April 24, 2008
Meet the Next Doctor of the Church
(Jimmy Akin)
Probably.
I mean, it's not certain, but at this point it's probable.
Why do I say that?
And who am I talking about?
If you don't recognize his picture, it's John Henry Cardinal Newman.
As to why is it probable, well, he is to be beatified.
If he is beatified, it is likely that he will (at some point) be declared a saint.
(NOTE: There is already an investigation underway of a possible second miracle needed for sainthood.)
If that happens, it's a dead certain lock that he will be named a doctor of the Church.
Why?
Because Newman's writings made the kind of important theological contribution to Catholic teaching that doctors of the Church make.
In particular, his theory on the development of doctrine helped the Church in a very important way by allowing theologians to better articulate the manner in which doctrine progresses, how something can be implicit in one age and made more explicit and precise with the course of time. He also did important work on the doctrine of conscience and other subjects.
Newman's theological contributions are so substantial that if you look at the index of people cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church and if you eliminate all the saints and popes, you're left with basically three names: Newman, Origen, and Tertullian.
At least those three get mentioned more than anybody else in the not-a-saint, not-a-pope category.
Tertullian will never be a saint, because he died a schismatic.
Origen is undergoing something of a rehabilitation, as can be seen from the kind of treatment B16 gave him in his series of Wednesday audiences on early Christian figures.
But Newman is the closest to being given the title "doctor."
It may even happen at the same time as his canonization, should that be forthcoming.
MORE ON NEWMAN.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (77)
April 04, 2008
Calling Priests "Father" In Latin
(Jimmy Akin)
They don't.
Call priests "Father" in Latin, that is.
This is a fact that came to my attention recently when I was reading a volume of Roman Replies and CLSA Advisory Opinions (a canon law journal that prints what its name indicates) that had a revision from the reign of John Paul II of the rescript of laicization that is given to priests who are returned to the lay state (in terms of how they function in the Church; they still remain priests ontologically).
The revision was notable in that it allowed bishops to do things like, after a period of time, allow the ex-priest to serve as a lector or an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion.
What caught my attention, though, was the way the document refers to the priest.
In the English translation, it says something like "Father _____________ of the Diocese of ______________ is hereby . . . blah, blah, blah, etc."
But in the original Latin, it doesn't say the Latin equivalent of "Father _____________," which would be "Pater _____________."
Instead, it said, "D.nus _____________."
D.nus?
I recognized that as almost certainly an abbreviation for "Dominus" or "Lord," which is a title that is still used for clergy in Latin, as it is in some countries (like England) as a title for nobility.
Thus when B16 was elected, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez announced:
« Fratelli e sorelle carissimi ! ¡ Queridísimos hermanos y hermanas ! Biens chers frères et sœurs ! Liebe Brüder und Schwestern ! Dear brothers and sisters ! Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum : Habemus papam ! Emminentissimum ac reverendissimum dominum, dominum Iosephum, sanctæ romanæ Ecclesiæ cardinalem Ratzinger, qui sibi nomen imposuit Benedicti decimi sexti. »
The blue part would be "Lord Joseph (Cardinal of the holy roman Church) Ratzinger."
(BTW, you can listen to that online HERE. I just love listening to it and recalling that day. I especially like the brief pause before he enthusiastically says "Ratzinger." WHEEEE! I love it. HERE ARE MORE HABEMUS PAPAM RECORDINGS OF OTHER POPES.)
Anyway, after looking at the rescript, I called a friend who is a Latinist and who is well acquainted with Church documents in Latin and asked two questions:
1) Is Dominus the normal honorific used for priests in Church documents.
Yes.
2) Do they use Pater or an synonym?
No.
So it seems that calling priests "Father" is something that happens in vernacular languages like English (Father) or Spanish (Padre) or Arabic (Abunah) but not (at least not typically) in the Church's official documents.
Interesting.
I said to my friend: "I bet there are a bunch of priests who don't know they are 'Lord So-and-So' in Latin."
My friend: "Let's not tell them."
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (47)
January 14, 2008
I've Been Saying This For Years
(Jimmy Akin)
It's shocking!
You know how only a third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence?
Well, they don't.
By which I mean: It isn't true that only a third of Catholics believe in the Real Presence.
That's a myth that got created due to thee things: (1) a pollster using a poorly worded questions that didn't correspond to Catholic teaching, meaning that Catholics responding to the question weren't sure how to answer it in a way that reflected their faith, and so the pro-Real Presence vote got split among several different categories. (2) Those reading the results of the poll didn't pay careful attention to how the question was worded and what the implications were for how the different categories had to be pieced back together to get an accurate indication of belief in the Real Presence. (3) The general desire to lament how bad things are these days led people to read the results in terms of a staggering crisis of faith.
And so for years the idea has been floating around out there that only a small number of Catholics actually believe in the Real Presence, despite the fact that it isn't true.
Now, I'm happy to concede that not enough Catholics believe in the Real Presence. 100% of them should. I'm also happy to concede that not enough Catholics understand the Real Presence in the manner articulated by the Church (transubstantiaion). Some have views that are fuzzy on that point, and bad catechesis is a key factor in that.
But the numbers are nowhere near as bleak as people make out.
And now there's a new study (by the National Catholic Reporter folks, of all people), that backs this up. Fr. Richard John Neuhaus writes:
81 percent say that “belief that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist” is essential in their understanding of the Catholic faith. Keep in mind that the survey is of a cross section of the 65 million Catholics in the U.S. (although Latinos are greatly underrepresented). Among the more highly committed Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that belief in the Real Presence is considerably higher than 81 percent. This is worth keeping in mind because some years ago a clumsily worded question in a survey came up with the conclusion that only one third of Catholics believed in the Real Presence, and that “finding” still crops up in discussions on the state of Catholicism. Among active Catholics, belief in the Real Presence, as also in the Incarnation, the Virgin Birth, and the Resurrection of Jesus, edges up toward unanimity.
GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (132)
November 12, 2007
November Bishops Meeting
(Jimmy Akin)
The U.S. bishops are meeting this week in the second of their two meetings that are held each year.
JOHN ALLEN HAS A PREVIEW HERE.
HE ALSO HAS UPDATED COVERAGE UNDERWAY HERE.
If I can, I'll offer some thoughts about what they're discussing this time, but I wanted to get links up first so that people could stay informed on the progress of the meeting.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (41)
October 09, 2007
Interview with Cardinal George
(Jimmy Akin)
John Allen has an interesting interview with Cardinal George which, for some idiotic reason,the NCR folks decided to put online in pdf form.
FIRST, HERE'S A BACKGROUNDER ON THE INTERVIEW.
AND HERE'S THE INTERVIEW ITSELF.
In the interview, Cardinal George has a number of things to say that have a bearing on the thesis that a broader cultural shift among Catholics is significantly responsible for declining Mass attendance and other religious practice, yet he also faults the leadership of the Church for contributing to the problem out of a sense of sociological naivete.
Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge talk about the distinction between “high tension” and “low tension” religion, arguing that over time low tension groups tend to dissolve into secularism.
That’s right. In the 60s, it was very important to show you could be American and Catholic. Whole magazines were devoted to that. There was a collective sigh of relief at the Second Vatican Council, with human freedom being so much in the forefront of the conciliar concerns, that the tension wasn’t there anymore. I think some of the moves of the church in that period now seem sociologically naïve, in their long-term consequences.
What do you have in mind?
Catholicism as a distinctive way of life was defined by eating habits and fasting, and by days especially set aside that weren’t part of the general secular calendar. They were reminders that the church is our mediator in our relationship to God, and can enter into the horarium [calendar] that we keep, into the foods that we eat, into all the aspects of daily life, into sexual life. Once you say that all those things can be done individually, as you choose to do penance, for example, you reduce the collective presence of the church in somebody’s consciousness. At that point, the church as mediator becomes more an idea for many people. Even if they accept it, it’s not a practice. So then when the church turns around and says ‘You have to do this,’ then resistance is there to say, ‘How can you tell me that? I’m deciding on my life for myself, and you even told me I could!’
Cardinal George also comments on the situation with the new translation of the liturgy being prepared and notes that, while the new translations are better and the right thing is being done in preparing them, it's still going to be a significant adjustment for people:
Bishop Donald Trautman and others worry that when that Sunday comes and you have to explain to people that from now on they will be saying “and with your Spirit” rather than “and also with you,” there will be a negative reaction. Do you share those concerns?
Hopefully, there will be a lot of good catechesis, which is already being prepared in all the English-speaking countries. That [a negative reaction] will happen if it’s not well prepared. It will be a lot harder, as we all know, to go from English to English than from Latin to English. The Latin was foreign anyway, and this was our language. Now we’ve got something that is our language, and we’ve got something new that is also our language with a slightly different cast. That’s going to be hard. Beyond that, we’ve memorized. I can say the canons by heart. We can enter into them and pray them. Even if they’re not great translations, they’re not bad, and in many ways they’re quite beautiful. I’ve made them my own. It’s good when you say “We believe,” and people go down the line through the Creed. We’re changing four lines in that thing. It’s going to be difficult. People will go back again to reading it, whereas for 20 years now we’ve just been able to remember it. That’s not going to easy, and nobody’s looking forward to it.
