December 18, 2007
New CDF Document! New CDF Document!
(Jimmy Akin)
The CDF, in conjunction with some other folks, has released a new and much-needed document.
For years, particular currents among theologians, priests, and society in general have eroded the basis for evangelization. I've seen appeals from allegedly missionary societies and felt compelled to go up to the priest representing them afterwards and say, "Father, did you know that you wouldn't have had to change one word of your pitch if your organization changed its name to the Society for the Propagation of Decent Medical Care? We need to hear about more than people's medical needs. We need to hear about their need for Jesus as well."
The new CDF document--which I haven't had a chance to finish yet, but which is the #1 thing on my reading list--stresses the importance of evangelization and the fact that, just because people in other faiths can be saved that doesn't mean that we should disobey Jesus and refuse to evangelize them.
The document also forms the third part of a CDF trifecta, starting with Dominus Iesus (stressing the uniqueness of Christ), the Q & A on the Church from last year (stressing the uniqueness of the Catholic Church), and now the new document (stressing the need for evangelization).
So, just to review . . . Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God and the unique Savior of mankind. He started the Catholic Church. And if you want to do Christ's will, you need to become a Catholic.
Kewl.
GET THE STORY.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (98)
August 28, 2007
The Arctic Night of the Soul
(Jimmy Akin)
Recently I posted about Mother Theresa's long dark night of the soul, in which she wrestled with spiritual dryness and doubt.
But the same thing happens at the other side of the faith spectrum, too.
HERE'S A STORY ABOUT ITALIAN ATHEIST AND INTELLECTUAL ORIANA FALLACI (WHO MET WITH POPE BENEDICT SHORTLY BEFORE HER DEATH) AND HER PERSISTENT TEMPTATIONS TO BELIEVE.
(WARNING: There is a bad word in the story.)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (205)
August 24, 2007
The Antarctic Night of the Soul
(Jimmy Akin)
Spiritual writers often refer to "the dark night of the soul"--the experience of great souls of seemingly being abandoned by God, as (perhaps) when Solomon wrote the book of Ecclesiastes ("Vanity, vanity; all is vanity!"), or (even more perhaps) when Jesus cried, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
Mother Theresa, it was revealed after her death, experienced this phenomenon as well, and recent evidence suggests that it lasted for a very long time--decades, in fact. Truly an antarctic dark night of the soul.
GET THE STORY.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (352)
June 11, 2007
A Voice Crying Out In The Wasteland
(Jimmy Akin)
It's amazing they had the hubris to release it in the first place.
Still, it's something to see the head of the thing noting that they can't afford to do that kind of thing any more.
Oh, and I loved this bit:
Finn made clear that he was not trying to stifle criticism, but said that in the future, such statements should come from individual theologians, perhaps with others signing on, but not in the name of the CTSA.
In other words, "If you want to mouth off to the Vaticsan, you take the hit. I've got to look out for the good for the organization."
Half the purpose of issuing joint statements on behalf of the society was to protect the individual signatories by making them look like they're part of a big, impressive group (or by not having individual signatories at all, just a joint statement of the organization). Having to make such statements on your own, without the society backing you up, will--indeed--"stifle criticism."
(Oh, and the other half of the purpose is to make the statements have more punch by them being issued by a society and not just an individual or a few individuals.)
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (110)
April 27, 2007
Carbon Offsets Vs. Indulgences
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I am sick and tired of hearing (reading) carbon offsets compared to papal indulgences. I just got done teaching my 7th graders (I homeschool) chapter 33 of the St. Joseph Balt. Cat #2 on indulgences. And, while I am a fairly well read and knowledgeable convert, I just don't feel I am able to show the differences as clearly and as eloquently as it should be done.
Could you devote an article to it that I could at least point others to?
Sure.
The comparison between carbon offsets and indulgences is something that one would expect given the gigantonormous amount of misinformation there is out there about indulgences.
Here's a typically uninformed articulation of the comparison:
Carbon offset is the process of reducing the net carbon emissions of an individual or organization, either by their own actions, or through arrangements with a carbon-offset provider. . . .
