Category Archives: Ecclesiology

Ecclesiology

Conquistadors – saviors of souls


-please click on the image for greater detail


-by Steve Weidenkopf

“The Catholic conquistador Hernán Cortés occupies a preeminent place in the modern pantheon of villainous Catholic personages. It is common to find the explorer in lists of the “most brutal” conquistadors. The five hundredth anniversaries of his landing at Veracruz in 1519 and conquest of Mexico in 1520-1521 produced varied reactions in Spain and Mexico. In November 2019, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López-Obrador criticized Cortés at a press conference. Like many other historical personages who have been roped into the clutches of “presentism” (a modern bias in historical interpretation that judges the past based on modern sensibilities), Cortés’s legacy is called into question in the modern world. Efforts to “cancel” his memory and achievements and to tear down statues erected in his honor (including in his hometown of Medellín, Spain) dominate the current view of this sixteenth-century Catholic conquistador.

Amid these historical attacks against the Church and her past members, today’s Catholics are oftentimes bewildered and uncertain how to respond. Catholics are susceptible to two erroneous responses to these anti-Catholic historical criticisms: an unflinching and uncritical triumphalism that highlights the good and ignores the bad of Church history and the “ostrich” approach of ignoring the controversy at best and implicitly accepting the false historical narrative at worst. The Catholic defender of Church history must fight these extreme positions and seek the historical truth through knowledge, understanding the context of historical events, and recognizing that people in the past were men and women endowed with free will, which was sometimes exercised virtuously and sometimes not.

The point of defending the Church’s history against false historical views and narratives of the modern age is to protect the Church against detractors who use history to discredit the Church and her teachings. Defense of Catholic personages and historical events from the “mythistory” of the present does not indicate complete acceptance of past persons or actions, but instead seeks authentic understanding so that controversial events can by explained (but not necessarily justified).

So who was Hernán Cortés, and what did he accomplish? How should Catholics in the modern world view this man and his actions?

While the Church was embattled in the theological revolution, which soon turned political, in German territory in the early sixteenth century, on the other side of the world, an unauthorized expedition of five hundred Spaniards left Cuba for a journey to the interior of modern-day Mexico. Nearly three decades after Columbus’s first voyage to the New World, the Spanish soldier Hernán Cortés landed his ships at Veracruz on Good Friday 1519 with multiple objectives, chief among them the conversion of the indigenous peoples to the Catholic faith. His army marched with two banners, with red and black with gold trim, with the Spanish coat of arms on one side and the cross of Christ on the other.

At the beginning of their journey, Cortés remarked to his men, “Brothers and companions, let us follow the sign of the Cross with true faith and in it we shall conquer.” He ordered the destruction of their ships, so that failure was not an option, and began the trek inward.

Cortés was a skillful military leader and tactician and an excellent motivator of men. Additionally, whatever his faults, he was a man of deep, pious faith and a faithful son of the Church. Bernal Díaz, one of Cortés’s soldiers who wrote an account of the conquest toward the end of his life, described the first conquistador’s faith life: “[He wore] just a thin chain of gold of a single pattern and a trinket with the image of Our Lady the Virgin Saint Mary with her precious Son in her arms. . . . He prayed every morning with a [book of] Hours and heard Mass with devotion; he had for his protector the Virgin Mary our Lady . . . as well as the Lord St. Peter and St. James and the Lord St. John the Baptist.”

Cortés marched his troops to the Mexica (the proper name for the rulers of the Aztec Empire) capital city of Tenochtitlán (on the site of the future Mexico City), a metropolis of 200,000 people in the center of a lake. The Aztec Empire consisted of a warlike people who conquered neighboring tribes to expand their empire and provide the human capital needed to satiate their bloodthirsty gods (the Hummingbird Wizard and the Lord of the Dark, among others).

The Mexica practiced more human sacrifices than any other New World native peoples. Every imperial city and large town had a central square from which a temple pyramid, where human sacrifices were performed, rose to the sky. The victim was laid on a table, where a priest would cut out his beating heart and hold it aloft for the worshipers to see. Imperial law mandated 1,000 human sacrifices a year in every temple, which totaled nearly 20,000 victims annually. Thirty years before the Spanish arrival in the city, the human sacrificial toll surpassed 80,000 during a four-day inauguration of the Great Temple.

Cortés sought the end of the grotesque and barbaric human sacrifices in conversations with the Aztec emperor, Moctezuma II. Eventually, Cortés arrested Moctezuma, an action deemed necessary for Spanish protection, and received permission from the emperor, in January 1520, to allow the placement of an altar, a cross, and an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Great Temple. The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass replaced the demonic human sacrifices for three months in the temple, but the Mexica priests were agitated and incensed at the stoppage.

Moctezuma was held in captivity for six months before his death (accounts differ as to the manner of death, with blame placed either with the Mexica or the Spanish). When Cortés left the city to deal with the arrival of another Spanish force sent to arrest the conquistador for his unauthorized foray, a large group of unarmed Mexica warriors were massacred by the remaining Spanish while dancing during a temple festival. This raised the ire of the indigenous population and forced the Spanish to flee the city. Cortés led his remnant army to Tlaxcala, a neighboring region containing a tribe hostile to the Mexica. Establishing alliances with Tlaxalans and other indigenous tribes, Cortés and the Spanish captured Tenochtitlán in August 1521, dealing a significant blow to Mexica hegemony.