Is it worth it?
Oh yes. I think the translations are superior. There’s a lot of the richness of the Roman rite, and therefore our faith, because our liturgy reflects our faith, that we will have present in our hearts again. But it will take 20 years, maybe, before we have it memorized. I mean, I’ll probably go to my death fighting not to say, “and also with you,” because it’s so second nature by now. People know immediately what to do. That’s great, that’s a sign of unity. So we’re introducing a discordant note in our unity, for a good purpose. I think the reason is very adequate, but it’s going to be work.
GET THE STORY. (PDF WARNING)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (43)
September 28, 2007
Sigh.
(Jimmy Akin)
So the Dutch Dominicans have put out a pamphlet calling for local churches to pick their own ministers, men or women, married or single, straight or homosexual, to celebrate the Eucharist, and hopefully these will be ordained by the local bishop and everyone will join hands and sing Kumbaya, blah, blah, blah.
Doesn't this stuff ever get old to them?
Actually, it's the people who are getting old, according to some.
EXCERPT:
Wim Houtman, religion editor for Nederlands Dagblad, a major Dutch newspaper, told NCR that the booklet reflects the views of an aging generation in Holland, many of whom are active in their local parishes, and disappointed by what they see as a conservative turn under Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Yet such debates, Houtman said, “mean nothing … to the people in their twenties and thirties who increasingly make the music in the Dutch Catholic Church.”
Yeah. Same graying of the dissident movement that's happening here. Dissidentism fails to reproduce itself effectively, leading to an aging of the dissident population.
It'll be interesting to see if the Vatican intervenes on this one or if they just leave it up to the Dutch bishops and the leadership of the Dominican order.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (27)
July 31, 2007
Happy St. Ignatius of Loyola Day!
(Jimmy Akin)
That includes, especially, all of the members of the Society of Jesus!
Though it may be somewhat impolitic to say so, I've often remarked that Jesuits are like the "little girl with the little curl, right in the middle of her forhead." When they're good, they're very, very good, and when they're bad, their horrid.
But I just got an e-mail from some of the good ones.
He writes:
I visit your website and I just wanted to drop you a note and let you know about something:
July 31st is the feast of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus - a.k.a. the Jesuits. For his feast day, www.companionofjesus.com (my website) is launching Jesuit Review, a 10 installment set of internet videos focusing on Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality, Jesuit history and contemporary Jesuits. You can find the first installment by clicking the Jesuit Review link at www.companionofjesus.com.
Carlos Esparza, SJ and I have created the series of internet videos that hopefully will give some insight into Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality. I think you'll like them. Given all of the press that Jesuits get, we thought it would be important to offer some basic introductory material about what Saint Ignatius hoped would drive the Society of Jesus.
I have to admit, Carlos and I are amateurs. Neither of us had ever been in front or behind a camera before and we had certainly never played around with video editing software. But, in the 4 weeks we had to complete the project, I think we came a long way.
I'm writing you in hopes that you will help spread the word about the videos. If we are successful in getting people to learn more about Jesuit/Ignatian spirituality, I expect that the New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus will encourage us to work on more projects of a similar kind.
Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (48)
July 20, 2007
Quo Vadis, Europa?
(Jimmy Akin)
John Allen had an interesting piece today regarding how the Holy See's relationship with Europe is likely to change in coming years. There are a lot of interesting things in the piece, but I'll call attention to and comment on a few.
First, the growing secularization of Europe (resulting in an unwillingness to take into account or adhere to Catholic values) will result in the Holy See taking a less pragmatic and more principled stand in its dealings with the European Union. That's a good thing, because if you don't stand up for your principles, problems result. A singificant part of the problems we find ourselves in today are due to an excessive pragmatism in the past. If bishops had started excommunicating pro-abort Catholic politicians back when Catholic identity mattered to the politicians in a substantive way, there'd be a lot fewer pro-abort Catholic politicians than there are now.
It also seems to me that there's a sequence in which pragmatism and principle are likely to alternate as an entity's fortunes wane. If an entity (like the Church) is in the ascendancy in a culture--if it's substantially running the show culturally--then it's going to be very pragmatic in its approach because it's trying to hold a culture together and that involves countless difficulties of a pragmatic nature. But if it's lost that influence (as the Church in Europe has) then it's going to be much more principled in its approach since it (a) no longer needs to run the whole culture and (b) needs to shore up its own identity contra the culture. If the culture begins to actively persecute it, however, a shift back to pragmatism occurs, only this time the pragmatism isn't directed toward running a culture but toward survival. This is what we see in Christian communities in the Middle East, where Christians have to be extraordinarily diplomatic and careful in order to prevent Muslim reprisals. Ultimately, though, if persecution goes far enough, a return to principle will occur--or not. There is a point, known as martyrdom, where you have to decide whether you will ultimately stick with your core principles or not, and you either do or don't.
We have Christ's assurance that the Church as a whole will survive, but it may fare very ill in Europe and we might actually get martyr popes one day, which leads to one of Allen's points:
Vatican policy on Europe will be more uncompromising and less amenable to Realpolitk solutions which aim to make a separate peace with secularism. This will have consequences across the [board], but one area likely to be especially combustible is same-sex marriage and gay rights. A more identity-driven Catholicism may run up against the growing legal protection of homosexuality in Europe to produce legal action against the church under hate speech and anti-discrimination laws. One under-40 Catholic priest I know, in this case a Canadian though he might easily be European, tells me that among priests of his generation, it's taken for granted that some may go to jail for defending Catholic teaching on sexuality. It's reminiscent of the way Catholic priests in Eastern Europe used to realistically accept that some of them might end up in Soviet gulags.
Allen also makes the point that the Holy See's relations with Europe are likely to shift from supporting particular short-term policy outcomes to articulating matters of fundamental principle that will (hopefully) bear fruit in the longer term.
To my mind this is also a good thing. Bishops around the world, out of a commendable desire to help their flocks, have been tempted to engage the Church in supporting particular political projects that stray too far from matters of principle and too far into matters of application. It's one thing to say "No homosexual marriage!" It's another thing to say "This farm bill has it's subsidies misallocated!" The first is far more within the Church's brief than is the second.
As is illustrated by one of Allen's final points, which--although he doesn't say it this way--shows that Catholics have different perspectives on these matters, and the globalization of the Catholic Church is going to make these differences felt in Europe:
Not only does a multipolar Vatican diplomacy leave Europe a bit out in the cold, it also promises sharper conflicts with Europe, and this time not just on gay rights. Catholic leaders from the global south are often bitterly critical of Europe and the United States on matters of economic justice and militarism; for example, many southern bishops talk about the World Bank and the IMF the way American bishops do Planned Parenthood, that is, as the church's central bête noir. Perceptions of unfair trading practices in Europe, especially its massive agricultural subsidies, are a matter of deep southern Catholic resentment. Under the impress of multipolar diplomacy, we might anticipate a future in which the flashpoints of church/state relations in Europe could be expressed as "sex, secularism, and subsidies."
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (125)
July 06, 2007
Lay Ecclesial Ministry & the Feminization of the Church
(Jimmy Akin)
John Allen had some interesting commentary last Friday on lay ecclesial ministry and the feminization of the Church.
He describes the basic phenomenon of increased lay ministry well (for good or ill), and much of what he has to say is quite insightful.
I'd like to write a longer commentary on what he has to say than I can at the moment (perhaps I can revisit the subject another time), but I'd call attention to at least a few points, briefly:
Allen notes (correctly) that in both the Catholic Church and in Protestant churches (even those that allow women ministers), the top level of leadership consists of men, but the level below this is largely women. That's to be expected for several reasons:
a) Women are--in all cultures and times--more religious than men, meaning that they're more likely to sign up/volunteer/whatever. However,
b) Men are not biologically equipped to bear and nurse children the way women are, which makes them the natural primary caregivers for children, which takes women out of the work/volunteer pool for a considerable length of time (at least until the children don't require constant supervision). In humans, bearing and raising young requires an intense personal investment (compared to some species, where the young are on their own from the moment they're hatched), which means--and this is especially true historically--that if a human family has to make a choice about who is the primary caregiver for the children and who is the primary breadwinner, the choices that most families will make, and have made historically, are obvious. This has an impact on human psychology, specifically:
c) Women are on average more psychologically oriented toward caregiving within the family and men are more psychologically oriented toward interacting with the outside world, which means things like pursuing a career (income for the family), fighting wars (protecting the family), and pursuing leadership (securing a place for the family in the broader social situation). Men have an innate leadership instinct that is stronger--on
average--than the same instinct is in women.
Because of factors (b) and (c), men disproportionately form the leadership of almost every institution: the family, the state, the business world, and the religious world. Men have a stronger drive to achieve in these areas, and because of their biological inability to bear and nurse children, they aren't taking time off to do those activities and can devote themselves more fully to their careers.
