Have you engaged many Latter-day Saints in conversation about your claims regarding us? What have been the primary sources of your education about Latter-day Saints? How many sources have you studied and are they published by the LDS church?
To answer Mr. Huston: yes, I have done my homework. In my booklet on Mormonism, I cite primarily from the Mormon “standard works” (e.g. the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price) as well as official announcements from the First Presidency, which is the highest governing body in the LDS Church. I’ve also read extensively the work of contemporary Mormon apologists and have visited the website of FAIR Mormon, an online LDS apologetics website.
So, yes, I am well aware of the arguments made for Mormonism, as well as Mormon rebuttals to arguments made against the faith, all of which I have found unconvincing. That is not to say that I find them to be irrational or easy to refute (an attitude Huston accuses me of having in questions 7 and 10 of his post).
It means only that, after weighing the evidence, I have found the Mormon position unable to account for what we know from the Bible, from history, and from natural theology. I’m sure Mr. Huston feels that Catholicism and all other non-Mormon faiths also do not account for the available evidence, so he can’t fault me for having a similar attitude toward his faith.
Question 6 asks, “Are you aware of any accusations that have ever been made about LDS belief or practice that were distorted or inaccurate?” Yes; in fact, question 2 of my booklet corrects mistaken views people have about Mormon polygamy, temple garments, and endowment ceremonies (while respecting the confidentiality of these ceremonies).
Concerning the Strange and the Speculative
Question 8 says that some of my arguments against Mormonism rely on “strange or unappealing [details],” such as my comments about the phrase “and it came to pass” in the Book of Mormon. Huston asks if this is a good standard for judging if the Book of Mormon is true.
My comment about the phrase “it came to pass” was a passing one about the Book of Mormon. The fact that this phrase occurs almost twenty times more often in the Book of Mormon than it does in the Bible should be expected if the former were just an improvised dictation and not divinely inspired writing. (See Thomas Finley’s critique in the anthology The New Mormon Challenge of how the Book of Mormon uses this phrase.) But this wasn’t my main argument against the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
In my booklet, I showed that there are other, more serious reasons to question the Book of Mormon, including passages that are plagiarized from the New Testament (which was supposedly not available to the ancient authors of the book of Mormon) and anachronistic details about ancient America. And, yes, I have read Mormon defenses against these charges but have found them unconvincing.
For example, some Mormon apologists say that the descriptions of swords in the New World are not anachronistic, even though steel did not exist in the New World prior to Spanish colonization. That’s because some New World tribes made swords out of clubs laced with volcanic glass called obsidian. But this doesn’t explain the Book of Mormon’s description of these swords rusting (Mosiah 8:11), which glass cannot do.
Question 9 says that my analysis of the Mormon concept of God represents “digging” into “obscure and trivial parts of [the Mormon] religion.” Huston asks if this is “a tacit admission that the vast majority of Mormonism is innocuous if not actually positive?”
This raises the question as to what the “main parts” of the Mormon faith are. I would argue that God is a central part of not just the Mormon faith but of any faith. So the fact that Mormons believe that they will become gods (Doctrine and Covenants 132:20) and that God the Father has a physical body (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22), lives near a celestial object called Kolob (Book of Abraham 3:3-4), and created us with the assistance of a Heavenly Mother (Origin of Man, 1909) are not obscurities but crucial doctrines that must be evaluated.
And, no, I haven’t had to dig into some obscure archive in order to find these details. They are readily available in the standard works of the Mormon faith, particularly Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. The First Presidency taught in 1909 that alongside heavenly Father there is another divine figure called “Heavenly Mother” who was involved in creating human beings. Past LDS President Gordon Hinkley even said, “Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me.”
Finally, the absence of compelling historical evidence for the events described in the Book of Mormon is troubling, and certainly Mr. Huston would agree that what is recorded in the Book of Mormon is not an “obscure” or “trivial” part of his faith!
The Witness of the Spirit
After his general observations, Huston addresses three specific issues I brought up in my CA Live appearance. The first is the Mormon practice of asking people to pray in order to discern if the Book of Mormon is true. I said this is a subjective and therefore poor way to discover if a religion is true, which Huston countered by citing Luke 24:32, James 1:5, and Matthew 7:7-8.
But in Luke 24, Jesus actually appeared and disappeared in front of the disciples on the Emmaus road, thus confirming his message and identity beyond what those two men felt. Matthew 7 deals only with asking for spiritual gifts, not knowledge about religious truth, and James 1:5 promises only that God will help us be wise, or apply our knowledge in prudent ways.
James does not teach us that God will give us knowledge about other religions or confirm if they are true or false simply through prayer and personal feelings. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it?” Instead, as 1 Timothy 3:15 says, the “the pillar and foundation of truth” is not a personal testimony but “the Church of the living God.”
Huston also says:
How do you account for the millions of people who have felt the power of the Holy Ghost testifying to them the truth of the Book of Mormon and the restored gospel? Can such a wide variety of people, over centuries and around the world, be deceiving themselves in such a consistent way? If it’s wishful thinking, when else has wishful thinking led to lives of compassionate charity and devotion fueled by sacrifice and self-denial?
But this argument could justify any religion. How does Huston account for the millions of people across the centuries who felt the spirit of God move them to embrace Catholicism, or Protestantism, or Islam, or Hinduism, or Buddhism? Don’t these faiths also possess people with lives of “compassionate charity and devotion fueled by sacrifice and self-denial”?
If this argument proves Mormonism is true, then it also proves every other major religion is true, and therefore it becomes useless as a defense of Mormonism. This also applies to Huston’s other argument: “If the Book of Mormon isn’t true, and someone prays about it, wouldn’t God clearly answer, ‘No! Get away from those lies and back to the Bible alone!’ Why wouldn’t God answer a prayer like that?”
So, according to Huston, since God doesn’t often correct people who accept the Book of Mormon, that means the book of Mormon is true. Okay, but God doesn’t routinely correct people who dismiss the book of Mormon, nor does he usually tell people who read the Qu’ran or the Catechism of the Catholic Church “get away from those lies!” Does that mean that Islam and Catholicism are true? Once again, Huston’s argument proves too much.
I agree with Huston that God can speak to someone’s heart to help him see the truth of the gospel message, but God also left us with evidence to help us determine when he actually has revealed himself. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 says we should test everything and retain what is good, not that we should pray only about important matters of faith. When Mormonism is tested for historical accuracy and sound theology, it falls short in both areas.
Becoming “Like” God, or Becoming Gods?
Huston says that the doctrine of “becoming like God” supposedly “got on my nerves,” but it’s not the doctrine of becoming like God that I found to be absurd (this is called theosis and is referenced in paragraph 460 of the Catechism). It’s the Mormon doctrine that those who follow all their ordinances will actually become gods—and, yes, we should be alarmed at a doctrine like that. Huston asks, “Which official LDS sources do you base the many extensions of this teaching that you cited?”
I’m glad he asked.
Along with the famous couplet from the fifth Mormon president, Lorenzo Snow (“As man now is, God once was: As God now is, man may be”), we have the words of Mormonism’s greatest prophet: Joseph Smith. Huston says I don’t have sources to back up the first half of Snow’s couplet; but in his King Follett sermon, Joseph Smith said, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens!”
Mr. Huston, is Joseph Smith wrong or right about God? If he’s right, then why not just accept Snow’s couplet? If Smith is wrong, then why should we trust the other things this so-called prophet said?
Huston explains the second part of Snow’s couplet by saying that we are “literal spirit children of God” and that “throughout the eternities of the next life, we can continue growing until we grow up to become like our Father and we will enjoy the same great blessings that make Heavenly Father God.” This includes the ability to “someday create spirit children of our own.”