The eventual conquest of the Aztec Empire was not as swift as usually portrayed, but occurred through a combination of Spanish military and technological superiority, and, most importantly, significant indigenous ally support. Cortés was aided by a former Mayan female slave known as Malintzin, who was among a group of twenty slaves given to the Spanish by the native people of Tabasco. Malintzin served as interpreter for Cortés and later became his mistress and bore the conquistador a son (Martin). Malintzin, like Cortés, has been maligned in modern memory as a traitor to her people who assisted Cortés for material and personal gain.

The conquest of New Spain was a bloody affair. The Spanish suffered significant casualties (over fifty percent) during the two-year war, but the Mexica suffered substantially more. Although Cortés estimated that his troops killed twelve thousand natives, the more likely number over the entire two-year campaign was near a million.

There is no doubt that the Spanish conquistadors and subsequent colonization severely impacted the indigenous peoples of the New World, both negatively and positively. Negatively, the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire resulted in a catastrophic death toll from violence and the unintended introduction of European diseases. Positively, Cortés expedition ended the barbaric practice of human sacrifice in the empire, and Spanish evangelization efforts, undertaken without much success until the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe a decade afterward, brought the light of Christ to a new area of the world.

Hernán Cortés was no saint, but he was a man of his age and culture, who, at least in part, was motivated by a desire to see the gospel communicated to people enslaved in darkness. Catholics cannot justify many of his actions in the New World, but, by studying authentic history, and not the false narratives rooted in presentism, we can understand the context in which he lived and acted and more effectively defend Catholic history against inappropriate and nefarious attacks.”

Love & truth,
Matthew

Liturgy, Philosophy

“In our own lives, each one of us must answer, voluntarily or not, the question about being human.”


-by Christopher Check

“When he was yet Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI delivered four homilies using passages from the book of Genesis as points of departure. These later became a book: “In the Beginning”: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall.

The book gets to the heart of the matter. “In our own lives,” Benedict declares, “each one of us must answer, whether he or she wants to or not, the question about being human.”

Even after God came down from heaven and gave us the answer, we continue in no small number to cast about for an explanation of why we are here. Indeed, the assertions by nihilist historians such as Yuval Noah Harari—that all the meanings we attach to life are delusions—are evidence that the question will never go away.

Whereas the Socratics and the Scholastics would have contemplated the question with quiet serenity, we pursue it with anxiety, created and exacerbated by the ubiquity of screens. In screens so many of us search, and search, and search, without even realizing that it is meaning we’re searching for. How enervating a search, and how hopeless!

Pope Benedict XVI, on the other hand, knew where to locate our meaning, and he devoted his priesthood to directing and redirecting our focus there. He pointed us to the complementary realities for which man was made, the two experiences necessary for living a full life: divine worship and human friendship. As he insisted in his brilliant Spirit of the Liturgy, we must get the former right to get the latter right: “It is only when man’s relationship with God is right that all of his other relationships—his relationships with his fellow men, his dealings with the rest of creation—can be in good order.”

Where, how, does man put his relationship with God in good order? It is in the same place—the same experience—where he locates his meaning: in the liturgy.

Pope Benedict knew that we, in the post-conciliar age, had lost our sense of this truth. In his 1985 interview with Italian journalist Vittorio Messori, Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, called our attention to “the post-conciliar [liturgical] pluralism,” noting that it was strange that it had “created uniformity in one respect at least: it will not tolerate a high standard of expression.”

It would be reductionist to understand this observation merely as the future pope seeking to rescue the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass from banal sanctuaries, insipid music, the innovations of narcissistic liturgists, and the extemporizing of bored priests. As his papacy would show, through his profound theological reflections on liturgy—ever rooted in his extraordinary grasp of Scripture, his command of classical languages, and his understanding of the anthropology of ritual sacrifice—and through his restoration and promotion of the traditional Latin Mass—Pope Benedict understood and wanted the faithful to understand that man is most himself participating in the liturgy, because it is in the liturgy that, on this side of the veil, man is most united—heart to heart—with God. So sacred an encounter, by virtue of the gravity and sublimity of its nature, must be elevated in its forms and expressions above all other human activity.

This word, participating, confounds us because we think Christianity is a religion of doing rather than being. What is meant by participation, or even “active participation”—participatio actuosa, as the Second Vatican Council puts it? “Unfortunately, the word,” Cardinal Ratzinger said, “was very quickly misunderstood to mean something external, entailing a need for general activity, as if as many people as possible should be visibly engaged in action.” Visit today a parish where even the most reverent Mass of Paul VI—what Benedict called the Ordinary Form of the Roman rite—is offered, and witness, for example, the collective arm-raising during the prayer “We lift them up the Lord” . . . even if it’s rendered “Habemus ad Dominum.” You will see what is not participation, but, in fact, a distraction from what Cardinal Ratzinger identified as the actio divina.

What should the faithful be doing at Mass, then, if not opening their arms or calling out responses or looking for work in the sanctuary? “The real action in the liturgy in which we are all supposed to participate,” Benedict wrote, “is the action of God Himself.” In the “oratio, the priest speaks with the I of the Lord—‘this is My body,’ ‘this is My blood.’” At this moment, Benedict asks us, “are not God and man completely incommensurable? Can man, the finite and sinful one, cooperate with God, the Infinite and Holy One?” The answer is yes, and it is this cooperation that the Church intends when calling for our participation in the liturgy—not a participation of moving and speaking, but rather the participation that comes from cooperating in mind and spirit with what is happening on the altar. This requires the active engagement not of our arms, but rather, as the rite says, of our hearts. That engagement can be given silently, and no less ardently for the silence. Perhaps it should.

This participation, which becomes a constant living in the presence of God, informs and transforms all our other relationships, all our friendships. The Christian who leads such an integrated life, one that begins with participation in a rightly ordered liturgy, becomes another St. Andrew, bringing his brother to Christ.