You might even expect men to be even more dominant in the religious world than they are except for factor (a): Women are more religious than men, which ensures them a prominent place in religious institutions.
What I have said thus far, of course, is based on the law of averages. It's not true of every individual. Some women are more driven to lead than some men and some men are more nurturing than some women in the same way that some women are taller than some men and some men live longer than some women (greater height being a male thing on average and greater longevity being a female thing on average). Similarly, some men are more religious than some women. It's all averages.
So the pattern that we actually see is to be expected: Men outnumber women in the top leadership roles in religious institutions, but women outnumber men in the next layer down.
In the Catholic Church, this reality has been reflected from the very beginning: Christ appointed apostles (leaders) who were all men, but we then read about there being a group of women (not men!) who ministered to their needs in turn.
Based on this defining, founding experience, the Church recognizes that the priesthood is something that can be held only by men, but it allows for a prominent place for women religious (think: priests and nuns).
In contemporary Protestant churches there have been some that have allowed women ministers, but the same pattern holds: Senior ministers are disproportionately male, while other church workers (including junior pastors) have a higher female representation, and sometimes are disproportionately female.
That's just the way the human species is. This pattern is straight out of human biology and psychology. It's part of our species' reproductive strategy. It's how God designed us.
But there can be fluctuations in how this gender dynamic plays out. Different religious bodies may have a more masculine or a more feminine orientation, and it's not hard to see how some churches have become so oriented toward one gender--by tilting toward a masculine spirituality or a feminine spirituality--that the environment becomes uncongenial to the other sex.
At one time there was much more of a stress on masculine spirituality in the Catholic Church than there is now. That's why we still speak of the Church militant as its earthly embodiment. But today the situation is changed, and it raises questions about how congenial an environment the Church is today for men.
Allen writes:
[S]ome recent writers have voiced concern that Christianity actually alienates men. David Murrow's Why Men Hate Going to Church (Nelson Books, 2004) and Leon J. Podles' The Church Impotent: The Feminization of Christianity (Spence, 1999), illustrate the point. Murrow is a Presbyterian and Podles a Catholic, but both have noticed something similar about their respective denominations.
As Podles put it succinctly, "Women go to church, men go to football games."
Podles believes that Western Christianity has been feminizing itself for the better part of 1,000 years, beginning with medieval imagery about the church as the "Bride of Christ," which he associates with St. Bernard of Clairvaux and exhortations to "fall in love" with Jesus. While that kind of imagery has a powerful impact on women, Podles wrote, it's off-putting for men. Podles argued that Christian men have sublimated their religious instincts into sports, soldiering, fraternal organizations, and even fascism. When they do engage in religious activity, he wrote, it's more likely to be in a more masculine para-church organization such as the Knights of Columbus (note the martial imagery) or Promise-Keepers.
Even reviewers who didn't buy Podles' historical arguments generally conceded that he was onto something in terms of Christian sociology.
On a less theoretical note, Murrow, a media and advertising specialist, said he looked around after attending weekly church services for almost 30 years, and drew what to him seemed an obvious conclusion: "It's not too hard to discern the target audience of the modern church," he wrote. "It's a middle-aged to elderly woman."
This was never anyone's intention, Murrow said, but it's the inevitable result of the fact that these women have two things every church needs: time and money. In that light, he said, it's no surprise that "church culture has subtly evolved to meet women's needs." Murrow agreed with Podles that "contemporary churches are heavily tilted toward feminine themes in the preaching, the music and the sentiments expressed in worship."
"If our definition of a 'good Christian' is someone who's nurturing, tender, gentle, receptive and guilt-driven, it's going to be a lot easier to find women who will sign up," Murrow wrote.
I don't agree with everything Allen says in the piece. In particular, I have some qualifications that I'd make in his final section regarding salaries and gender, but the dominance of feminine spirituality today in the Catholic Church is a concern to me. As a former Evangelical, I have an experience of what it's like to be in a church that has a more masculine spirituality, and the Catholic Church's early zeal to evangelize was driven by a masculine impulse ("Convert those heathen!"). I have a concern that the Catholic Church today is in danger of--and, indeed, has already become--too oriented towards a feminine mode of spirituality.
Both modes are essential for the Church to function optimally, just as both a man and a woman are essential for a family to function optimally.
It's how God designed us.
After all, in the beginning there was Adam and Eve. It was "not good" that man should be alone, and it also is not good that woman should be alone. God meant for mankind to exist with the two sexes working together--bringing both of their viewpoints to the experiences they encounter--and when one viewpoint begins to crowd out the other, it's not a good thing.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (188)
May 18, 2007
A New Corollary of Godwin's Law?
(Jimmy Akin)
Recently there was a story in the Catholic press about a speech in which an Italian churchman apparently referred to things like abortion and euthanasia as "terrorism with a human face."
Now there's this story about L'Osservatore Romano referring to an Italian commedian's jibes at B16 and the Church as "terrorism."
The paper is quoted as saying:
"This, too, is terrorism. It's terrorism to launch attacks on the Church," it said. "It's terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man."
I don't know what all the commedian said, but the story refers to him saying:
"The Pope says he doesn't believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved," he said.
He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. He died in December after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator.
"I can't stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn't the case for (Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet or (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco," he said between musical acts at the open-air concert.
This kind of thing leaves me scratching my head.
I'm one of the biggest B16 fans there is, but I don't see how this kind of stuff amounts to "terrorism." Either there's something missing from the new story that the commendian said that would qualify in this regard or there is something in Italian culture that would allow these statements to be taken as incitements to violence or the word "terrorism" means something different in Italian . . . or I don't know what.
While people regularly talk about how hard it is to give a rigorous definition to the term, it seems to me that at the core of the idea of terrorism is using either violence or threats of violence to cause fear in order to get someone to do what you want.
If there isn't at least the threat of violence, it isn't terrorism. It's something else. For example, if someone threatens to release damaging information to get someone to do what he wants, it's blackmail.
If violence or the threat of violence isn't being used as some kind of coercion (either on the social policy level or on the personal level) then it isn't terrorism. Violence without the purpose of coercision is just violence. Thus murder--even mass murder--is not terrorism.
So I don't see how abortion or euthanasia or joking (even joking badly or offensively or mean-spiritedly) about the pope is terrorism.
But like I said, maybe the press reports have left stuff out, or maybe "terrorism" means something different in Italian.
I just hope we aren't approaching an ecclesiastical equivalent of Godwin's Law--something to the effect of "The more sharply felt the subject matter of a dispute is, the more likely a churchman is to call it 'terrorism.'"
That would only rob the word of its meaning.
Would that count as lexical terrorism?
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (60)
May 11, 2007
It's Family Day In Italty Tomorrow
(Jimmy Akin)
FIND OUT WHY THAT'S MUCH MORE DRAMATIC THAN IT SOUNDS.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (24)
March 30, 2007
USCCB Smackdown
(Jimmy Akin)
Readers of JA.O know about the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith--the universal Church's doctrinal watchdog group. What many may not know, though, is that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has an equivalent body, known as the Committee on Doctrine.
Whereas the CDF is tasked with dealing with global problems in the area of theology, the COD is tasked with dealing with local (i.e., national) ones, and it's just delivered a stinging warning about the writings of one of our home-grown dissenters, Daniel Maguire of Marquette University.
It's interesting how Maguire accuses the COD of being "obsessed with sex" when it was his writings on sexual issues that contained clear contradictions on Church teaching.
Marquette's response is also interesting.
And disappointing.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (243)
March 27, 2007
The Declericalization of the Global South
(Jimmy Akin)
Use 'em or lose 'em?
That's a question facing Church leaders in many parts of the global south. The first 'em refers to lay people willing to take on roles traditionally performed (if at all) by priests. The second 'em refers to lay people in general.
Here's the dynamic: Many Catholics in the developing world have little access to priests, but they are quite religious and want to be part of a Christian community, and there are all these helpful Pentecostals interested in showering them with attention and pastoral care.
For example (EXCERPT):
One Honduran woman, for example, told me a story about her sister-in-law who had been hospitalized with a form of cancer. She did not belong to a parish that had a resident priest, and the overworked hospital chaplain was only able to see her briefly and episodically. Meanwhile, a local Pentecostal community had members in her room every day, comforting her, bringing her flowers, and seeing to the needs of her family while she was away. It’s no mystery, this Honduran woman told me, why her sister-in-law considered joining that Pentecostal church. In the end, the family persuaded her to remain Catholic, but that’s not how these things often turn out.
That kind of situation may be responsible for why Pentecostalism--and Protestantism in general--is making such headway in Latin America. You just don't need the kind of rigorous commitment and training on the part of Protestant ministers in that context that you do of priests. All they need to do is hang out their shingle, and with the help of others in their churches, you've got instant pastoral workers.
It's entirely different in an environment where the priest is expected to do everything and it's very hard to become a priest, requiring a lot of training and commitment on the part of candidates.
So if you want to compete (i.e., retain souls), you're going to either need to radically up the number of priests--which would likely entail lowering standards for them--or shift many responsibilities from priests to lay people.