But the Bible never says we are God’s literal children, only that we are his children through adoption (Romans 8:15). Jesus is the “only begotten” Son of God or the “one of a kind” Son of God (Greek, monogenous [John 3:18]). It’s true that in heaven we will share in many of God’s communicable attributes, like his holiness, but we can never become God, since God is the uncreated and infinite act of being.
We are and always will be creatures who, if we die in a state of grace, will adore the infinite God for all eternity. The Bible and Sacred Tradition never speak of us having “spirit children” in the next life, and they affirm that there is only one God, which means we cannot become “gods” (see Isaiah 43:10, Isaiah 44:8, John 5:44, John 17:3, 1 Timothy 6:16).
Joseph Smith and other early Mormon leaders were more explicit about the Mormon doctrine that believers will “become gods.” Smith said in the King Follett sermon:
[Y]ou have got to learn how to be gods yourselves, and to be kings and priests to God, the same as all gods have done before you, namely, by going from one small degree to another, and from a small capacity to a great one; from grace to grace, from exaltation to exaltation.
Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, said, “The Lord created you and me for the purpose of becoming Gods like Himself” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 3, 93.) In the twentieth century, the Mormon apostle Bruce McConkie said, “This full salvation is obtained in and through the continuation of the family unit in eternity, and those who obtain it are gods” (Mormon Doctrine, 472). The current Encyclopedia of Mormonism says, “This process known as eternal progression is succinctly expressed in the LDS aphorism, ‘As man is, God once was. As God is, man may become.”
It’s true this teaching is not explicitly found in Mormonism’s standard works, but consider the words of prominent Mormon theologian Stephen E. Robinson:
It is the official teaching of the LDS Church that God the Father has a physical body (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22). The belief that God the Father was once a human being rests mainly on two technically uncanonized sources (sermons of Joseph Smith and Lorenzo Snow) which have, however, in effect become normative” [emphasis added] (How Wide the Divide?, p. 79).
Finally, I agree with Huston that the LDS Church has not defined how “spirit children” are made or who will be exalted, but what it has defined is heretical and must be rejected by orthodox Christians.
Is Jesus God or god?
Huston next says I was “flat-out” wrong in saying that Mormons don’t believe Jesus is God and demands sources for this allegation. Of course, that depends on how you define the word God. Mormons believe Jesus is “God” in the sense that we are all “gods.” According to their theology, we are all God’s literal spirit children (including Jesus) and were fashioned from eternally preexisting “intelligences” (Doctrine and Covenants 93:29).
Jesus allegedly told Joseph Smith, “I was in the beginning with the Father, and am the First-born; And all those who are begotten through me are partakers of the glory of the same, and are the church of the First-born. Ye were also in the beginning with the Father” (Doctrine and Covenants, 93:31-33).
The First Presidency taught in 1909,“The Father of Jesus is our Father also. . . . Jesus, however, is the first-born among all the sons of God—the first begotten in the spirit, and the only begotten in the flesh. He is our elder brother, and we, like Him, are in the image of God.” Jesus is our sibling because he was created like we were (which means he can’t be God, since God is uncreated).
Jesus is even the Devil’s brother, since God created both of them. The Mormon apologetics website FAIR Mormon admits, “[I]t is technically true to say that Jesus and Satan are ‘brothers,’ in the sense that both have the same spiritual parent, God the Father.”
However, to distinguish our faith from this heretical belief, Christians say in the Creed that the Son was “begotten, not made” (the term made applies to creatures like us or the angels), “one in being with the Father” and not a distinct being he created.
Huston says, “Mormons believe that Jesus Christ is Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament. (Did you know that?).” I did, but Mormons erroneously believe that the Bible teaches the existence of two Gods, Elohim and Jehovah. Elohim is supposed to be God the Father, while Jehovah is God the Son; but this doesn’t explain passages that identify one God by both these designations. One example of this would be Deuteronomy 6:4, which says, “Hear O Israel, Yahweh [Jehovah] our Elohim is one.” Notice also that Huston restricts Jesus to being “the God of the Old Testament” as if there is a different God of the New Testament. But isn’t Jesus the God of the whole Bible?
Huston also says, even though they each have their own glorified but physical body, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are absolutely united in all things, as both the Bible and Book of Mormon teach. Therefore, they are both God.
But if we are talking about two embodied beings, then we are talking about two gods, not one. Saying they are one being because they cooperate perfectly is like saying a miraculously cooperating Penn and Teller are one magician! Huston’s language is reminiscent of the previous LDS president Gordon Hinkley, who said of the Father and the Son, “They are distinct beings, but they are one in purpose and effort” (Gospel Principles, 37) and the LDS official website, which says, “each member of the Godhead is a separate being.”
So, if the Father and Son are separate beings (plural), and God just is being itself (singular, infinite, and undivided) then the Father and Son can’t be God. They would instead be gods, with the Father having a higher ontological status than the Son. But this contradicts Christian theology, which teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons who exist as the one being of God. The Catechism says:
We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity” . . . the real distinction of the persons from one another resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another (CCC 253, 255).
Finally, I’ll close with some questions of my own for Mr. Huston:
When Jesus said the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt. 16:18) and instructed believers to bring sinners to “the Church” (Matt. 18:17), did he mean it? If Jesus is God, then wouldn’t he have known about the so-called “great apostasy” involving the Church “falling away” from the gospel (until it was restored by Joseph Smith?). If Jesus knew that would happen, why did he speak and act as if it would not?
How many gods are there? If there is more than one god, then how do you explain Isaiah 44:8, where God says, “Is there a God besides me? I know not any”; or John 5:44, where Jesus speaks of the glory of “the only God”?
In Acts 7:59, Stephen prayed to Jesus before his martyrdom, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Would you be comfortable directly asking Jesus to receive your spirit before death like Stephen did? Would you say to Jesus, “You are my Lord and God” like Thomas did (John 20:28)? Now, it’s true Jesus taught us to pray to the Father, but where in Scripture did Jesus say we must pray only to the Father? Since Jesus taught his disciples to pray only the Our Father, do you say only that prayer, or are other kinds of prayers allowed?
Can you tell me with any certainty and specificity where the events in the Book of Mormon took place? Doesn’t it concern you that even atheistic archaeologists agree with Christians and Jews on where many major events in the Bible took place but no such agreement is found regarding the events described in the book of Mormon?
Is there anything that would convince you that Mormonism is false? If not, then why should you expect other people to leave their faiths and become Mormon when you aren’t prepared to do the same?
In closing, I thank Mr. Huston for his response and encourage him, and anyone else reading this, to evaluate the evidence and not rely on emotions, which can lead us into error.”
COMMENTS:
“#1 Gene Fadness – Boise, Idaho
Your response, Trent, is thorough, correct and well-documented. As a former temple Mormon and missionary, I can tell you that the struggle we face is getting our LDS friends to acknowledge their entire faith history and theology. It’s a young faith, but there are already clear demarcations made between “old” Mormonism and “new” Mormonism. In the last 30 years, there is great reluctance to talk about eternal progression and men becoming gods. Google the Gordon Hinckley interview with Larry King where he does all he can to gloss over it. Some LDS who truly understand their faith and history even accused Hinckley of denying an essential doctrine. The modern church “glosses” over all those unpleasant topics such as men becoming gods, how Jesus was conceived, the existence of Kolob, the reasons for polygamy or a priesthood that once excluded people of African descent. Because they believe in modern revelation they have a convenient way to deny what past “prophets” and “apostles” have written.
“Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” – G.K. Chesterton
Here in Wisconsin, our legislature is debating the ban on sale of aborted fetal tissue, enflamed by the recent Planned Parenthood expose’ videos. The dean of the medical school of the University of Wisconsin and a couple legislators have argued against this ban citing the benefits of medical research. Clearly, I note, they are not catechized in Catholic teaching.
CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH PART THREE LIFE IN CHRIST
SECTION ONE MAN’S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT
CHAPTER ONE THE DIGNITY OF THE HUMAN PERSON
ARTICLE 4 THE MORALITY OF HUMAN ACTS
1749 Freedom makes man a moral subject. When he acts deliberately, man is, so to speak, the father of his acts. Human acts, that is, acts that are freely chosen in consequence of a judgment of conscience, can be morally evaluated. They are either good or evil.
I. THE SOURCES OF MORALITY
1750 The morality of human acts depends on:
– the object chosen;
– the end in view or the intention;
– the circumstances of the action.
The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the “sources,” or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.
1751 The object chosen is a good toward which the will deliberately directs itself. It is the matter of a human act. The object chosen morally specifies the act of the will, insofar as reason recognizes and judges it to be or not to be in conformity with the true good. Objective norms of morality express the rational order of good and evil, attested to by conscience.
1752 In contrast to the object, the intention resides in the acting subject. Because it lies at the voluntary source of an action and determines it by its end, intention is an element essential to the moral evaluation of an action. The end is the first goal of the intention and indicates the purpose pursued in the action. The intention is a movement of the will toward the end: it is concerned with the goal of the activity. It aims at the good anticipated from the action undertaken. Intention is not limited to directing individual actions, but can guide several actions toward one and the same purpose; it can orient one’s whole life toward its ultimate end. For example, a service done with the end of helping one’s neighbor can at the same time be inspired by the love of God as the ultimate end of all our actions. One and the same action can also be inspired by several intentions, such as performing a service in order to obtain a favor or to boast about it.
1753A good intention (for example, that of helping one’s neighbor) does not make behavior that is intrinsically disordered, such as lying and calumny, good or just. The end does not justify the means. Thus the condemnation of an innocent person cannot be justified as a legitimate means of saving the nation. On the other hand, an added bad intention (such as vainglory) makes an act evil that, in and of itself, can be good (such as almsgiving).39
1754 The circumstances, including the consequences, are secondary elements of a moral act. They contribute to increasing or diminishing the moral goodness or evil of human acts (for example, the amount of a theft). They can also diminish or increase the agent’s responsibility (such as acting out of a fear of death). Circumstances of themselves cannot change the moral quality of acts themselves; they can make neither good nor right an action that is in itself evil.
II. GOOD ACTS AND EVIL ACTS
1755A morally good act requires the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances together. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself (such as praying and fasting “in order to be seen by men”).
The object of the choice can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety. There are some concrete acts – such as fornication – that it is always wrong to choose, because choosing them entails a disorder of the will, that is, a moral evil.
1756It is therefore an error to judge the morality of human acts by considering only the intention that inspires them or the circumstances (environment, social pressure, duress or emergency, etc.) which supply their context. There are acts which, in and of themselves, independently of circumstances and intentions, are always gravely illicit by reason of their object; such as blasphemy and perjury, murder and adultery. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.
IN BRIEF
1757 The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the three “sources” of the morality of human acts.
1758 The object chosen morally specifies the act of willing accordingly as reason recognizes and judges it good or evil.
1759“An evil action cannot be justified by reference to a good intention” (cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Dec. praec. 6). The end does not justify the means.
1760A morally good act requires the goodness of its object, of its end, and of its circumstances together.
1761There are concrete acts that it is always wrong to choose, because their choice entails a disorder of the will, i.e., a moral evil. One may not do evil so that good may result from it.”
“Many people after discovering the faith soon realize that it is sometimes difficult to discern God’s will in a given situation. Most people think that knowing God’s will is impossible. After all, He gave us our natural capacity to reason and He has revealed Himself to us – so the rest is up to us. There is some truth to this, especially at the beginning of the spiritual life. But anyone who tries to make progress in our pilgrimage of faith this way is soon discouraged.
Following Christ often requires us to act in ways far beyond what common sense would dictate. This is why St. Paul urges, “calling to mind the mercy of God, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, your spiritual worship. Do not conform yourselves to this age, but live a transformed life by the renewal of your minds – so that you may discern what is God’s will — what is good, pleasing and perfect” (Romans 12:1-2).
As long as we try to live like everybody else, as long as we think like everyone else, our ability to know God’s will is severely impeded. The mercy of God revealed by Christ crucified gives us a different standard. The pathway to knowing the will of God is found in loving imitation of the Lord who laid down His life for His friends. God’s will is found in the Cross.
We can find the Cross, first of all through, loving sacrifice no matter how small or insignificant or hidden from the world. In fact, the more hidden the better. In the old days, this was called “offering it up.” Whatever is the least desired, least comfortable, least understood – God’s will is hidden there waiting to be discovered. Whenever we renounce anything out of love and devotion to the Lord, whenever we bear a trial for His glory, whenever we offer up our internal pain and continue out of faithfulness to Him – this action opens up space in our hearts and minds, space for God’s will to flow into our will. Paradoxically, this never overthrows our freedom but expands it, liberating us from selfishness and anything else that prevents us from loving to the full.
The Cross of Christ is also found whenever we are moved to do something beautiful for God. It was in her effort to do something beautiful for God that Blessed Teresa of Calcutta heard the call her to be His light. She discovered in her efforts to do something beautiful for God new facets of His Holy Will that would have otherwise remained hidden. St. John of the Cross lived by this same wisdom and marveled at the immense horizon of love and freedom God’s will contains. He came to counsel those who were seeking the Will of God, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.”
-by Rev Timothy Norris, pastor of St. Paul in Ham Lake, MN, delivered at Sunday Mass, Oct. 27, 2013
“O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” In my homily today I would like to talk to you about the very difficult and painful subject of the clergy sexual abuse scandal which is once again very much in the news here locally as a result of the recent investigative reports conducted by Minnesota Public Radio news into some recent cases of actual and alleged sexual misconduct by some priests of our archdiocese, and allegations of how archdiocesan officials may have mishandled their response to these events.
I hope that what I say here does not add to the pain or alienation that anyone here may be feeling; rather, my aim is to search for hope and healing, as difficult as that may seem given the present circumstances.
First and foremost, I want to apologize to all victims of sexual misconduct by priests or other members of the clergy, and to their families and loved ones.
I know the shame and anguish I feel as a member of the Church and of the clergy that you have been subjected to such a horrific betrayal of trust, and I can only imagine the depths of your suffering. I want to apologize also for the many failures of our Church leadership and others who have left you feeling doubly victimized by their failure to prevent the abuse or to acknowledge their mistakes and to seek to make amends.
I hope and pray that you can find healing. And, if there is any way that I can be of assistance in that healing, I would be glad to help you to the extent that I am able.
We are all sinners
Secondly, I must acknowledge and confess that I, too, am a sinner, and that I am very sorry for all of the ways that I have failed in thought, word and deed to reflect the purity and love of our Lord Jesus Christ in my priestly ministry and life. I ask forgiveness from God and from all of you. “O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Pope Francis was asked in a recent interview that received much publicity, “Who is Jorge Mario Bergoglio?” And, his response was, “I am a sinner . . . . I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.”
He then goes on to explain using the image of a famous painting known as the calling of St. Matthew by Caravaggio (above): “That finger of Jesus pointing at Matthew. That’s me. I feel like him. Like Matthew. It is the gesture of Matthew that strikes me: he holds on to his money as if to say, ‘No, not me! No, this money is mine.’ Here, this is me, a sinner on whom the Lord has turned his gaze. And this is what I said when they asked me if I would accept my election as pontiff. I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.”