In 2007, on the Feast of St. Andrew, Pope Benedict XVI published his second encyclical, Spe Salvi. “In hope we are saved,” it begins, quoting St. Paul to the Romans. This salvation, Benedict continues, citing the patristic studies of Henri de Lubac, “has always been considered a ‘social’ reality.” Real life, the pope declares, can be attained only within the context of “we.” The “individual,” an impossible concept conceived by Enlightenment philosophers, and one that their less imaginative heirs today keep attempting to foist on us, makes no sense to the Christian.

In marriages, in families, in associations and friendships and religious orders, we are not individuals, but a communion of persons. The Trinity—the God in Whose image we are made—is a communion of persons. Our road back from the hopelessness of an atomized society of screens to true friendships is true liturgy. Pope Benedict XVI pointed the way—and will continue to.”

Amen. I am in a desert wasteland of liturgy. The ancient Greek philosophers began with the question “What is the life well lived?”  The question remains to each person who dares live it as weighty and profound and pressing as ever.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Love,
Matthew

Christmastide, December, Holy Innocents, Saints

Dec 28 – Feast of the Holy Innocents, Martyrs – Baptism of Blood, Martyrdom by Grace

«La Vierge à l’Enfant entourée des saints Innocents», huile sur bois (Hauteur. 138 cm ; largeur. 100 cm) de Pierre Paul Rubens. – Œuvre executée vers 1618, appartenant au musée du Louvre (Paris). – Ref. Nº INV 1763, photographiée lors de l’exposition temporaire « Rubens et son Temps » au musée du Louvre-Lens. Please click on the image for greater detail.


-by Joseph Heschmeyer, a former lawyer and seminarian, he blogs at Shameless Popery.

“Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, in which we praise as saints and martyrs the children murdered in Jesus’ stead by King Herod, who feared the news of the birth of a rival king.

The biblical basis for this feast is Matthew 2:16, which says that “Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.”

Prudentius (348-c. 413) wrote his beautiful Salvete flores Martyrum in their honor, as part of his larger poem in honor of the Feast of the Epiphany. There are various English translations, but I’m fond on this one by Nicholas Richardson:

Hail, all you flowers of martyrdom,
whom, at life’s very door,
Christ’s persecutors slew, as storms
the new-born roses kill!

O tender flock, you are the first
of offerings to Christ:
before his altar, innocent,
with palms and crowns you play.

But do the Holy Innocents deserve to be called saints, much less martyrs? After all, “martyr” means “witness,” and it’s not as if they were voluntarily witnesses who went to their deaths for the sake of Christ. As Charles Péguy observes, the Holy Innocents were “the only Christians assuredly who on Earth had never heard tell of Herod” and “to whom, on Earth, the name of Herod meant nothing at all.” Even calling them “Christians” seems wrong, since they weren’t baptized and knew no more about Jesus than they did about Herod. Right?

Wrong. Jesus speaks of his own death as a kind of baptism, saying during his public ministry, “I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how I am constrained until it is accomplished!” (Luke 12:50). The early Christians picked up on this. Though insisting that baptism is necessary for salvation, Christians like St. Cyprian are clear that “they certainly are not deprived of the sacrament of baptism who are baptized with the most glorious and greatest baptism of blood.”

Similarly, Tertullian describes the blood and water flowing from the pierced side of Christ (John 19:34) as the “two baptisms,” which Jesus gives us “in order that they who believed in his blood might be bathed with the water; they who had been bathed in the water might likewise drink the blood.” He views this “second font,” martyrdom, as “the baptism which both stands in lieu of the fontal bathing when that has not been received, and restores it when lost.” So the early Christians didn’t view martyrdom as an exception to the need to be baptized. Rather, they viewed it as a sort of baptism—in blood instead of water.

So it’s not an exaggeration to say that the Holy Innocents—who died for Christ, and even died in Jesus’ place—were baptized in blood. We can be assured of their salvation, since Jesus promised that “whoever loses his life for My sake, he will save it” (Luke 9:34).

And all this despite their young age. St. Irenaeus, writing c. 180 AD, says that God

suddenly removed those children belonging to the house of David, whose happy lot it was to have been born at that time, that He might send them on before into His kingdom; He, since He was himself an infant, so arranging it that human infants should be martyrs, slain, according to the Scriptures, for the sake of Christ, who was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the city of David.

This is an important detail: St. Matthew presents the death of these children not simply as a tragedy, but also as a fulfillment of “what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah” (Jer. 31:15; Matt. 2:16-18). So these infants are martyrs in a unique way, since their death helps to prove that the child Jesus is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

Their death also reveals Christ as the New Moses. Prudentius makes this connection in his poem:

’Mid his coevals’ streams of blood
the Virgin’s child, alone
unharmed, deceived the sword, which robbed
these mothers of their babes.

Thus Moses, savior of his race,
and Christ prefiguring,
did once escape the foolish laws
which evil Pharaoh made.

So there are biblical reasons for understanding the Holy Innocents as martyrs in the sense of “witnesses.” Their death tells us something about Jesus Christ.

Cyprian, writing in the middle of the third century, describes the Holy Innocents not only as martyrs, but as a sort of prototype for all martyrs:

The nativity of Christ witnessed at once the martyrdom of infants, so that they who were two years old and under were slain for His name’s sake. An age not yet fitted for the battle appeared fit for the crown. That it might be manifest that they who are slain for Christ’s sake are innocent, innocent infancy was put to death for His name’s sake. It is shown that none is free from the peril of persecution, when even these accomplished martyrdoms.