In the Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict spoke against lowering standards for priests, which would point in the direction of increased lay involvement in pastoral work.
Here in the global north, increasing lay involvement has often (not always) been used as a tool to try to strip the priesthood of its uniqueness, along with an associated liberal theological agenda.
But John Allen thinks that's not the case in Latin America.
GET THE STORY.
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March 19, 2007
Behind the Scenes at the CDF
(Jimmy Akin)
Catholic News Service ran an interesting piece interviewing Cardinal Levada that provided a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, including a look at the mechanics of how it goes about its work.
It's well worth reading, so
GET THE STORY.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (1)
December 19, 2006
I Don't Like This Idea At All
(Jimmy Akin)
Breitbart is reporting:
The Vatican may one day field a football team that could rival the top formations in Italy's powerful Serie A, the Holy See's Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said Sunday.
"I do not preclude the possibility that the Vatican, in the future, could put together a football team of great value, that could play on the same level as Roma, Inter Milan and Sampdoria," all first division teams, the Cardinal said, according to the Ansa agency.
Bertone has never hidden his passion for football, and has commented on matches in the past when he was archbishop of Genoa. He has mentioned on several occasions the possibility of the Vatican fielding a team. SOURCE. CHT to the reader who e-mailed.
I like Cardinal Bertone, and I'm glad he got the Secretary of State's job at the Vatican, but I think this is a really bad idea.
I don't know how serious he is about it. I can easily see this just being a kind of running joke between him and the Italian press that Breitbart isn't getting, but if he is serious about the Holy See having a football (read: soccer) team, I think that's a really bad idea.
First of all, how will the team reflect on the Holy See, simply in terms of its performance? If it isn't a good team then it's going to reflect poorly. If it is a good team then it'll reflect poorly as the Vatican is perceived as crowding its way into an arena and diminishing the standings of other teams for no good reason.
Whether it's an good team or not, where's the money to run it going to come from? Will the Holy See be perceived as spending money on this that would better be spent on widows and orphans?
Even if the thing's a money-maker, it will take time and attention on the part of those running the show at the Vatican. That's a bad thing given that they already don't have enough time to attend to all the real pastoral needs that exist out there.
Then there's the fractiousness that sports teams breed. It's one thing when you have inter-team rivalries that are completely arbitrary and everyone knows it, but if you start mixing team rivalries up with matters that actually do mean something--like religion or politics--then it's another story. I don't think American politics would be served well by the Democrats and the Republicans each starting their own NFL team and entangling the political sphere with the sports sphere. Having an official Vatican soccer team would produce a similar entanglement that we'd be better off without. It would, on some level, ask Catholics to side with the official Vatican team--or else teach them that it's okay to side against the Church sometimes. And then there would be Catholic players on other teams being asked to compete against the Church's official team.
And then there's hooliganism. If the team is successful (or even if it isn't), can we count on the Vatican soccer hooligans to be the most polite, least offensive, least violent of hooligans? Do we want Vatican soccer hooligans in the first place?
Assuming that this isn't just a joke, what possible reason could the Holy See have for wanting to start such a thing? I'm sure that someone could come up with some nonsense about penetrating the secular culture with the message of Christ, but you know what? That's the job of the laity, not the Vatican. The Vatican's job in such matters is to support and educate the laity so that they can affect the culture for Christ, not to undermine the efforts of Catholic players and fans by starting their own rival franchise. That's the same reason the Church doesn't start it's own political party.
If this is to be taken seriously, it sounds to me like an impermissible form of mission creep. The Vatican's mission has nothing to do with fielding sports teams. I don't even like the sport and culture office they opened up a while back, and I hope that goes on the chopping block in B16's reorganization of the curia.
There is no special reason why the Vatican should start a sports team anymore than it should open up an ice cream plant or start its own shoe resoling service or undertake any other venture not related to its mission. "Because we can" is not a good enough reason for an organization to undertake unrelated ventures in areas that it's not expert at. What happens is that this creates inefficiencies, wastes time and money, harms those already trying to do good work in the field, and generally fails and causes embarassment.
So I hope this is just a joke.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (49)
November 16, 2006
November Bishops Meeting
(Jimmy Akin)
The U.S. bishops meet twice a year, and we're currently in the middle of their November meeting. This time they have a rather full agenda, and they're in the process of cranking our documents.
Given how these things normally go, I was a bit surprised to discover PDFs of these documents appearing on the USCCB web site in a fashion that was actually and pleasantly timely.
However, the USCCB has a tendency to only put up documents for a short time and then yank them (try finding a version of the the U.S. edition of the GIRM on their web site these days; it used to be there, but t'ain't now).
I'll have some commentary about some of these, but for now, get 'em while you can.
BISHOPS' PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT ON IRAQ
MARRIED LOVE AND THE GIFT OF LIFE
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November 10, 2006
More On Mars & Venus
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I certainly agree generally that there is this difference...but this raises a question:
In the observation on the difference in the Roman vs American approach to law--where does that leave those who are engaged in liturgical abuses etc?
Can it not be said then that well...Rome does not REALLY mean for the rubics etc to be so fully followed....etc??? Does that not just undo everything?
I assume this would not be the case...enlighten us.
Indeed, it is not the case, but this is one of those situations where enlightenment comes only with difficulty.
While Rome-written law is more prone to unwritten exceptions and legamorons than America-written law is, we both have them, and you just have to have a feel for them based on your knowledge of the culture in question.
Thus in America laws against speeding usually function as legamorons but laws against homicide do not.
The government isn't nearly as serious about enforcing the speed limit as it is laws against murder. Americans know this instinctively because they have the experience of living in their culture and noticing the difference in seriousness with which the two cases are treated by the government. Unsolved murders give rise to extensive police investigations. Unsolved violations of the speed limit do not.
Roman law, being produced by a high-context culture, has more unstated exceptions and legamorons than our laws, but this does not make Roman law meaningless any more than the unstated exceptions and legamorons in American law make it meaningless.
The real question is how to know when Roman law contains an unstated exception or legamoron.
That's something that the folks in the Vatican--who are actually immersed in the culture that wrote the law--tend to pick up by experience. It's part of the context they bring to the interpretation and application of the law--the same way Americans observing their own culture figure out that murder laws are intended more seriously than speed limit laws.
For those who don't work at the Vatican, courses in canon or liturgical law at seminaries and universities are meant to impart that context--or as much of it as possible--to students so that they begin to acquire the context, too.
If you haven't had those courses but work extensively with canon and liturgical law, you can begin to absorb it that way as well.
That's the category I'm in. I've worked enough with canon and liturgical law over the years--talking to canon lawyers and liturgists, reading books on the topics, reading documents that Rome issues dealing with them--that I've absorbed enough of the context to have something of a "feel" for where some of the exceptions and legamorons are.
Sometimes documents that Rome issues point to these directly. For example, Redemptionis Sacramentum has a three-fold classification of liturgical abuses as graviora delicta ("more grave delicts"), "grave matters" and "other abuses." What they put in what category tells you what they are going to be the most strict about.
Similarly, there was a letter by the CDW a while back in which it was pointed out that while the laws regarding posture at Mass are intended to provide "to ensure within broad limits a certain uniformity of posture" but not to "regulate posture rigidly in such a way that those who wish to kneel or sit would no longer be free." That kind of response screams legamoron or unstated exception.
And so the posture laws at Mass admit more flexibility than those regarding the graviora delicta, such as throwing away the consecrated species.
After you have enough experience watching Rome apply its law in concrete cases, you start getting a feel for what they're really concerned about and where they're only gesturing in a general way at what they want to happen.
The posture of the laity at Mass laws are gesture laws. They really don't care if everyone else is standing and you choose to sit or kneel. As long as the laity are in the pews and not being disruptive, they aren't going to get worked up about what posture you're in.
That's why you may hear me say on the radio that Rome really won't mind if a family or group of people at Mass holds hands voluntarily--even though that posture is not mandated in the liturgical books--but it will be more concerned if people are being forced to hold hands against their will. That's interfering with others--it's disruptive and gets people upset, and they don't want the laity acting disruptively.
I'm not sure how to put this next point, but one of the reasons for this is that Rome doesn't expect that much from the laity. It wants them to be at Mass and watch and listen and hopefully sing and pray and not be disruptive. It doesn't expect them to have an intimate familiarity with liturgical law and its punctillious observance.
This grows out of a mindset which is in some way a hold over from the Middle Ages, when the laity were almost uniformly uneducated peasants, and you can't ask too much of them. From an ecclesiastical perspective, we laity are in a sense just in from slopping the pigs, and while it is praiseworthy if a few pigsloppers take enough interest in the Mass to learn the details of liturgical law, this is the exception and not the rule--and always has been.
So as long as the laity are in the pews and relatively calm and not shouting or brandishing pitchforks, Rome doesn't so much mind if they're not all in the same posture.