St. Matthew was a publican, a tax collector. In the Gospel reading today, Jesus uses the simple prayer of another publican, “O God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” to point out an awful truth: That no matter how self-righteous and holy we think we might be, we are all just sinners.
Archbishop Nienstedt in his column this week in The Catholic Spirit acknowledges that, in regard to the efforts to prevent and address clergy misconduct during this past decade, “serious mistakes have been made. . . . There is reason to question whether or not the policies and procedures were uniformly followed. There is also a question as to the prudence of the judgments that have been made.”
Now, we who look at those failures from the outside may be tempted to scoff and judge like the Pharisee: “Thank God I am not like those jerks — more interested in their own reputations and protecting the image of the Church and pedophile priests than they are in protecting children.”
But, in all honesty, have we ever tried to put ourselves in their place? Hindsight is always 20/20. But are we really so certain that we might not make the same mistakes or misjudgments, whether out of ignorance, fear and cowardice, pride or ambition?
We might think, “Thank God I am not like those pedophile priests.” But how many of us struggle with lustful inclinations, viewing adult pornography, masturbation, pre-marital sex, infidelity, etc.? Do those things make us a danger to be around children?
We think, ‘But I would never harm a child.’ Yet, how many of us have ever come close, losing our temper with the kids perhaps? Our society is rightly intolerant of child sexual abuse, but why do so many in our society champion the right for a child’s life to be extinguished before it has even been born?
I mention these things not to make excuses for or downplay the gravity of the offenses of pedophile clergy, or Church leaders who fail to protect the young and vulnerable. Those offenses are rightly to be condemned, and they need to be corrected.
Rather, the thing that I want to point out is that there, but for the grace of God, go I. Sin is a universal human condition. Nobody can say, “Thank God I am not like the rest of humanity,’’ because we are all sinners.
I am a sinner. Archbishop Nienstedt is a sinner. Pope Francis is a sinner. We are all sinners. And, we come to the Church as sinners in search of mercy and redemption. The scandal of clergy sexual abuse is the problem of how the Church is at the same time holy and yet sinful in its members. It is a problem that has existed ever since the Church began.
Difficult questions
Now, I have spent much time in prayer and reflection this week agonizing over this problem, at times almost to the point of despair. The contradiction between the holiness of the priest who is called to serve and love the Church in the image of Christ the Good Shepherd, and the priest who betrays that trust by abusing a child is so great that it boggles the mind.
How is this possible?
Why can this happen?
Why doesn’t anybody stop it?
It has been announced that next year Pope John Paul II will be canonized a saint. Some critics claim that Pope John Paul II should not be canonized because they think he did not do enough to address the problem of clergy sexual abuse. But let me suggest for a moment that I think the scandal goes even higher up than the pope.
Well, who is higher up than the pope? Let me suggest that the scandal started with Jesus. It sounds blasphemous. But hear me out.
Who after all was responsible for appointing the first pope and bishops in the Church? Was it not Jesus when he chose the Twelve Apostles?
Why did he choose men like Peter, who tried to turn down the job by saying, “Leave me Lord, I am a sinful man,” or like doubting Thomas, or Matthew the greedy tax collector — men he knew would all deny and abandon him like cowards in his hour of need?
True, all men are weak and sinful. Jesus had to choose somebody, but were these really the best men he could find?
Most scandalous of all, why did he choose Judas Iscariot, who he knew full well would betray him and, unlike the others, would despair and take his own life, and not turn back in faith? At least the pope and bishops are mere human beings, who may not know if a priest they are about to ordain will turn out to be a pedophile or not. But we believe that Jesus is the all-powerful, all-knowing God, and yet he knew Judas would betray him. Why did He do nothing to stop it?
After all, we believe that God gave special grace to the Blessed Virgin Mary to preserve her from all stain of sin, so that she could be the mother of his son. If Jesus is truly the head of his Church, then why doesn’t he give special grace to his priests to keep them from sin?
Or, at the very least, why doesn’t he prevent the pedophiles from becoming priests in the first place? How can God let innocent children suffer such abuse? Doesn’t he care? Is he punishing us? Doesn’t he love us? Does he even exist?
The question has been asked so many times before. Why does God let bad things happen to good people? Why doesn’t God put an end to war, crime, poverty, and injustice? Why does God allow rapists, and murderers and pedophiles to run rampant in our streets? Why does God allow the weeds to grow with the wheat? Why, oh why, oh why must these evils exist in our world?
The scandal of clergy sexual abuse of minors is the very face of evil glaring at us, mocking our faith and hope in a loving, caring God, challenging us to deny that such a God exists, and daring us to leave the Church behind as just a bunch of deluded, hypocritical fools.
Of course, abandoning faith in God and the Church won’t really change the sorry lot of humanity. One will still have to resign oneself to living in a risky world, full of pedophiles and predators and evil lurking around every corner with little hope that things might get any better. Is there any alternative to just simple resignation, or even worse, giving up on it all in despair?
At this point I want to cry out like Job, “I have spoken but did not understand; things too marvelous for me, which I did not know. Therefore I disown what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes.”
And all that I am left with is the disturbing image of Jesus suffering and dying on the cross, with his mother Mary crying in anguish beneath him.
What terrible suffering Mary must have felt at that moment knowing that Jesus had been betrayed and abandoned by his closest friends — the same sort of suffering I imagine a parent must feel when their child has been abused by a priest. “How could you do such a thing to my son?”
Why did Jesus allow his innocent mother Mary to experience such pain? She had done no wrong. She did not need to be punished for anything. And, yet, he allowed it. Seeing his mother suffer must only have added so much more to his own pain and humiliation, and yet he accepted it.
Our faith teaches us that he accepted it as the price that needed to be paid for our salvation from sin — the mystery of Christ crucified, “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” The absurdity that we dare to believe is that the cross, that suffering, and that all the evils that exist in our world, including the devastating scandal and pain of clergy sexual abuse, can be instruments of redemption, if we, by faith in the grace of God, do not let the power of such evils to overcome our ability to love.
That is what Jesus showed us by pardoning his persecutors from the cross. “Father, forgive them, they know not what they are doing.” That is what he showed us when he gathered Peter and the other disciples together again after his resurrection, that he still wanted to be their friend, despite how they had hurt him with their denials and abandonment.
That is the grace that he must have given to his mother Mary for her, too, to be able to forgive and gather together again as friends with the disciples in the upper room when they all received the Holy Spirit.
In this moment, Jesus is inviting us to not lose faith and hope in the power of his love to overcome and heal the wounds of sin. Jesus says to each one of us, “I have forgiven you for all of the pain and sorrow you have caused me by your sins. So do not let your hearts be hardened by the pain and suffering that others’ sins have caused to you, even the terrible betrayal of clergy sexual abuse. I know its hurts; I know it is hard, but do not let the pain overcome your ability to love and to forgive. Forgive even if those who have hurt you do not acknowledge their sins or change their ways. Forgive 70 times seven times. Trust in the power of my grace and love, to help you carry your heavy burden, to heal your broken heart, and to live once again in love, compassion and peace.”
Working to do better
As a member of the clergy I do acknowledge that many of my brothers in the clergy have sinned against you, that many in our Church leadership have sinned against you, that I have sinned against you.
While I may not be personally responsible for all the acts of sexual abuse, and negligent in preventing those abuses that have occurred, I cannot, of course, ask for your forgiveness of these sins without expressing true contrition and a resolve to make amends.