By their death, the Holy Innocents also teach us something of the ruthlessness of the Enemy, as well as something about the Christian life—namely, that we’re not promised it will be easy. After all, if even these pure and innocent children should suffer such a fate, why should we expect to be spared hardship or persecution?

But Cyprian also highlights where we tend to go wrong in our thinking about martyrdom. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking of martyrdom as a kind of good work that the martyr does for Christ. But the early Christians warned against this. The Martyrdom of Polycarp, written within a year of Polycarp’s death in 155, contrasts St. Polycarp’s martyrdom with the failed martyrdom of Quintus, who “forced himself and some others to come forward voluntarily” to trial, in an attempt to be martyred, only to end up apostatizing and offering sacrifice to the pagan gods.

Instead, martyrdom is a grace that—if need be—we receive from Christ. As Cyprian says, “the cause of perishing is to perish for Christ. That Witness Who proves martyrs, and crowns them, suffices for a testimony of His martyrdom.” So it’s not the Holy Innocents who make themselves martyrs. It’s ultimately Christ Who makes them saints and martyrs.

Just as Christ makes saints of babies in water baptism every day, He gave the Holy Innocents the grace of becoming saints and martyrs through the baptism of blood, so that (in Péguy’s words), those “who knew nothing of life and received no wound except that wound which gave them entry into the kingdom of heaven.”

Love & Merry Christmas,
Matthew

Advent, Liturgy

I look from afar – Aspiciens a longe

I look from afar:
and lo, I see the power of God coming,
and a cloud covering the whole earth.
Go ye out to meet Him and say:

Tell us, art Thou He that should come
to reign over Thy people Israel?

High and low, rich and poor, one with another.
Go ye out to meet Him and say:

Hear, O Thou shepherd of Israel, Thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep.
Tell us, art Thou He that should come?

Stir up Thy strength, O Lord, and come.
To reign over Thy people Israel.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

I look from afar:
and lo, I see the power of God coming,
and a cloud covering the whole earth.
Go ye out to meet Him and say:

Tell us, art Thou He that should come
to reign over Thy people Israel?

Ecclesiology

Why must we believe certain doctrines not explicitly found in the Bible?

In short: because the Church teaches it. As has been pointed out many times by many apologists over the years, the very idea that Scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith is not only nonsense, but explicitly refuted by Scripture itself.

  • “Follow the pattern of the sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 1:13).
  • “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.” (2 Thess. 2:15).
  • “Obey your leaders and submit to them; for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account” (Heb. 13:17).
  • “If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15).

So, the idea of the Bible being the ultimate source and arbiter of truth is false on its face. Scripture itself disproves this belief. The Church is the guardian of the deposit of faith, faithfully transmitting the teachings of Jesus Christ. Christ commissioned the Church to teach all nations (see John 14:26, 16:13), and we know that under the protection and guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Church teaches us what is true.

Love & truth,
Matthew

New Testament, Papacy, Scripture

Binding & Loosing – Mt 16:19 & 18:18


-by Suan Sonna, a Baptist convert to Catholicism

“Let’s address one of the most common prooftexts cited against Catholicism: Matthew 18:18. In this verse, Jesus bestows the power to “bind and loose” upon the apostles and thereby sets a pattern for local churches. The objection, according to Orthodox and Protestants, is that Matthew 18:18 nuances Peter’s authority in Matthew 16:19, where he is given the keys of the kingdom and the power to bind and loose. What initially seems like a bestowal of monarchical power onto Peter is softened into perhaps a more collegial system – or a pure democracy!

The first problem with this objection is that it’s a non sequitur: the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Strictly speaking, Jesus says that Peter (16:19) and the apostles including Peter (18:18) have the power to bind and loose. This fact alone does not reveal the authority dynamic among them. What’s the relationship between Peter’s binding and loosing and the other apostles’ authority? Matthew 18:18 notwithstanding, why, in Matthew 16:19, is there a unique commission to Peter if his power is no different from the others?

The second, and I think principal, issue is that the objection engages in special pleading. It ignores relevant facts about Peter and the surrounding context such that 18:18 looks unexpected for Catholicism only if we consider it in isolation.

A clarification should be made: Peter as an apostle would have shared certain privileges with the other apostles. They all possessed the power to bind and loose, which was originally the power of the Jewish leaders to discipline the community by declaring what is forbidden (bound) and allowed (loosed). The apostles could also discipline any church or speak on behalf of the entire church, because they were all directly receiving divine revelation. It therefore makes perfect sense that the apostles, including Peter, would have identical powers in this regard, given their shared office—just as a circuit judge and the chief justice of the supreme court are both judges.

The better question is whether Peter individually possessed any unique authority. Acts 5 is one of the best places to investigate. It is mysteriously made known to Peter that Ananias and Sapphira hoarded their property from the Jerusalem church. Some scholars argue that Peter continually received direct revelation from God. Evangelical scholar Eckhard J. Schnabel puts it this way: “Luke describes Peter as the spokesman of the apostles, who have just received Ananias’s gift. He also describes Peter as having the gift of prophecy, which allows him to see into Ananias’s heart—something only God can do (cf. Heb. 4:13).”

This is remarkably similar to how Jesus revealed in Matthew 16:17 that God the Father, and not any human source or power, helped Peter identify Jesus as the Messiah. We also see the Church moved by Peter’s dream to loosen Jewish dietary restrictions—another direct revelation from God to the one apostle (Acts 10:9-16).