But not all laws connected with the laity display that level of flexibility. For example, the laws against lay folks preaching the homily are meant seriously. Letting lay folks preach homilies starts to blur the line between the priests and the pigsloppers, and that is a Bad Thing.
You can tell that they really mean those laws because of how frequently they reiterate them.
And so, over time, one can develop a sense of what laws are strict ones and what laws aren't, but it takes work and careful attention.
Which raises Ed Peters' point about whether for a global organization a high-context approach to the law is the best way to go. Given that the vast majority of Catholics--and even bishops--do not and cannot share all of the context that suffuses the Vatican itself, it could make what Rome wants a lot more obvious if they were more clear and explicit in the way they write law.
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November 09, 2006
A Disheartening News Story
(Jimmy Akin)
THIS STORY WAS QUITE DISHEARTENING.
For several reasons.
Let's start with the title:
Vatican opposes Saddam’s death sentence
Unless the pope has said something or unless he has approved the release of a text by a Vatican dicastery, that statement is not accurate. There is no Vatican policy on something unless one of those two things happens. If all you've got are the apparent personal opinions of people who work at the Vatican--which is all the article suggests it has--then you need to say "Vatican officials oppose Saddam's death sentence" or something like that.
The article first turns to Cardinal Martino:
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, said carrying out the death sentence would be an unjustifiably vindictive action, reported Reuters.
"For me, punishing a crime with another crime, which is what killing for vindication is, would mean that we are still at the point of demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," he was quoted as saying by Italian news agency Ansa.
This is the kind of sloppy language on social topics that regularly comes from some European churchmen.
First, it is grossly misleading to refer to imposing the death penalty as "punishing a crime with another crime." The death penalty is not a crime legally, nor is it one in principle morally, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church indicates when it states: "The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor" (CCC 2267).
Even if we assume that "killing for vindication" is a crime--an assumption that can be subject to extreme challenge--it does not follow that Saddam's execution is simply killing for vindication. It may, indeed, be vital to the protection of Iraqi society and ending the violence that is occurring there. Even if there is a brief flare up of sectarian violence, that may well be less than the violence that would ensue from keeping him in prison. If it is then his death may be necessary as a way of protecting Iraqi lives.
Even apart from that, it seems hard to discern a rational basis for the claim that "killing for vindication" is "a crime." If someone is himself a murderer then killing him would seem to amount not to a crime but to justice--i.e., rendering unto the person according to his merits. If you want to oppose the death penalty on other grounds--like it prevents rehabilitation or could be inflicted on the innocent accidentally--then fine. Those are extrinsic reasons to oppose the death penalty. They do not make the act itself "a crime." If you've got someone dead to rights, like Saddam, who clearly committed crimes against humanity then the act of putting him to death is intrinsically an act of justice, even if you think there are extrinsic reasons you shouldn't perform that act of justice.
This is something that the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace ought to understand.
Calling an act of justice a crime is grossly misleading and is language that does not meet the standard of high moral clarity that should be found in the public utterances of an official of the Vatican.
Furthermore, putting Saddam to death--by hanging or any other means the Iraqis are likely to use--is not remotely an "eye for an eye" situation. The lex talionis means demanding of the offender exactly what he inflicted on his victim, and given the magnitude of Saddam's crimes, the only way to begin to do to him what he has done to others would be to strap him to a table and perform surgery on him to implant electrical wires into his brain's pain center and then turn on enough voltage to leave him in constant screaming pain for years and years so that he experiences something approaching the magnitude of the suffering that he inflicted on the countless individuals who he had tortured, raped, and killed--as well as the constant fear he instilled in millions of Iraqis and the anguish of all those whose family members he had tortured, raped, or killed.
The fact that the Iraqis are simply proposing to hang him means that they are showing him considerable mercy and not actually inflicting on him something proportionate to what he did to others, meaning that this is not an "eye for an eye" situation.
So more sloppy language.
Then the cardinal makes a jaw-dropping statement:
"Unfortunately, Iraq is one of the few countries that have not yet made the civilized choice of abolishing the death penalty," he said.
Here is a map of the countries of the world based on the status of the death penalty in them. The blue countries are the ones that have banned the death penalty. All the others allow it in varying situations:
It is clearly not the case that Iraq is one of a "few" countries that have not banned the death penalty. The majority of world countries still retain it in their laws, and the remark raises serious questions about the state of Cardinal Martino's knowledge about the state of affairs in the world that are part of the subject matter of the dicastery which he oversees. It may be from a European perspective (some might say, a European cocoon) that it looks like everyone has eliminated the death penalty, but this is far from the case.
Characterizing this as "the civilized choice" displays an offensive sense of moral superiority in that it implies that those who have not banned the death penalty are uncivilized--which is manifestly not true. Not only have the vast majority of world civilizations had the death penalty--including Rome and Catholic Italy until very recently--but the majority of them today have it as well.
The article then turns to someone else:
Fr. Michele Simone, deputy director of the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, told Vatican Radio that opposing the death penalty does not mean accepting what the former leader has done.
"Certainly, the situation in Iraq will not be resolved by this death sentence. Many Catholics, myself included, are against the death penalty as a matter of principle," the Jesuit priest was quoted as saying.
"Even in a situation like Iraq, where there are hundreds of de facto death sentences every day, adding another death to this toll will not serve anything," he said.
This is simply outrageous. While Fr. Simone does not specify whether the "de facto death sentences" are those deaths brought about by terrorists or those fighting the terrorists, it is outrageous to establish a moral equivalence between the lawful execution of a convicted mass murderer--which is in itself an act of justice--and the acts of terrorists. It is further outrageous to refer to the acts of those fighting terrorists as "de facto death sentences." This applies whether the people in question are terrorists themselves or civilian casualties who are accidentally killed.
It also is fatuous to trot out the "violence doesn't solve anything" bromide in the way Fr. Simone does, telling us that "adding another death to this toll will not serve anything."
In fact, violence properly used solves quite a lot, which is why the Church acknowledges the use of lethal force in what it terms "legitimate defense" (CCC 2263-65). Violence solved the problem of the Nazis and Italian fascism, and putting Saddam to death can in fact serve several things:
1) It will at least partially serve upon him the justice that he deserves,
2) It will serve the families who are still aching after what Saddam did to them and their now-dead relatives,
3) It may well serve to pacify Iraq in the long run, and
4) It will serve as a warning to other dictators of what can happen to them.
It is hard not to wonder whether individuals such as Cardinal Martino and Fr. Simone would have similarly argued against the execution of Adolf Hitler had he been captured at the end of World War II instead of committing suicide.
In any event, these are statements unworthy of responsible churchmen. If one wants to oppose the death penalty on various grounds, fine, but these aren't worthy ones, and these kinds of deliverances do not further rational dialogue on the matter.
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November 08, 2006
Americans Are From Mars; Romans Are From Venus
(Jimmy Akin)
John Allen has a very good piece on the culture gap between America and Rome and how it affects relations within the Church. The article sums up a lot of the differences that you find out if you spend serious time studying Rome and how it operates and is well worth reading.
Allen initially explains the cultural difference like this:
It would be flip to say that “Americans are from Mars, Romans from Venus,” but there’s more than a smidgen of truth to the perception of being on different planets.
As an illustration, he compares the American and Roman attitudes toward time:
To take just one small but telling example, consider the difference between American and Roman views of time. In the United States, we have a “microwave” culture. If we perceive a need, we want that need satisfied immediately. If there is a problem, we want a plan to resolve it by the close of business. If you don’t have such a plan, it’s either because you’re lazy or you’re in denial, and either way it’s unacceptable. Our motto tends to be that of Homer Simpson who, when told that it would take 30 seconds for a fried meal, responded: “But I want it now!”
Rome, on the other hand, is a culture notoriously accustomed to thinking in the long term. Its motto tends to be, “Talk to me on Wednesday, and I’ll get back to you in 200 years.” Rome is in that sense a “crock-pot” culture. The idea is that the food simmers for a much longer period of time, but if you get the ingredients right, it will be much more satisfying.
Although Allen doesn't use the terms I'm about to, America (like England and Germany) has what some anthropologists have called a "low context" culture, while Italy (like the Middle East) has what is called a "high context" culture.
The difference has to do with how much background knowledge you are expected to have in order to function successfully in the culture. Low context cultures don't require you to know that much of the local cultural lore in order to function successfully. That's why, in America, if you can speak English and obey a few basic laws which are easy to look up, you can get along well. You don't have to know all of the unwritten laws and lore and customs and tribal alliances that you would have to in a high context culture.
High context cultures, by contrast, assume that the individual does know the local lore. Among other things, this allows high context cultures to communicate in a way that is less explicit, more allusive. This is one reason that the Bible is as mysterious as it is: It was written in a high context culture that assumed the reader already knew the background to the documents, so it doesn't waste time explaining that background. If you don't have that background, the resulting document can seem obscure and mysterious.
(That background, or at least the theoogically salient bits, are preserved in the form of Sacred Tradition, which is why Sacred Tradition is needed to correctly understand Sacred Scripture. It's the missing background material you need to make sense of Scripture. It's also notable that sola scriptura arose in a low context culture of Germany, which assumes you don't need extensive background information to understand a document.)