I hope you know by now how truly sorry I am for the pain that so many children and families have had to endure because of the evil of clergy sexual abuse.
I know that many people are rightly angry and frustrated with our Church leadership for not doing more to acknowledge our failures and to correct them. While I cannot speak directly for them, I believe that Archbishop Nienstedt and the others in our Church leadership responsible for supervising our clergy are indeed sorrowful as well, and regret very much the pain that has been caused to people because of the abuse.
I think that they are imperfect human persons, like myself, who, given a very tough job and responsibility, have tried to do what they thought was best at the time, but nevertheless have made mistakes and questionable judgments, as the archbishop admits in his column [Oct. 24] in The Catholic Spirit.
Out of love and justice for those who have been victimized by clergy sexual abuse, I know there is so much more that we need to do to make amends for our past failures, and to change our ways and correct our faults, so that we can do better at protecting our children and the vulnerable from further abuse in the future.
To this end, Archbishop Nienstedt in his column has spelled out some initial steps that the archdiocese will implement, including a special independent task force to investigate all matters related to sexual misconduct by clergy and to recommend further changes and improvements for preventing abuse in the future.
The archbishop has also ordered a review of all clergy personnel files by an outside firm to evaluate whether anyone who is currently serving in active ministry might be a risk to public safety.
For my part, as your pastor, I promise to do all that I can here at the Church of St. Paul or in other spheres where I might have influence, to make sure that our policies and procedures for the protection of the vulnerable and young are being implemented and followed and improved as needed.
If you or someone you know has been victimized by clergy or others and you are in need of help, don’t be afraid to seek it. There is help available from trained civil authorities in government child protection, social services and law enforcement agencies.
With the exception of what I hear in the confessional, I, as a member of the clergy, as well as teachers, and other counselors, are required by Minnesota law to report any suspected abuse of a minor or vulnerable adult to these same civil authorities. However, if there is any way I can be assistance to anyone struggling with these problems, I offer to do what I can to help. Our archdiocese also offers victim advocacy and assistance services.
It is an unrealistic and impossible expectation that we will ever be able to completely eliminate all risk of clergy sexual misconduct and abuse from our Church, no matter how hard we try. But that is no reason for not trying and doing all that we can to do better.
Ultimately, however, as weak, imperfect, sinful human people, we must rely on God´s grace and mercy to sustain us and help us in all of our efforts to heal, to reconcile and to protect each other from harm.
-by Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, (1918 – 2008), Dulles was raised a Presbyterian but had become an agnostic by the time he was a student at Harvard. Subsequent to his conversion to Catholicism, he held the Laurence J. McGinley Chair in Religion and Society at Fordham University. This essay is adapted from the Laurence J. McGinley Lecture delivered on November 7, 2007.
“Nothing is more striking in the New Testament than the confidence with which it proclaims the saving power of belief in Christ. Almost every page confronts us with a decision of eternal consequence: Will we follow Christ or the rulers of this world? The gospel is, according to Paul, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith” (Rom. 1:16). The apostles and their associates are convinced that in Jesus they have encountered the Lord of Life and that He has brought them into the way that leads to everlasting blessedness. By personal faith in Him and by baptism in His name, Christians have passed from darkness to light, from error to truth, and from sin to holiness.
Paul is the outstanding herald of salvation through faith. To the Romans he writes, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:9). Faith, for him, is inseparable from baptism, the sacrament of faith. By baptism, the Christian is immersed in the death of Christ so as to be raised with Him to newness of life (Rom. 6:3-4).
The Book of Acts shows the apostles preaching faith in Christ as the way to salvation. Those who believe the testimony of Peter on the first Pentecost ask him what they must do to be saved. He replies that they must be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and thereby save themselves from the present crooked generation (Acts 2:37-40). When Peter and John are asked by the Jewish religious authorities by what authority they are preaching and performing miracles, they reply that they are acting in the name of Jesus Christ and that “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Paul and his associates bring the gospel first of all to the Jews because it is the fulfillment of the Old Testament promises. When the Jews in large numbers reject the message, Paul and Barnabas announce that they are turning to the Gentiles in order to bring salvation to the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts 13:46-47).
A few chapters later in Acts, we see Paul and Silas in prison at Philippi. When their jailer asks them, “What must I do to be saved?” they reply, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.” The jailer and his family at once accept baptism and rejoice in their newfound faith (Acts 16:30-34).
The same doctrine of salvation permeates the other books of the New Testament. Mark’s gospel ends with this missionary charge: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:15-16).
John in his gospel speaks no less clearly. Jesus at one point declares that those who hear His word and believe in Him do not remain in darkness, whereas those who reject Him will be judged on the last day (John 12:44-50). At the Last Supper, Jesus tells the Twelve, “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent” (John 17:3). John concludes the body of his gospel with the statement that he has written his account “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31).
From these and many other texts, I draw the conclusion that, according to the primary Christian documents, salvation comes through personal faith in Jesus Christ, followed and signified by sacramental baptism.
The New Testament is almost silent about the eternal fate of those to whom the gospel has not been preached. It seems apparent that those who became believers did not think they had been on the road to salvation before they heard the gospel. In his sermon at Athens, Paul says that in times past God overlooked the ignorance of the pagans, but he does not say that these pagans were saved. In the first chapter of Romans, Paul says that the Gentiles have come to a knowledge of God by reasoning from the created world, but that they are guilty because by their wickedness they have suppressed the truth and fallen into idolatry. In the second chapter of Romans, Paul indicates that Gentiles who are obedient to the biddings of conscience can be excused for their unbelief, but he indicates that they fall into many sins. He concludes that “all have sinned and fall short” of true righteousness (Rom. 3:23). For justification, Paul asserts, both Jews and Gentiles must rely on faith in Jesus Christ, Who expiated the sins of the world on the cross.
Animated by vibrant faith in Christ the Savior, the Christian Church was able to conquer the Roman Empire. The converts were convinced that in embracing Christianity they were escaping from the darkness of sin and superstition and entering into the realm of salvation. For them, Christianity was the true religion, the faith that saves. It would not have occurred to them that any other faith could save them.
Christian theologians, however, soon had to face the question whether anyone could be saved without Christian faith. They did not give a wholly negative answer. They agreed that the patriarchs and prophets of Israel, because they looked forward in faith and hope to the Savior, could be saved by adhering in advance to Him Who was to come.
The apologists of the second and third centuries made similar concessions with regard to certain Greek philosophers. The prologue to John’s gospel taught that the eternal Word enlightens all men who come into the world. Justin Martyr speculated that philosophers such as Socrates and Heraclitus had lived according to the Word of God, the Logos Who was to become incarnate in Christ, and they could therefore be reckoned as being in some way Christians. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen held that the Wisdom of God gave graces to people of every generation, both Greeks and barbarians.
The saving grace of which these theologians were speaking, however, was given only to pagans who lived before the time of Christ. It was given by the Word of God Who was to become incarnate in Jesus Christ. There was no doctrine that pagans could be saved since the promulgation of the gospel without embracing the Christian faith.
In the West, following Ambrose and others, Augustine taught that, because faith comes by hearing, those who had never heard the gospel would be denied salvation. They would be eternally punished for original sin as well as for any personal sins they had committed. Augustine’s disciple Fulgentius of Ruspe exhorted his readers to “firmly hold and by no means doubt that not only all pagans, but also all Jews, and all heretics and schismatics who are outside the Catholic Church, will go to the eternal fire that was prepared for the devil and his angels.”