Peter’s rebuke to Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 inflicts death through divine action. This is significant, as there are only two other times in the New Testament where God kills someone: Acts 12:23, where he strikes down Herod for setting himself up as a god, and 1 Corinthians 11:29-30, where St. Paul notes that many have brought death on themselves by unworthily consuming the Eucharist. Acts 5 is the only time, however, that God does so through an apostle’s rebuke.

Peter’s actions here fall under his binding and loosing power, as F.F. Bruce (among others) explains:

“Binding” and “loosing” were idiomatic expressions in rabbinical Judaism to denote the promulgation of rulings either forbidding or authorizing various kinds of activity. The authority to bind or loose given to Peter in the present context is given to the disciples as a body in Matthew 18:18, in a saying of Jesus similarly preserved by this evangelist only. Again, the record of Acts provides an illustration. Where church discipline is in view, Peter’s verbal rebuke of Ananias and Sapphira received drastic ratification from heaven (Acts 5:1-11).

It is true that “the authority to bind and loose given to Peter” is “given to the disciples as a body in Matthew 18:18.” But authority can come in various degrees. All 100 senators are given the authority to write and vote on legislation, but the Senate majority leader can do more with that authority than his colleagues can, being privileged to bring legislation to a vote as well.

Indeed, F.F. Bruce uses Peter’s binding and loosing authority as a paradigmatic example of church discipline. This event shows that Peter could bind and loose without always having to go through his fellow apostles. Moreover, Bruce could be using “authority” here similar to how we would ordinarily use “power” or “capacity.” This interpretation makes sense of how he can say the authority (or simply “power”) to bind and loose can be given both to Peter and “the disciples as a body” while also using Peter as a unique example without contradicting himself. Peter and the entire apostolate received the same power to bind and loose but with different degrees of authority.

Finally, notice that Acts 5 is referenced as a “drastic ratification from heaven” of “Peter’s verbal rebuke.” Peter’s actions—a uniquely Petrine binding and loosing—shake the entire Church: “and great fear seized the whole church and all who heard of these things” (v. 11). His individual exercise of binding and loosing authority is the only one feared in this way. Although all of the apostles were respected afterwards, the people specifically laid the sick in Peter’s presence so that his shadow could touch and heal them (v. 15).

The popular objection from Matthew 18:18 fails to account for the nuance between having the same power or capacity to bind and loose and having the same degree of authority attached. Although the other apostles can bind and loose, command any church, and teach infallibly, we can only say that Peter is the chief spokesman of the apostles, rebukes with the utmost divine wrath backing him, and can shake the entire Church as in Acts 5. And so the biblical data show that Peter, even in his binding and loosing power, is pre-eminent.”

Love,
Matthew

Ascension, Eastertide

Why the Ascension?


-detail of the Ascension, Saint Dié manuscript

-Eastern France (Saint-Die) manuscript, 1504-1514

-by Joseph Heschmeyer, a former lawyer and seminarian, he blogs at Shameless Popery.

“It’s not hard to understand why we would celebrate Good Friday (Jesus atones for our sins on the Cross) and Easter Sunday (Jesus rises again, conquering death). But Ascension Thursday commemorates Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Why, from the perspective of one of those “left behind” on Earth, is that something to celebrate?

It’s easy to misunderstand the Ascension, as if Christ were abandoning his disciples. But he promised that this wouldn’t happen, saying “I will not leave you desolate” (John 14:18) and “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20). Similarly, we misunderstand the Ascension if we imagine that Jesus is returning to heaven, as if he ever left heaven in the first place. As St. Augustine points out, Jesus “did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven.”

Instead, Christ’s ascension is really his enthronement in heaven. One of the final prophecies Jesus makes before His death is that “from now on the Son of Man shall be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 22:69). That prophecy remained unfulfilled on Easter morning, as we know from His words to Mary Magdalene: “I have not yet ascended to the Father, but go to My brethren and say to them, I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God” (John 20:17). Instead, the prophecy is fulfilled in the Ascension, which is how St. Stephen, “full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55), and why St. Paul says that this is now “where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1; see also Heb. 8:1, 12:2; Rev. 4).

If Jesus, in His divinity, was in heaven the whole time, what is it that ascended? His humanity. And this is near the heart of why the Ascension matters. For many people, Christianity has become too disembodied—that we think of it as good news for our souls, but not for our bodies (or worse, as a sort of mission rescuing us from our captivity in our bodies).

N.T. Wright, in his book Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, reported that “a survey of beliefs about life after death conducted in Britain in 1995 indicated that though most people believed in some kind of continuing life, only a tiny minority, even among churchgoers, believed in the classic Christian position, that of a future bodily resurrection.” In America, a 2006 poll similarly found that only thirty-six percent of respondents answered “yes” to the question: “Do you believe that, after you die, your physical body will be resurrected someday?” Perhaps most shockingly, even self-described Christians overwhelmingly rejected the idea of bodily resurrection: only thirty-eight percent of Catholics and forty-four percent of Protestants answered “yes.” The situation was slightly, but only slightly, better for regular churchgoers: half of them reported believing in the bodily resurrection.

As bad as these numbers are, the reality is likely worse. Both the U.S. and U.K. studies are now decades old, and it’s hard to imagine that the situation has improved since then. Moreover, as Wright points out, “I often find that though Christians still use the word resurrection, they treat it as a synonym for ‘life after death’ or ‘going to heaven’ and that, when pressed, they often share the confusion of the wider world on the subject” (p. xii). Even many of the people who answered “yes” probably think of “resurrection” in non-physical terms.