One of the ways in which high and low context cultures differs is in how they write law: Low context cultures spell everything out in detail in law since they aren't relying on people to use their knowledge of the unwritten law in interpreting the text. They write law rigorously and, as a result, they expect it to be rigorously obeyed.
High context cultures, by contrast, use law to gesture at what they want to happen, but they admit a thousand unwritten exceptions. Consequently, the laws of high context cultures abound in legamorons.
Allen describes the situation like this:
For Anglo-Saxons, law is a lowest common denominator of civil behavior, and hence we assume that laws are meant to be obeyed. If we find that people aren’t obeying a given law, it’s a problem, and we either crack down or change the law. In Mediterranean cultures, on the other hand, law is more an expression of an ideal, and there’s tremendous room for subjectivity in interpretation and application in a concrete set of circumstances. Anyone who’s ever driven the streets of an Italian city knows what I’m talking about. The bar tends to be set high, with the implicit understanding that most people, most of the time, will far short to varying degrees.
This is a constant source of misunderstanding when the Vatican issues a draconian-sounding decree, which immediately elicits howls of protest from the United States about it being unrealistic or inhumane. Vatican officials are routinely exasperated by the reaction, since they fully expect that pastors and bishops will exercise good judgment about how it ought to applied in individual cases. Most recently, we saw this dynamic with the document from the Congregation for Catholic Education on the admission of homosexuals as seminary candidates. No one in Rome, including the authors of the document themselves, believes that it means absolutely no candidate with a same-sex orientation should ever be admitted to Holy Orders. They saw it as a call to careful discernment, not a blanket ban. (Admittedly, American Catholics can to some extent be forgiven the protest. As the old joke goes, we often have the worst of both worlds – Roman law applied by Anglo-Saxon bishops!)
Ultimately, Allen concludes that America and Rome--despite their culture gap--need each other, and he's right.
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October 27, 2006
Lay Initiatives
(Jimmy Akin)
Ed Peters has often pointed out that worthwhile initiatives in the Church are frequently started by lay people and only later taken up by the clergy.
Here's another example of that principle.
L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO, THE SEMI-OFFICIAL VATICAN NEWSPAPER.
EXCERPT:
Cardinal Bertone said "that it is due to some lay faithful, animated by a strong missionary motivation," that the newspaper "was able to take its first steps and begin its activity with courage, presenting the genuine face of the Church and the ideals of liberty that she proposes and incarnates."
The cardinal said the "succession of historical events shows that, in the past as in the present, to spread the Gospel message in all realms of society, to promote and defend the ideals of authentic liberty, truth, justice and charity, the Church needs the action, creativity and charism of the laity."
And given L'Osservatore Romano's venerable age of 145, the lay initiative that started it was long before Vatican II and in an age in which Catholics even more than today reflexively allowed clerics to undertake religious initiatives.
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October 26, 2006
Doubts About Torture
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
As you may know, in the blogsphere there is a heated controversy among Catholics over the morality of torture. Mark Shea is regarded as the camp leader that asserts that that torture is objectively evil, and the other camp that think it is more of a subjective/relative issue. While I would certainly be interested in your take on it, I was thinking more about dubiums. What are they, how they get started/submitted and, seeing much controversy over this (and personally being confused and torn to boot), whether one would be warranted in the case of torture, and what would/should it look like.
I haven't been keeping up with this debate, including what Mark has written about it, so I am not in a position to comment on anything a particular person has written. I have briefly chatted with Mark about the matter, and my impression is that his position is within the permitted range of Catholic moral thought on this, though his is not the only position within the permitted range of Catholic moral thought.
I've discussed the question of torture before, and would not be opposed to doing so again, though since that is not the meat of your question, I'll save that for another time.
As to the question of dubia (Latin, "doubts"), I can say the following:
Dubia are a kind of response that the Holy See has used for some time in clarifying various questions concerning doctrinal, moral, or disciplinary matters. The term dubia is the plural of dubium ("doubt") and is used as shorthand. Technically, a response given in this form is known as a Responsum ad Dubium ("Response to a Doubt" or, more colloquially, "An Answer to a Question"). These are written in a Q & A format where the question is the doubt that is posed and the answer is the response to it.
SEE HERE FOR AN EXAMPLE OF A RECENT DUBIUM.
Various Vatican dicasteries (departments) issue dubia within their own realm of competence, such as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issuing dubia on questions of faith and morals, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments issuing them on liturgical matters, and--back when it had actual authority--the Pontifical Biblical Commission issuing them on what could be taught regarding various biblical questions.
In the case of a dubium on torture, the relevant dicastery would be the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It would be from there that any dubium on the moral status of torture would be issued.
Unfortunately, I don't see any such dubium being issued in the near future. There are basically three reasons for this:
1) Lack of standing to pose the dubium
Unlike Catholic Answers, the Holy See is not in the business of running a Q & A service. They don't have an equivalent of our "Apologists' Line." Wish they did; but they don't. To avoid being overloaded with questions from the one billion faithful on the planet, the Holy See thus doesn't officially entertain questions from any ol' ordinary person.
Generally, for a dubium to have any hope of receiving an official response, it has to be posed by a bishop. "Did a bishop ask it?" is the minimum threshold question for getting a dubium off the ground. Even then, that's not enough. More is needed (see the next two numbered points).
Dubia can also be initiated by folks in the Holy See itself (e.g., as when JP2 requested that Pre-16 issue one on the status of the teaching of Ordinatio sacerdotalis), but here we're still dealing with a case of in-house Vatican bishops initiating or at least approving a dubium before it can proceed.
If an ordinary lay person were to send a letter asking the CDF about the moral status of torture he might get a letter back from a lower-down official, possibly referring him to a moral theologian for assistance, but whatever the response would be, it would not have been run past the pope, would not have received his approval, and would not engage the Magisterium of the Church.
2) Lack of substantial controversy
Even when a bishop asks for a clarification on something, a response is not guaranteed. Among the other conditions that must be fulfilled for a dubium to be forthcoming, the Holy See must perceive that the question is sufficiently pressing that it warrants an official response.
I don't see them thinking that on the torture issue. The question of the moral status of torture and what precisely constitutes torture is a pressing question for (some) Americans, but I see no evidence of that in the world at large. Those countries that routinely use torture do not have raging public controversies about it, and many are not Catholic any way (many, in fact, are Muslim), and in Europe the question is considered to have such an obvious answer that there is a reflexive response to it when attention (rarely) is given to it.
The fact that some blogs are discussing the question would not affect this point. The blogosphere is so far off the radar at the Vatican that it is perceived dimly as just something occurring on the Internet (which is itself dimly perceived; the Holy See is headed by a generation that does not have deep and broad experience of the Internet, even if some of them now use e-mail; some folks at the Holy See actually do read blogs, but not the highest leaders from what I can tell). Since the blogosphere is largely (not exclusively) dominated by English-speakers and since it is still a relatively small phenomenon (despite its ability to bring down Dan Rather), the controversy on some English-speaking, American Catholic blogs would not be regarded as of sufficient moment to warrant the CDF formulating an official response and getting the pope's sign-off on it.
3) Lack of clarity
Even when there is enough controversy or other pastoral reason that gives a question sufficient force to warrant an official response, and even when it is being asked by a bishop, the Holy See also has to feel that it has an answer to the question that would be worth contributing.
They don't want to be wrong, and this is particularly keenly felt when it comes to matters of faith and morals.
As a result, the Holy See would not respond to a dubium on torture unless it felt that it had a carefully thought-out and correct answer to offer, and my sense is that on this question they do not feel they have this.
There have been a number of statements in Magisterial and semi-Magisterial documents condemning torture, but these do not offer technical definitions of what torture is, and having a good definition is a precondition for formulating a solid response to finely posed moral questions on the topic.
If Rush Limbaugh were commenting on the situation, he might--in his own characteristic idiom--refer to such brief condemnations as acts of "drive-by Magisterium" that condemn torture in a brief manner that does not pause to explain in technical detail what torture is or allow finely-tuned moral questions to be answered about it.
While one would find such a characterization by Rush to display "a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable," such Magisterial acts express a deep moral intuition that torture is wrong, but they have not thus far meditated on this intuition to the point that technical questions can be answered about it.
And, in fact, this is often the way topics are first broached by the Magisterium. Rarely does one find an issue addressed in a fully articulated form on the first go-round.
Instead, the Magisterium often signals the direction it is going, or even the conclusion it intends to reach, but it allows and--indeed--desires moral theologians to hash out the question so that Catholic thought on the issue can mature to the point that the Holy See can examine the reflections of orthodox moral theologians and formulate an official response that has been cross-examined and will stand the test of time.
It wants that cross-examination and testing of the answer to occur on a lower level than that of the official response, because if they rushed out an official response that had not been cross-examined in this way then someone might point out a fatal flaw in it later on.