The views of Augustine and Fulgentius remained dominant in the Christian West throughout the Middle Ages. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) reaffirmed the formula “Outside the Church, no salvation,” as did Pope Boniface VIII in 1302. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Council of Florence (1442) repeated the formulation of Fulgentius to the effect that no pagan, Jew, schismatic, or heretic could be saved.
On one point the medieval theologians diverged from rigid Augustinianism. On the basis of certain passages in the New Testament, they held that God seriously wills that all may be saved. They could cite the statement of Peter before the household of Cornelius: “Truly I perceive that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35). The First Letter to Timothy, moreover, declares that God “desires all men to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). These assurances made for a certain tension in Catholic teaching on salvation. If faith in Christ was necessary for salvation, how could salvation be within reach of those who had no opportunity to learn about Christ?
Thomas Aquinas, in dealing with this problem, took his departure from the axiom that there was no salvation outside the Church. To be inside the Church, he held, it was not enough to have faith in the existence of God and in divine providence, which would have sufficed before the coming of Christ. God now required explicit faith in the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation. In two of his early works ( De Veritate and Commentary on Romans ), he discusses the hypothetical case of a man brought up in the wilderness, where the gospel was totally unknown. If this man lived an upright life with the help of the graces given him, Thomas reasoned, God would make it possible for him to become a Christian believer, either through an inner illumination or by sending a missionary to him. Thomas referred to the biblical example of the centurion Cornelius, who received the visitation of an angel before being evangelized and baptized by Peter (Acts 10). In his Summa Theologiae , however, Thomas omits any reference to miraculous instruction; he goes back to the Augustinian theory that those who had never heard the gospel would be eternally punished for original sin as well as their personal sins.
A major theological development occurred in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The voyages of discovery had by this time disclosed that there were large populations in North and South America, Africa, and Asia who had lived since the time of Christ and had never had access to the preaching of the gospel. The missionaries found no sign that even the most upright among these peoples had learned the mysteries of the Trinity and the Incarnation by interior inspirations or angelic visitations.
Luther, Calvin, and the Jansenists professed the strict Augustinian doctrine that God did not will to save everyone, but the majority of Catholic theologians rejected the idea that God had consigned all these unevangelized persons to hell without giving them any possibility of salvation. A series of theologians proposed more hopeful theories that they took to be compatible with Scripture and Catholic tradition.
The Dominican Melchior Cano argued that these populations were in a situation no different from that of the pre-Christian pagans praised by Justin and others. They could be justified in this life (but not saved in the life to come) by implicit faith in the Christian mysteries. Another Dominican, Domingo de Soto, went further, holding that, for the unevangelized, implicit faith in Christ would be sufficient for salvation itself. Their contemporary, Albert Pighius, held that for these unevangelized persons the only faith required would be that mentioned in Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please Him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him.” They could therefore be saved by general revelation and grace even though no missionary came to evangelize them.
The Jesuit Francisco Suarez, following these pioneers, argued for the sufficiency of implicit faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation, together with an implicit desire for baptism on the part of the unevangelized. Juan de Lugo agreed, but he added that such persons could not be saved if they had committed serious sins, unless they obtained forgiveness by an act of perfect contrition.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the Jesuits of the Gregorian University followed in the tradition of Suarez and de Lugo, with certain modifications. Pope Pius IX incorporated some of their ideas in two important statements in 1854 and 1863. In the first, he said that, while no one can be saved outside the Church, God would not punish people for their ignorance of the true faith if their ignorance was invincible. In the second statement, Pius went further. He declared that persons invincibly ignorant of the Christian religion who observed the natural law and were ready to obey God would be able to attain eternal life, thanks to the workings of divine grace within them. In the same letter, the pope reaffirmed that no one could be saved outside the Catholic Church. He did not explain in what sense such persons were, or would come to be, in the Church. He could have meant that they would receive the further grace needed to join the Church, but nothing in his language suggests this. More probably he thought that such persons would be joined to the Church by implicit desire, as some theologians were teaching by his time.
In 1943, Pius XII did take this further step. In his encyclical on the Mystical Body, Mystici Corporis, he distinguished between two ways of belonging to the Church: in actual fact ( in re ) or by desire ( in voto ). Those who belonged in voto , however, were not really members. They were ordered to the Church by the dynamism of grace itself, which related them to the Church in such a way that they were in some sense in it. The two kinds of relationship, however, were not equally conducive to salvation.Those adhering to the Church by desire could not have a sure hope of salvation because they lacked many spiritual gifts and helps available only to those visibly incorporated in the true Church.
Mystici Corporis represents a forward step in its doctrine of adherence to the Church through implicit desire. From an ecumenical point of view, that encyclical is deficient, since it does not distinguish between the status of non-Christians and non-Catholic Christians. The next important document came from the Holy Office in its letter to Cardinal Cushing of Boston in 1949. The letter pointed out ”in opposition to Father Leonard Feeney, S.J., and his associates at St. Benedict Center” that, although the Catholic Church was a necessary means for salvation, one could belong to it not only by actual membership but by also desire, even an unconscious desire. If that desire was accompanied by faith and perfect charity, it could lead to eternal salvation.
Neither the encyclical Mystici Corporis nor the letter of the Holy Office specified the nature of the faith required for “in voto” status. Did the authors mean that the virtue of faith or the inclination to believe would suffice, or did they require actual faith in God and divine providence, or actual faith in the Trinity and the Incarnation?
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on the Church and its Decree on Ecumenism, made some significant departures from the teaching of Pius XII. It avoided the term member and said nothing of an unconscious desire for incorporation in the Church. It taught that the Catholic Church was the all-embracing organ of salvation and was equipped with the fullness of means of salvation. Other Christian churches and communities possessed certain elements of sanctification and truth that were, however, derived from the one Church of Christ that subsists in the Catholic Church today. For this reason, God could use them as instruments of salvation. God had, however, made the Catholic Church necessary for salvation, and all who were aware of this had a serious obligation to enter the Church in order to be saved. God uses the Catholic Church not only for the redemption of her own members but also as an instrument for the redemption of all. Her witness and prayers, together with the eucharistic sacrifice, have an efficacy that goes out to the whole world.
In several important texts, Vatican II took up the question of the salvation of non-Christians. Although they were related to the Church in various ways, they were not incorporated in her. God’s universal salvific will, it taught, means that he gives non-Christians, including even atheists, sufficient help to be saved. Whoever sincerely seeks God and, with His grace, follows the dictates of conscience is on the path to salvation. The Holy Spirit, in a manner known only to God, makes it possible for each and every person to be associated with the Paschal mystery. “God, in ways known to Himself, can lead those inculpably ignorant of the gospel to that faith without which it is impossible to please Him.” The council did not indicate whether it is necessary for salvation to come to explicit Christian faith before death, but the texts give the impression that implicit faith may suffice.
Vatican II left open the question whether non-Christian religions contain revelation and are means that can lead their adherents to salvation. It did say, however, that other religions contain elements of truth and goodness, that they reflect rays of the truth that enlightens all men, and that they can serve as preparations for the gospel. Christian missionary activity serves to heal, ennoble, and perfect the seeds of truth and goodness that God has sown among non-Christian peoples, to the glory of God and the spiritual benefit of those evangelized.
While repeatedly insisting that Christ is the one mediator of salvation, Vatican II shows forth a generally hopeful view of the prospects of non-Christians for salvation. Its hopefulness, however, is not unqualified: “Rather often, men, deceived by the evil one, have become caught up in futile reasoning and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator. Or, some there are who, living and dying in a world without God, are subject to utter hopelessness.” The missionary activity of the Church is urgent for bringing such persons to salvation.