That’s a problem, because Christianity makes little sense if the body doesn’t have dignity, or isn’t made to last forever. After all, why does the Church care about a “theology of the body,” or about tending to the bodies of even the dead? Because Christianity is good news for the body as well as for the soul. The Catechism quotes Tertullian to the effect that “the flesh is the hinge of salvation,” commenting, “We believe in God Who is creator of the flesh; we believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh; we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfillment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh” (CCC 1015).

In Eden, there was an intimate union between God and earthly creation, symbolized by “the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen. 3:8). This union between heaven and earth was ruptured in sin. And that rupture was healed first through the Incarnation (in which the heavenly God took on earthly humanity) and then the Cross (in which he offered his flesh “for the life of the world”—John 6:51), and then the Resurrection (in which Christ rose again with a glorified body), and then the Ascension (in which he rose physically to be enthroned at the right hand of the Father in Heaven). Prior to the Ascension, heaven was a purely spiritual realm.* No more.

And so Ascension Thursday is only the beginning. Christ has the first body in heaven, but not the last. He is followed soon after by His mother, which is why we celebrate the Assumption. And someday, God willing, we will all join Him. It’s why the angel’s message on Ascension Thursday is forward-looking: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, Who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as You saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). The union between heaven and earth has begun, and it is irrevocable. Our journey now is to prepare for that union to be completed within us.

*I’ll prescind here from the thorny question of what Elijah and Enoch experienced prior to Christ’s ascension.”

Love,
Matthew

Apologetics, Ecclesiology

Converting costs: do it anyway!! Quo vadis, Domine?

Christ appearing headed to Rome to Saint Peter leaving Rome on the Appian Way, Annibale Carracci, 1601-2, The National Gallery, London, Oil on panel, 77 cm × 56 cm (30 in × 22 in), please click on the image for greater detail


-by Joseph Heschmeyer, a former lawyer and seminarian, he blogs at Shameless Popery.

“Once you’re convinced Catholicism is true, is converting really necessary? That question might sound strange to some readers. After all, if you believe that the Catholic Church really is the Church founded by Christ, why wouldn’t you convert?

Well, lots of reasons. Maybe you’re part of a solid Protestant community. Maybe converting would create serious tension in your marriage or with your parents. Maybe you would lose your job in ministry. In some of the most extreme cases, maybe you live in a country in which converting to Catholicism is a capital crime. In short, people weighing whether to become Catholic are often dealing with much more than simply answering the question, “Is it true?”

But as serious and well-grounded as those hesitations may be, the Second Vatican Council doesn’t mince words:

In explicit terms [Jesus] himself affirmed the necessity of faith and baptism and thereby affirmed also the necessity of the Church, for through baptism as through a door men enter the Church. Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved. (CCC 846)

This is simply a restatement of what Catholics have been saying for two millennia. The Church is, in St. Paul’s words, Jesus’ “body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23). To try to have Jesus without the Church is to try to have Christ the head without the body of Christ, or to put asunder what God has joined together (Matt. 19:6; Eph. 5:30-31). In short, as the Catechism puts it (795), it’s not a matter of choosing among denominations, but about accepting the “whole Christ” (Christus totus), head and body.

Significantly, we’re not talking about a person who is innocently unaware of the Catholic Church or is still trying to sort out the truth of the Catholic claim. The person who sees the truth of the Catholic claim and yet refuses to respond to it is knowingly rejecting the fullness of Christ, cutting themselves off from salvation.

If that seems like a steep cost, it should. Jesus was explicit that His message might prove destabilizing for family peace (Matt. 10:34-38):

Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be those of his own household. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Or more pithily: “if any one comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:16). Jesus compares the decision to follow Him to that of a king deciding to go to war against an invading army twice his size (vv. 31-33). In other words, it’s not the kind of decision one ought to make lightly. It’s going to cost something.

You might object here: “I’m not saying not to follow Jesus—I’m just saying not to become Catholic!” But the whole point is that for the person for whom Jesus has revealed the truth of the Catholic Church, remaining Protestant (or Orthodox, etc.) is to cease to follow Him. It does no good to say we’re going to follow Jesus on our terms, just as it would have done Jesus’ original listeners no good to say they were going to follow the God of Abraham on their own terms. If Jesus shows you the way in which He wants you to follow him, that’s not the time to do your own thing or stay in your comfort zone. That’s the time to pick up your cross and follow Him, even if He’s leading you somewhere weird and uncomfortable (like the Catholic Church). (Quo vadis, Domine?)

Fortunately, though, Jesus doesn’t just tell us about the high cost of discipleship. He also promises us that these earthly costs of converting will be worth it. He tells the rich young man, “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21). Perhaps piqued by this mention of heavenly treasure, St. Peter then asks, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” (v. 27). Jesus responds by promising that “every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for My name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life” (v. 29).

In other words, discipleship isn’t just about sacrifice, but about investing, laying up for ourselves “treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:20). Converting to Catholicism can be scary, and it can be costly. But take courage: whatever it costs you will be well worth it, both in this life and in the life to come.”

Love & Truth,
Matthew

Apologetics, Good Friday, Liturgy, Passiontide, Triduum

The Whole World Should be Catholic: Good Friday Solemn Intercessions


-please click on the image for greater detail

V. For the unity of Christians

Let us pray also for all our brothers and sisters who believe in Christ,
that our God and Lord may be pleased,
as they live the truth,
to gather them together and keep them in his one Church.

(Also, in the Solemn professions Jews, atheists, or those who otherwise do not believe in the Trinitarian God, etc., basically the whole world, would become Catholic. I suppose that includes even some “Catholics” who do the name no honor would become exemplar Catholics.)