And this is good managerial practice. When a manager in an organization--someone charged with making a decision on an important matter--is considering what decision should be made, it is wise for him to hear out his juniors as they debate the issue before he gives a ruling.
That's what the Holy See likes to do with doctrinal and moral questions that are being freshly posed or posed in a new way. They let theologians and moral theologians kick the question around so that the issue can be thoroughly explored before they weigh in and issue a binding statement.
There are cases, of course, when questions are being raised that so threaten settled principles that this isn't possible, but it strikes me that--to the extent the question of torture is even on the Vatican radar at present--this is what they are letting moral theologians do.
The truth is that at this point we don't have a good definition for torture--one that will allow it to be distinguished from other uses of the infliction of pain (mental or physical) to ensure compliance with various goals--and so at present moral theologians have the liberty to hash out the question until the issue matures to the point that, should it be warranted, an official response would make sense.
We do, after all, need a sensible way to distinguish torture from the efforts of the state to deter crime by putting people in prison (something that is not pleasant and thus involves a form of pain) or the efforts of parents to keep their four-year olds from rushing out into the street by giving them a swat on the fanny (ditto on the pain).
All of which is to say that I don't see the conditions for getting a responsum ad dubium on this question being fulfilled at present: We in the blogosphere (unless we are a bishop) don't have the standing to pose the question, there isn't a major controversy on this topic on a global scale, and the issue is not sufficiently mature to allow the posing of an official answer.
So the best we can do is what bloggers do best: "Discuss amongst yourselves."
HERE'S WHAT I'VE SAID ON THE TOPIC SO FAR.
If folks are interested, I can try to offer further thoughts in the future, but this blog post has gone on for long enough.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (173)
October 25, 2006
Soldiers At The Service Of Peace
(Jimmy Akin)
They have a lot of conferences over in Rome about . . . well, all kinds of stuff. Shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings. Everything from soup to nuts.
I'm not always sure how necessary or valuable some of these conferences are, but here's one I can really get behind:
The fifth international congress of military ordinates is focusing on the theme "Soldiers at the Service of Peace."
The president of the congress, being held in the Vatican from Oct. 23-27, is Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.
He is being assisted by Father Giulio Cerchietti, head of the congregation's central office for the pastoral coordination of military ordinariates.
As they saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes (a slight exaggeration, but not much of one), and soldiers definitely need pastoral care.
I'm also glad--among much of the reflexive peace-at-any-costs language that we encounter in some ecclesiastical circles--a recognition of the Catechism's reality-based statement that
Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace (CCC 2310).
Amen.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (4)
October 24, 2006
The Next Doctor Of The Church?
(Jimmy Akin)
If you look at the index of sources cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church you'll see that it's divided into several categories. The most important of these are quotations from papal documents (largely recent pontificates) and ecumenical council documents (largely Vatican II) and the writings of the Church Fathers. In addition, the writings of various saints are also cited.
Between those four sources--popes, councils, Church Fathers, and saints, you have almost all of the sources quoted in the Catechism accounted for.
But there are a few others.
For example, there are Origen, Tertullian, and Newman. John Henry Newman, that is.
Now Origen and Tertullian were almost-Church Fathers. They lived in the era of the Church Fathers and they would have been counted among their number except . . .
. . . except that Origen got a bad rep for entertaining some screwy notions, like the pre-existence of the soul (not the same as reincarnation) and the idea of apocatastasis (for those playing along at home, that's the idea that every spirit--including demons--will eventually be saved; so there ain't no hell, only purgatory). This got a buncha folks shouting anathema at him after his death, so no Church Father status for him! As worthy as he otherwise would have been of it.
. . . and except that Tertullian actually left the Church (!) and went to a schismatic group known as the Montanists and he didn't get reconciled by the time he died. So no Church Father status for him, either.
And thus neither of 'em are saints, which--despite the estimable value of their writings--prevents them from being named doctors of the Church, the way such doctorates are handed out these days (it's a saints-only club).
Yet the writings of Origen and Tertullian are so valuable that--in spite of the fact that they are non-saints, non-fathers, and non-doctors, they still get quoted in the Catechism.
That gives them something in common with Cardinal John Henry Newman (and yes, I know that folks would want to put Cardinal in front of his last name, but this is my blog. So there.). His writings are of such value that they are also quoted in the Catechism, and he's a non-saint, non-father, non-doctor, too.
But that may not stay the case for long.
Newman will never be a Church Father because he didn't live in the right era (pre-A.D. 750), but he may end up as a saint (assuming he made it to heaven) and, after that, he may get named a doctor of the Church. (I'd name him in a hot second if he were a saint and I were pope.)
Just recently, Newman's cause to another step toward canonization. A small step, to be sure, but a step is a step (by definition). What happened was this: The diocesan phase of the investigation of a miracle attributed to his intercession is about to close and the results will be forwarded to Rome.
If Rome decides that the event was a miracle then the Ven. John Henry Newman could get beatified and find himself Bl. John Henry Newman. If another miracle happens, he could wake up one morning and find himself St. John Henry Newman.
And if that happens, his doctorization is almost a shoe-in.
Why?
Because Newman made a massive contribution to Catholic theology through his articulation of the concept of doctrinal development.
This is a concept that has been and will continue to be of enormous importance to Catholic theology (as well as the subject of periodic abuse by folks who want to present doctrinal mutation as doctrinal development, thus departing from the authentic version of the concept articulated by Newman).
The idea of doctrinal development in some form is something that Catholics have been aware of for centuries. It's always been clear to theologians and historians that the writers in former ages of the Church did not articulate the Christian faith in precisely the same way as in later ones and that different questions have been dealt with in different ages, with various subjects coming into sharper focus as false articulations of these topics got identified and discarded.
But Newman helped articulate the matter in a new way that would better enable the Church to do theology in a way that would meet changing historical conditions without denying the substance of the faith that was handed down to it. He illustrated how the essentials of the faith remained the same in every age even if the articulation and exposition of these changed over time. Thus, for example, we needn't expect the Church of the 21st century to look and sound exactly like that of the 4th, nor need we expect the Church of the 34th century to look and sound exactly like the one of today. Yet they could still be the same Church, preaching the same faith.
Newman's articulation of this was unique in his day, and it has helped the Church greatly through the theological crises of the 20th century, which is why he gets to get quoted in the Catechism even though he's not a pope, not a council, not a father, and not even a saint.
And why, if he made it to heaven and gets declared a saint, he'll be on the short-list for being named a doctor of the Church. (Pius XII should also be on that list, in my opinion, and John Paul II is on it.)
Still, we gotta wait on that, so in the meantime
GET THE STORY.
READ MORE ABOUT NEWMAN.
READ NEWMAN'S ESSAY ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE.
READ MORE ABOUT THE DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH.
Incidentally, as a matter of curiosity, I first encountered the idea of doctrinal development long before I was a Catholic, when I was a new Christian listening to tapes of J. Vernon McGee's "Thru the Bible" program. Though McGee may not have had any idea who Newman was (nor did I at the time), he clearly articulated the idea that Christian doctrine progresses through the ages as various questions are taken up--settled--and then new ones are examined.
According to the history of doctrinal development that McGee articulated, the early centuries settled the doctrine of Christ (think the first six ecumenical councils), the Reformation settled the question of justification (sola fide), and the current age--McGee speculated--was settling the question of Eschatology (Dispensationalism).
Now, my friends, may I say that although McGee was a Dispensationalist and a Fundamentalist with very little affection for the Catholic Church (meaning that he was wrong about the conclusions the process of doctrinal development was reaching), the fact that he could recognize and acknowledge the process working through Church history is a significant testimony to the explanatory power and value of the concept.
I hope McGee and Newman have become good friends in heaven.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (36)
September 28, 2006
Ministry Vs. Apostolate
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
What is the difference between a ministry and an apostolate? What does the Church teach on this? And lastly, are there restrictions on laymen, for example, who use the term ministry when in all actuality it is an apostolate.
This is a common question. People are often perplexed by the relationship between the two terms and the fact that they are often used interchangeably. And there's a good reason for that: They are interchangeable--at least substantially so.
The term ministry (in a religious context) at its base conveys the idea of performing a spiritual service of some kind, while the term apostolate at its base conveys the idea of in some manner promoting the work of the apostles or functioning in a capacity somewhat like that of the apostles. Since the apostles performed spiritual services, the two terms basically converge.
Thus both "ministry" and "apostolate" can refer either to particular spiritual services or to organizations that are devoted to providing such services.
Because the clergy and laity have different functions, they perform ministries or apostolates in different ways, but the laity are envisioned in participating in apostolic activity. Thus Vatican II issued a Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity.
With recent dissident efforts at horizontalizing the Church and bluring the distinction between clergy and laity, there can be confusion about what apostolates are appropriate to clergy and laity. The same thing can happen regarding ministries, and the 1997 Instruction on Collaboration was notably concerned about the use of the term "ministry" in certain contexts involving lay individuals, for example (see Practical Provisions, Article 1).
Despite these difficulties, the two terms retain substantial overlap, even if they need to be carefully understood and distinguished in particular contexts.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (34)
September 26, 2006
Is The Schism Beginning?