After the council, Paul VI (in his pastoral exhortation “Evangelization in the Modern World”) and John Paul II (in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio ) interpreted the teaching of Vatican II in relation to certain problems and theological trends arising since the council. Both popes were on guard against political and liberation theology, which would seem to equate salvation with formation of a just society on earth and against certain styles of religious pluralism, which would attribute independent salvific value to non-Christian religions. In 2000, toward the end of John Paul’s pontificate, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the declaration Dominus Iesus , which emphatically taught that all grace and salvation must come through Jesus Christ, the one mediator.
Wisely, in my opinion, the popes and councils have avoided talk about implicit faith, a term that is vague and ambiguous. They do speak of persons who are sincerely seeking for the truth and of others who have found it in Christ. They make it clear that sufficient grace is offered to all and that God will not turn away those who do everything within their power to find God and live according to His law. We may count on Him to lead such persons to the faith needed for salvation.
One of the most interesting developments in post-conciliar theology has been Karl Rahner’s idea of “anonymous Christians.” He taught that God offers his grace to everyone and reveals Himself in the interior offer of grace. Grace, moreover, is always mediated through Christ and tends to bring its recipients into union with Him. Those who accept and live by the grace offered to them, even though they have never heard of Christ and the gospel, may be called anonymous Christians.
Although Rahner denied that his theory undermined the importance of missionary activity, it was widely understood as depriving missions of their salvific importance. Some readers of his works understood him as teaching that the unevangelized could possess the whole of Christianity except the name. Saving faith, thus understood, would be a subjective attitude without any specifiable content. In that case, the message of the gospel would have little to do with salvation.
The history of the doctrine of salvation through faith has gone through a number of stages since the High Middle Ages. Using the New Testament as their basic text, the Church Fathers regarded faith in Christ and baptism as essential for salvation. On the basis of his study of the New Testament and Augustine, Thomas Aquinas held that explicit belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation was necessary for everyone who lived since the time of Christ, but he granted that in earlier times it was sufficient to believe explicitly in the existence and providence of God.
In the sixteenth century, theologians speculated that the unevangelized were in the same condition as pre-Christians and were not held to believe explicitly in Christ until the gospel was credibly preached to them. Pius IX and the Second Vatican Council taught that all who followed their conscience, with the help of the grace given to them, would be led to that faith that was necessary for them to be saved. During and after the council, Karl Rahner maintained that saving faith could be had without any definite belief in Christ or even in God.
We seem to have come full circle from the teaching of Paul and the New Testament that belief in the message of Christ is the source of salvation. Reflecting on this development, one can see certain gains and certain losses. The New Testament and the theology of the first millennium give little hope for the salvation of those who, since the time of Christ, have had no chance of hearing the gospel. If God has a serious salvific will for all, this lacuna needed to be filled, as it has been by theological speculation and church teaching since the sixteenth century. Modern theology, preoccupied with the salvation of non-Christians, has tended to neglect the importance of explicit belief in Christ, so strongly emphasized in the first centuries. It should not be impossible, however, to reconcile the two perspectives.
Scripture itself assures us that God has never left Himself without a witness to any nation (Acts 14:17). His testimonies are marks of His saving dispensations toward all. The inner testimony of every human conscience bears witness to God as lawgiver, judge, and vindicator. In ancient times, the Jewish Scriptures drew on literature that came from Babylon, Egypt, and Greece. The Book of Wisdom and Paul’s Letter to the Romans speak of God manifesting his power and divinity through his works in nature. The religions generally promote prayer and sacrifice as ways of winning God’s favor. The traditions of all peoples contain elements of truth imbedded in their cultures, myths, and religious practices. These sound elements derive from God, who speaks to all his children through inward testimony and outward signs.
The universal evidences of the divine, under the leading of grace, can give rise to a rudimentary faith that leans forward in hope and expectation to further manifestations of God’s merciful love and of his guidance for our lives. By welcoming the signs already given and placing their hope in God’s redeeming love, persons who have not heard the tidings of the gospel may nevertheless be on the road to salvation. If they are faithful to the grace given them, they may have good hope of receiving the truth and blessedness for which they yearn.
The search, however, is no substitute for finding. To be blessed in this life, one must find the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field, which is worth buying at the cost of everything one possesses. To Christians has been revealed the mystery hidden from past ages, which the patriarchs and prophets longed to know. By entering through baptism into the mystery of the cross and the Resurrection, Christians undergo a radical transformation that sets them unequivocally on the road to salvation. Only after conversion to explicit faith can one join the community that is nourished by the Word of God and the sacraments. These gifts of God, prayerfully received, enable the faithful to grow into ever greater union with Christ.
In Christ’s Church, therefore, we have many aids to salvation and sanctification that are not available elsewhere. Cardinal Newman expressed the situation admirably in one of his early sermons:
“The prerogative of Christians consists in the possession, not of exclusive knowledge and spiritual aid, but of gifts high and peculiar; and though the manifestation of the Divine character in the Incarnation is a singular and inestimable benefit, yet its absence is supplied in a degree, not only in the inspired record of Moses, but even, with more or less strength, in those various traditions concerning Divine Providences and Dispositions which are scattered through the heathen mythologies.
We cannot take it for granted that everyone is seeking the truth and is prepared to submit to it when found. Some, perhaps many, resist the grace of God and reject the signs given to them. They are not on the road to salvation at all. In such cases, the fault is not God’s but theirs. The references to future punishment in the gospels cannot be written off as empty threats. As Paul says, God is not mocked (Gal. 6:7).”
We may conclude with certitude that God makes it possible for the unevangelized to attain the goal of their searching. How that happens is known to God alone, as Vatican II twice declares. We know only that their search is not in vain. “Seek, and you will find,” says the Lord (Matt. 7:7). If non-Christians are praying to an unknown God, it may be for us to help them find the one they worship in ignorance. God wants everyone to come to the truth. Perhaps some will reach the goal of their searching only at the moment of death. Who knows what transpires secretly in their consciousness at that solemn moment? We have no evidence that death is a moment of revelation, but it could be, especially for those in pursuit of the truth of God.
Meanwhile, it is the responsibility of believers to help these seekers by word and by example. Whoever receives the gift of revealed truth has the obligation to share it with others. Christian faith is normally transmitted by testimony. Believers are called to be God’s witnesses to the ends of the earth.
Who, then, can be saved? Catholics can be saved if they believe the Word of God as taught by the Church and if they obey the commandments. Other Christians can be saved if they submit their lives to Christ and join the community where they think He wills to be found. Jews can be saved if they look forward in hope to the Messiah and try to ascertain whether God’s promise has been fulfilled. Adherents of other religions can be saved if, with the help of grace, they sincerely seek God and strive to do his will. Even atheists can be saved if they worship God under some other name and place their lives at the service of truth and justice. God’s saving grace, channeled through Christ the one Mediator, leaves no one unassisted. But that same grace brings obligations to all who receive it. They must not receive the grace of God in vain. Much will be demanded of those to whom much is given.”
(CCC 846) “How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers? Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:
Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; He is present to us in His body which is the Church.
He Himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door.
Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.”
I have been given an incalculable amount. I submit myself, wholly, or at least I try to to the Author of ALL that gift, in most profound gratitude possible. Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man. cf Lk 18:13.
-by Br Alan Piper, OP, prior to entering the Order, Br Alan earned his PhL from the Catholic University of America
“The Christian faith is about God—not only because God is its subject-matter, but also because God is its source. God had something to say to us, something He thought it would be good for us to know, and something which, if He had not told us, we would not otherwise have known. The Christian faith, therefore, is a kind of knowledge, because it arises from a revelation, and the reception of this specific revelation establishes human beings in a new relationship to God.