-by Peter Wolfgang

“Today is Good Friday. It is the day that Catholics and other Christians commemorate the death of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which accomplished our definitive redemption.

It is also the day that Catholics pray for those other Christians to come into full communion with the Catholic Church. And “for the Jewish people” and “for those who do not believe in Christ” and “for those who do not believe in God” to do likewise.

The language of the post-Vatican II liturgy is carefully worded, but the intent is clear. On Good Friday, during the Solemn Intercessions, Catholics pray for the whole world to become Catholic.

I join in that prayer every year. Indeed, I look forward to it. I, too, believe (as the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus often put it) that “the Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ most fully and rightly ordered through time.”

I, on the other hand, almost never make such claims—not because I don’t believe them, but because of where my work takes me. I run the Evangelical-associated Family Institute of Connecticut, which is part of a network of Family Policy Councils (FPCs) that exist in about forty of the fifty states. Only about five of the forty are run by Catholics.

There is no distinctly Catholic subject matter published under the auspices of my organization. But there is a lot on my personal Facebook, where I have noticed an uptick in . . . questions? . . . pushback? . . . from non-Catholic friends.

There is the Mormon friend who emails me quotes on how I should not wait until after I am dead to become a Mormon. There’s the Pentecostal minister who, over lunch, mentions his belief that the Catholic Church was founded by Constantine. There are the Evangelical ministers who are surprised when I post verses they believe to be prooftexts against Catholicism.

And, of course, there is Mary.

My non-Catholic friends are right to ask questions. I’m wrong to avoid them. We are all called “to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15).

With special attention to the one question that comes up most with my non-Catholic friends, here is why I am Catholic: in a word, the Church.

In my experience, the famous “solas” of the Protestant Reformation almost never come up in conversation. Those issues seem to be as resolved as they are likely to get. What really sticks in the craw of my Protestant friends is the Catholic Church’s claim to be the Church, the one true Church of Jesus Christ. The 2000 Vatican document Dominus Iesus uses the phrase ecclesial communities precisely because, it was argued, Protestant “churches” are not churches in the true sense—that “just as there is one Christ, so there exists a single body of Christ, a single bride of Christ: ‘a single Catholic and apostolic Church’” (16). One Lord, one baptism, one Church.

In John 17:21, Jesus prays of his disciples “that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” Christ surely intended for us to be one Church, not divided into separate communions.

But the Church does acknowledge “that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church.” The Church recognizes, as Dominus Iesus spells out, that “outside of her structure, many elements can be found of sanctification and truth.”

I have seen those elements “of sanctification and truth.” Indeed, in my work on behalf of the values we share, I have occasionally experienced a greater Christian love and generosity from Protestants than I have from Catholics.

Where the rubber hits the road is in the Catholic claim to be “fully” the Church in a way that other communions are not.  What, really, is the Catholic Church saying with this claim? That Protestant churches are not the Church as we understand it because they have not maintained apostolic succession and, therefore, valid sacraments.

Should not the Protestant affirm this? “That’s exactly right,” he might say. “We are not the Church as you understand it because your understanding is incorrect. We don’t need apostolic succession and those extra sacraments to be the Church. If we thought otherwise, we would not be separated from you in the first place.”

For myself, I believe that the Catholic Church is what it claims to be. It is, at bottom, why I am Catholic. If you believe what the Church claims about itself, then all its other claims—about Mary, the Eucharist, and so forth—naturally follow.

I thank God that the Church teaches that my Christian brethren of other communions are in a real “albeit imperfect” (Dominus Iesus 17) communion with me, because that is what I have experienced. These are my brothers and sisters in Christ. I love them.

And I believe that we should all be in perfect communion together as members of the Catholic Church. That it is the will of Christ: that we all be one in her, His bride.

I will pray for that when I pray the Solemn Intercessions at the Good Friday liturgy today. I will do so in the belief that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be—and in the hope that we and our separated brethren will again be one “so that the world may believe.”

Love & truth, blessed Good Friday,
Matthew

Ecclesiology, Liturgy, Liturgy of the Hours, Prayer

St Benedict’s Admonition to Pray the Divine Office


-by John Paul Sonnen

“By tradition going back to early Christian times, the Divine Office has been prayed by Roman Catholics, arranged in such a way that the whole course of the day and night are sanctified with prayers.

This recitation of the Office of the Church praises God without ceasing, in song and prayer, and it intercedes with Christ for the salvation of the world. For this reason it has also been called the “Liturgy of the Hours.”

For centuries lay Catholics have visited Benedictine monasteries across the world, participating in the recitation of the Office, fostering a unique relationship between man and God. In Benedictine communities the recitation of the Office is called the Opus Dei or “work of God.”

The recitation is a prayer or “work” that allows the Christian to think of God and to sing His praises. It is an act of sacrifice and revelation that directs the whole self, psyche and soma alike to God, inviting man to come closer to forgetting himself in this one particular form of the worship of God.

It has been described thus by the Benedictine theologian, Dom Hubert van Zeller:

“The Divine Office is at the same time the word of God for man and the work of man for God. It is God’s revelation of Himself in human accents; it is man’s debt repaid to Him in the medium of sacrifice” (The Holy Rule, p. 172).

The Divine Office is for All

The recitation of the Divine Office is of such importance that Roman Rite clerics in major orders are bound to pray it daily. This includes priests, deacons, monks, nuns, and many members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and of Societies of Apostolic Life according to their approved Constitutions.

Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy has an entire chapter dedicated to the subject of the Office, seen in chapter 4 of Sacrosanctum Concilium. In the same document the Council admonishes not only clergy, but also the lay faithful, to also pray the hours of the Divine Office with the whole Church with this recommendation:

“And the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the Divine Office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 100).