(Jimmy Akin)
Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo apparently consecrated four men as bishops on Sunday.
In so doing, as Ed Peters points out,
HE INCURRED THE PENALTY OF AUTOMATIC EXCOMMUNICATION RESERED TO THE HOLY SEE.
So did any of the men he ordained if they were still in communion with the Church.
MORE FROM CATHOLIC WORLD NEWS.
As tragic as that situation is, I fear that an even greater tragedy may be about to unfold.
Since the debacle following Vatican II, the Holy See has been terrified of a major schism occurring that would involve modernist dissidents. For that to take place, a number of conditions would need to exist:
1) There would need to be a large number of laity willing to go along with the schism.
2) There would need to be a large number of priests available.
3) There would need to be bishops available.
4) There would need to be infrastructure available (churches, financing, etc.)
Thus far the right combination of factors has not combined to create a major modernist schism (in the proper sense of the term). There are always lots of tiny little schisms occurring--even personal ones (i.e., individual people going into schism)--but the largest we have had since the Council was that of the traditionalist dissidents in the Lefebvrist movement. The number of traditionalist dissidents, however, pales in comparison to the number of modernist dissidents. There are far more laity, priests, and even bishops with modernist than with traditionalist tendencies.
As painful as the Lefebvrist schism has been, the potential for a major schism on the part of modernists is thus far more frightening to Rome.
Thus far it hasn't happened, and my guess is that one of the major reasons is the non-fulfillment of condition 4 above. I think a lot of individuals don't want to face the financial and logistical hardship of trying to set up a major modernist dissident church. They're too comfortable where they are and are content to serve out their time spreading dissent in their already secure positions of influence. Why should a modernist priest leave the financially secure and respectable position and brave the rigors of an insecure startup venture?
If you want to know part of the reason that the Holy See has been so soft on individuals with this tendency, the desire to avoid a schism is a big part of it. If the people in question are made too uncomfortable then they might decide that pulling up stakes would be worth it, so Rome has cut them substantial slack (far more than in the old days) in hope that the problem can be solved on a generational basis by cooking the frog of dissent slowly, gently reigning them in in a step-wise manner and waiting for the current group to pass from the scene.
Thus we've had incremental improvements, like the release of the Catechism of the Catholic Church to promote authentic Catholic teaching (instead of doing something like the anti-modernist measures popes took in the early 20th century) or revising the GIRM and insisting on new, better translations of the liturgy (instead of just jumping back to the old order of Mass).
But the situation may not last, and what Milingo just did may have made it much, much worse.
At least two of the conditions needed for a major modernist schism are now concretely fulfilled. There are thousands of former priests who have left the priesthood to get "married" (in fact, they are not married due to the impediment of holy orders, but they have discounted this fact), and by apparently elevating some of these men to the episcopate, there are now bishops who are not just sympathetic to this movement but who are part of it and who are not tied to the existing episcopal structure in the Catholic Church. (I.e., they are not occupying positions that Rome appointed them to and which they have reasons to want to retain.)
These men could turn around and start ordaining their own priests--and I assume that this was the purpose of elevating them to the episcopate since they could already perform all the other sacraments--and they could draw upon the pool of modernist ex-priests and, one way or the other, have a large number of clergy for their movement in fairly short order.
The question would then turn to consideration of condition 1: How many laity would be willing to go along with them?
There certainly are a large number of laity who have modernist inclinations, though a lot of these are non-churchgoers. (When you hear reports that frighteningly high numbers of Catholics hold heterodox views, those numbers generally do not distinguish between cultural Catholics and those who actively practice their faith. Regular churchgoers, while they have suffered under decades of heterodox preaching and religious education, are still far more orthodox than the non-churchgoers are.) Non-churchgoers aren't likely to start going to the local breakaway church just because it has a married priest saying Mass. A few will, but most are too comfortable where they are in bed or watching their TV sets (or both) on Sunday morning.
The number who would go, however, is not inconsiderable. It would still be a smallish minority of Catholics, but enough to produce a larger schism than the SSPX and similar groups have.
If the schismatic bishops can get the infrastructure they need.
Right now the only people who would go to their services are the hardcore dissidents, and while there are plenty of them, in order to have a major schism you really need parishes all over the place. "Location! Location! Location!" as they say. The schism would be able to attract far more of the faithful to it if there were dissident parishes all over the place that looked at least somewhat like Catholic churches and held themselves out as such.
It thus seems to me that the major barrier is thus still the financial/logistical one, but the potential for a larger-than-Lefebvre schism of a modernist dissident type exists, and what Archbishop Milingo has just done has made the situation an order of magnitude worse.
As you might guess, I think that this is a situation that clearly calls for prayer.
I also think that Rome should give serious consideration to establishing the consecration of a bishop without papal mandate as of itself a schismatic act. Thus far it has not done so. (The reason Lefebvre went into schism was that he consecrated bishops not just without a papal mandate but against papal mandate.) The way the law is written right now, one could be consecrated a bishop without papal mandate and still remain a Catholic, though one would be subject to the censure of excommunication. But having rogue bishops who are still in some sense Catholic will gravely harm the pastoral good of the faithful, and it strikes me that Rome may need to make it clear that no such bishops are in any sense Catholic so that the faithful will not be confused. To do that, Rome should consider revising or authentically interpreting the law in such a way that any unmandated episcopal consecration is itself schismatic.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (124)
August 30, 2006
He's Baaaaaa-aack!
(Jimmy Akin)
Fr. Gabriele Amorth, that is.
A reader sent me a link to
THIS ARTICLE ON A RECENT INTERVIEW THAT FR. AMORTH GAVE
(CHT to the reader!)
and I was considering whether to blog it when I noticed that the same article was linked on the Drudge Report, so just about every other person in the world will see it, and I knew I had to deal with the issue.
First, let's deal with the material in the article itself: The headline is a claim by Fr. Amorth expressing a personal opinion of his that Hitler and Stalin were possessed.
Is that true?
Well, maybe.
They were both the leaders of massive, unimaginably inhuman movements that caused millions of deaths and untold suffering. They both were enraptured by evil, dehumanizing ideologies whose consequences were written in blood.
Is it too far to think that the devil might take a special interest in influencing such gentlemen? Of course not. To the contrary. I think it would be quite reasonable to think that the devil took a lively interest in influencing both of them and spurring them on to greater and greater evil.
Did this amount to full-blown possession, with personality displacement and all that?
I don't know. All I can say is that it wouldn't surprise me, but I would be hesitant to give interviews expressing the opinion that they were actually possessed unless I had pretty clear evidence of that and not just conjecture based on a knowledge of how much evil they did.
Which leads to the question: What kind of evidence does Fr. Amorth have? I don't know. The article doesn't say. and I don't have access to the original interview, which was probably in Italian anyway.
Not having any indication of whether Fr. Amorth has specific evidence of possession, I then find myself asking whether Fr. Amorth is the kind of individual who would be careful that he had solid evidence before making such claims.
No. He's not.
This is evident in the article itself from the following quotation:
"I am convinced that the Nazis were all possessed."
Huh? Really? All of the members of the Nazi Party? Without exception? They all had full-blown cases of possession with personality displacement? Even the teacher in B16's school who helped him avoid attending Hitler Youth meatings?
The fact is that Fr. Amorth is an individual given to making sweeping statements that are not firmly grounded and that are subject to a credulous mindset that is too ready to see possession (full-blown or not).
How else can one explain his claim--in his book An Exorcist Tells His Story--to have performed thirty THOUSAND exorcisms in a nine year period? That's nine exorcisms PER DAY for nine years--Sundays included!
If this claim is remotely accurate then the man is a walking exorcism factory.
It is simply impossible to reconcile this claim with the Church's requirements for the performance of exorcisms, which include (among other things) diligent evaluation of the individuals to be exorcised to determine that they are not simply suffering from psychological illness.
One more recent report indicates that the number of exorcisms he has performed had risen to 50,000 as of 2001.
It is therefore very difficult to place much weight in claims made by Fr. Amorth on such matters.
Which left me scratching my head about one claim made in the article, that Pius XII attempted to have a "long-distance" exorcism performed on Adolph Hitler.
I couldn't take Fr. Amorth's word for this, of course, but I did some independent research, and it seems to be true. I'll have more info on that when I can get it.
Oh, and I should mention something else about Fr. Amorth. He is often credited--as he is in the article--as "the Vatican's chief exorcist" and (somewhat more colorfully) as "Benedict XVI's 'caster out of demons.'" This is not true.
There is no "chief exorcist" position at the Vatican. Fr. Amorth is a priest of the Diocese of Rome who happens to be one of a number of exorcists there. He is the most well-known and prominent of them, but this does not give him the position of "chief exorcist of the Vatican."
MORE INFO ON FR. AMORTH FROM ED PETERS.
Be sure to read the sidebar, too.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in The Church | Permalink | Comments (101)
August 24, 2006
We Are Taking Back Our FutureChurch!
(Tim