To say this much is already to distinguish Christian faith from two common misconceptions. The first is the familiar idea that faith is contrary to reason. Proponents of this view often deny the existence not only of revelations from God but of God himself. To which St. Paul classically responds, “Ever since the creation of the world God’s invisible nature . . . has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (Rom 1:20). In themselves, the existence and nature of God are not really matters of faith. God can be known, and indeed should be known, simply from the order, even the mere existence, of the universe. In the end, the rationalistic atheist ends up holding the rather dubious proposition that everything has a cause except everything.
And if God is generous enough to create the universe, to keep it in existence, and to give life to spiritual creations such as human beings, is it really so incredible that He, like a good parent, has not abandoned us but sought to teach us and to bring us into intimate union with himself?
And is it really very surprising that this education in divine things should involve an element of darkness? Such intimate knowledge of the infinite Creator is beyond the capacity of human reason alone. So when God speaks to us in Christ He illumines our minds by a special grace called the virtue of faith. By this gift—despite the remaining darkness—the mind is brought into contact with God and begins to share in God’s own knowledge of Himself. (How’s that for anti-rational?) Whoever believes in Christ is like someone who has emerged from a subterranean cavern and now waits for his eyes to adjust to the light of the sun.
There is another kind of faith—optimistic but inadequate—which offers a kind of vague assurance that, whatever one’s relation to revealed religion, everything is going to be fine in the end. When someone uses this notion to excuse himself from taking seriously claims of divine revelation, the situation is like that of the man caught in the flashflood: having declined to be rescued by car, boat, and helicopter, he places all of his confidence in a direct intervention by God. Swept away by the waters, the man meets his Maker asking why nothing was done to save him, only to be told that God had sent a car, a boat, and a helicopter. The Christian claim is that God has already sent us the means of salvation: the doctrine of Christ, the sacraments, the Church. These means make it possible for us to be happy with God now and for eternity. By contrast, it is uncertain whether a hazy optimism will be much help when the waters come.
Such are the conceptual counterfeits the virtue of faith is cast among, and it is important to be able to distinguish the genuine article, not only because faith is our gateway to the Christian mysteries but also because faith itself is one of these mysteries. Receiving the gift of faith, we begin to be taken up into the re-creation of the world.
After all, the life of faith is not an unthinking acquiescence; as St. Augustine put it, to believe in Christ is “to think with assent.”
“Summer is the tourist’s season. Imagine taking a tour of the White House. There is that surreal feeling of walking through the corridors of such an important building, where so much has happened. And then, at the climax of the tour, you enter the Oval Office. There, the tour guide comments on the history of the room and its current appearance. Visitors ooh and ah, snapping photos and selfies.
However, sitting there in the Oval Office, behind the desk, is the President. For some strange reason, the tour guide does not mention him, and following suit, most visitors hardly even notice him. Perhaps a few devoutly patriotic visitors offer a polite “good afternoon, Mr. President.” But besides such niceties, there is no fuss about the President. People are more enthralled by the room than the man.
A similar scenario plays out in many Catholic churches. Most tours focus on architecture and artwork. “Look at these gothic arches.” “What beautiful stained glass!” All the while, the King of the Universe, the unmatched Lover of every heart is present—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity—awaiting each guest in the Eucharist. Sure, the pious visitors will genuflect or bow, but even these gestures are often perfunctory.
Art has an inherent value, worthy of receiving the tour’s appreciation. And it is a blessing to have a church worthy of such a tour. Even more, the beauty of the church helps to manifest the beauty of the Eucharist. Good artwork tells the story of God’s love for us, and good architecture calls forth the reverence due to the Eucharist.
Yet the irony remains. For a brief period of time, we get more excited about the wrapping paper than the gift.
Our response should be quite simple: “You are my God; I thirst for You.”
Love,
Matthew
Summa Catechetica, "Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut intelligam." – St Anselm, "“Si comprehendus, non est Deus.” -St Augustine, "Let your religion be less of a theory, and more of a love affair." -G.K. Chesterton, "As the reading of bad books fills the mind with worldly and poisonous sentiments; so, on the other hand, the reading of pious works fills the soul with holy thoughts and good desires." -St. Alphonsus Liguori, "And above all, be on your guard not to want to get anything done by force, because God has given free will to everyone and wants to force no one, but only proposes, invites and counsels." –St. Angela Merici, “Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways.” —St. Teresa of Avila, "I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men and women who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, and who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity… I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism, and where lie the main inconsistences and absurdities of the Protestant theory.” (St. John Henry Newman, “Duties of Catholics Towards the Protestant View,” Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England), "We cannot always have access to a spiritual Father for counsel in our actions and in our doubts, but reading will abundantly supply his place by giving us directions to escape the illusions of the devil and of our own self-love, and at the same time to submit to the divine will.” —St. Alphonsus Ligouri, "The harm that comes to souls from the lack of reading holy books makes me shudder . . . What power spiritual reading has to lead to a change of course, and to make even worldly people enter into the way of perfection." –St. Padre Pio, "Screens may grab our attention, but books change our lives!" – Word on Fire, "Reading has made many saints!" -St Josemaría Escrivá, "Do you pray? You speak to the Bridegroom. Do you read? He speaks to you." —St. Jerome, from his Letter 22 to Eustochium, "Encounter, not confrontation; attraction, not promotion; dialogue, not debate." -cf Pope Francis, "God here speaks to souls through…good books“ – St Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, "You will not see anyone who is really striving after his advancement who is not given to spiritual reading. And as to him who neglects it, the fact will soon be observed by his progress.” -St Athanasius, "To convert someone, go and take them by the hand and guide them." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP. 1 saint ruins ALL the cynicism in Hell & on Earth. “When we pray we talk to God; when we read God talks to us…All spiritual growth comes from reading and reflection.” -St Isidore of Seville, “Also in some meditations today I earnestly asked our Lord to watch over my compositions that they might do me no harm through the enmity or imprudence of any man or my own; that He would have them as His own and employ or not employ them as He should see fit. And this I believe is heard.” -GM Hopkins, SJ, "Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book." — St. John Bosco, "Why don't you try explaining it to them?" – cf St Peter Canisius, SJ, Doctor of the Church, Doctor of the Catechism, "Already I was coming to appreciate that often apologetics consists of offering theological eye glasses of varying prescriptions to an inquirer. Only one prescription will give him clear sight; all the others will give him at best indistinct sight. What you want him to see—some particular truth of the Faith—will remain fuzzy to him until you come across theological eye glasses that precisely compensate for his particular defect of vision." -Karl Keating, "The more perfectly we know God, the more perfectly we love Him." -St Thomas Aquinas, OP, ST, I-II,67,6 ad 3, “But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered." —St. Teresa of Avila, "Let those who think I have said too little and those who think I have said too much, forgive me; and let those who think I have said just enough thank God with me." –St. Augustine, "Without good books and spiritual reading, it will be morally impossible to save our souls." —St. Alphonsus Liguori "Never read books you aren't sure about. . . even supposing that these bad books are very well written from a literary point of view. Let me ask you this: Would you drink something you knew was poisoned just because it was offered to you in a golden cup?" -St. John Bosco " To teach in order to lead others to faith is the task of every preacher and of each believer." —St. Thomas Aquinas, OP. "Prayer purifies us, reading instructs us. Both are good when both are possible. Otherwise, prayer is better than reading." –St. Isidore of Seville “The aid of spiritual books is for you a necessity.… You, who are in the midst of battle, must protect yourself with the buckler of holy thoughts drawn from good books.” -St. John Chrysostom