Following on this, the Code of Canon Law also encourages laity to participate in the recitation of the Office:

“Others also of Christ’s faithful [the laity] are earnestly invited, according to circumstances, to take part in the liturgy of the hours as an action of the Church” (Code of Canon Law, 1174).

This call to unceasing prayer for clergy, and lay people, too, when possible, is in response to St. Paul’s exhortation: “Pray without ceasing” (1The. 5:17). For only in the Lord can be given and received fruitfulness and increase. This is why the Apostles first said as an example for all, “We will devote ourselves to prayer…” (Acts 6:4).

Hence, all who perform the recitation of the Office perform a service in fulfilling a duty of the Church, praying together with the Church in unison.

The Divine Office as a Gift from St. Benedict

St. Benedict in his sacred Rule (Regula), a book he wrote that is one of the most influential books in the history of Christendom, gives a significant amount of advice on the subject of the Office, its structure and the regulations he laid out for his followers.

This Rule, written in about the year 540 AD, starts with a Prologue where St. Benedict speaks of his intention to create a “school” for the Lord’s service for those who have heard God’s call and followed Him.

All that follows in the Rule from hereafter is an elaboration of this theme of seeking God. A key component of the monastic vocation in light of this theme, as described by St. Benedict, is the recitation of the Divine Office said not alone, but in common.

The Rule with careful clarity gives detailed instructions of the order of Latin chants and prayers. More prayers were even assigned to the monks during winter months, taking into consideration the shorter length of day, assuming the monks would have slightly more time to pray while staying warm indoors.

St. Benedict explains in his own words the importance of the Office which revolved around seven daily services, also known as offices or hours. He writes:

“The prophet says, ‘Seven times a day have I praised you’ (Ps. 119:164). We will fullfil this sacred number seven if we perform the duties of our service at the hours of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, because it was with reference to these hours of the day that he said, ‘Seven times a day have I praised you.’ With regard to the night office the same prophet says, ‘In the middle of the night I rose to praise you’ (Ps. 119:62).” (The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 16).

St. Benedict devised that each of the hours of prayer were divided into a one-week Psalter. This allowed for all 150 Psalms to be said by the monks in one week, with the prayers divided into set times in the chapel, with an additional night office called Matins.

Benedict warns that such a life with regular hours to pray can be hard, particularly at first. He also acknowledged that problems could arise among the monks that may threaten to sabotage the practice, that was to be sung in unison by the monks in the chapel.

At the heart of Benedictine life is praying not only the choral Office but also the sung Conventual Mass, both celebrated in choir. Unfortunately, today not everyone follows all the chapters of the Rule, especially with regard to the structure of the sung Office in choir with its one-week psalter in Latin.

In the 1960’s the office of Prime was suppressed, and the Psalms were no longer distributed throughout one week, veering from the original approbations of St. Benedict. Some communities also gave up the beauty of chanting the Office in Latin, an immense cultural loss and deviation from what St. Benedict himself envisioned.

How to Say the Divine Office

The Mass and Office will always be at the center of Benedictine life.

The recitation of the Office by monks in a spirit of obedience and reverence has great merit. The act punctuates the day of the monk, like a leaven awakening the soul to sanctify the day as a gift of self to God.

Praying the Office worthily and embracing it sanctifies the whole life and assists the monk toward his goal of unceasing prayer – Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus.

St. Benedict outlines the attitude of mind with which monks are to approach the duty of prayer. The saint’s aim was to get his monks to bring to their interior and exterior exercise a proper disposition of prayer that combined awe, simplicity, compunction, and purity of intention.

In heaven, St. Augustine teaches, satisfied love sings the hymn of praise in the plentitude of eternal enjoyment. Here below, yearning love seeks to express the ardor of its desires.

There is always need in spirituality for a holy fear and balanced reverence with yearning love. St. Gregory warned that irreverence is one of the signs of the soul’s deterioration, a sure sign that a monastic community is suffering.

St. Augustine sheds light on the subject:

“Let us then ever remember what the prophet says: ‘Serve the Lord in fear,’ and again, ‘Sing ye wisely,’ and ‘In the sight of the angels I will sing praises unto Thee.’ Therefore, let us consider how we ought to behave ourselves in the presence of God and of His angels, and so assist at the Divine Office that mind and voice be in harmony” (Sermons of St. Augustine, Sermon 255).

Here again, as in the exercise of humility, it is the omnipresence of God that inspires the monk as he recites the Office with proper reverence in a community setting. At the same time, it encourages him to keep up his unceasing struggle against distractions, boredom, against a sense of wasting time, and against the dismay that comes as a temptation to feel that no sensible progress is being made in the spiritual life.

In discovering the virtue of the Office, the soul discovers also the essential need to pray, and particularly the grace to pray throughout the day and night in sacrifice. Prayer and sacrifice are seen traditionally as the logical and necessary consequence of justice.

This is because God must be served for His great glory, thanked for His great glory, and atoned to for the outrages done to His glory.

Therefore, the Christian knowing about God’s existence and recognizing His sovereign rights over His creatures finds peace in expressing this knowledge and submission in the most immediate way possible through prayer.

Catholics will want to dedicate themselves in a special way to the expression of this attitude of prayer.

When appropriate, they will want to use their spiritual and physical faculties at the service of this expression, and they will know that in their exercise of praying the Divine Office a still more immediate and intimate relationship with God is being realized in response to St. Benedict’s admonition to pray in unison without ceasing.”

Love,
Matthew