George Monbiot, an English environmentalist and writer, has compared carbon offsets to the practice of purchasing Indulgences during the Middle Ages, whereby people with money could purchase forgiveness for their sins (instead of actually repenting and not sinning anymore). Monbiot also says that carbon offsets are an excuse for business as usual with regards to pollution [SOURCE].
The basic idea behind paying someone for cabon offsets is that you are hiring that person to do something to reduce the carbon emissions that otherwise would exist if you didn't pay them to undertake the task. Thus, by paying them, you offset some of the carbon emissions that you yourself are generating.
For example, suppose that you are Al Gore and that you own a home that you run in such a way that it burns 221,000 kilowatt-hours in contrast to the 10,656 kilowatt-hours burned by a normal home. Such power consumption is inconsistent with maintaining one's status as carbon emissions' Scoldmaster General, and so what do you do?
Well, you could pay someone to go plant trees on the idea that the trees will grow and lock up (sequester) a bunch of carbon and thus reduce the amount of free-floating carbon in the environment--until such time as the tree dies and decays and it gets re-released anyway.
Or you could get even more creative.
In any event, the idea is that you pay someone else to reduce the carbon that would otherwise be emitted so that you don't have to curb your own carbon-emitting lifestyle.
That's why this is precisely how carbon offsets are different than indulgences.
For the record,
An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints [SOURCE].
Carbon offsets are things that allow people to avoid altering their personal carbon lifestyle.
Indulgences are things available to people who have already altered their lifestyle by repenting of their sins and being forgiven of their guilt. They have to do with mitigating the temporal consequences that often accompany sins, even though the sins have been forgiven.
This is why indulgences are not a license to go on sinning. If you haven't repented of the sin then forgiveness of its guilt is not available to you and thus indulgences, which come after forgiveness of guilt, are not available either.
Indulgences thus presuppose that you have already altered your personal lifestyle, which is precisely why they are not the same thing at all as carbon offsets.
Unfortunately, the anti-Catholicism of the last several centuries has so purvaded English-speaking culture that we constantly hear indulgences described as licenses to go on sinning (they're not) and that they used to be sold by the Catholic Church (they weren't).
This is simple misinformation.
MORE ON WHAT INDULGENCES ACTUALLY ARE.
AND THEIR THEOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS IN SCRIPTURE.
Oh, yeah, and there's another difference between the two: Indulgences are based on biblical principles. Carbon offsets are based on junk science.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (47)
April 23, 2007
Limbo Document Published
(Jimmy Akin)
The document that the International Theological Commission has been working on concerning limbo has now been published.
AS ANTICIPATED, it casts doubt on the doctrine of limbo without claiming anything certain regarding the fate of infants dying without baptism, instead encouraging an attitude of hope regarding their salvation.
This is in line with the development of Catholic thought in the last few decades regarding the fate of such children, as well as the discussion of their fate in the Catechism.
That hasn't stopped the MSM from portraying this in sensationalistic and inaccurate terms, speaking of the pope bucking Catholic tradition or changing Church teaching.
In fact, the International Theological Commission is not an organ of the magisterium but an advisory body. Its documents, even when their publication is approved by the pope, do not have magisterial force. What the pope did in this case was allow an advisory document to become public. That's not the same thing as changing Church teaching.
Shame on the MSM for not being competent enough to get the basic facts of the story straight.
CATHOLIC NEWS SEVICE'S PIECE IS PRETTY GOOD, THOUGH.
BACKGROUND (LINK FIXED).
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (236)
April 02, 2007
The Nature of Hell
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
Recent comments by the Pope on hell and other subsequent blogging comments have raised a minor question for me about hell. It seems that many will insist that there is no physical component to hell. This assertion seems logically in conflict with church teaching that in the resurrection we will have some kind of eternal physical body. A physical body implies the possibility of physical locality. If so, then heaven and hell could have corresponding physical attributes. So a more precise phrasing of the question is: "Does the assertion that hell has no physical reality indirectly conflict with church teaching on the resurrection and the state of our resurrected bodies?"
It strikes me that there is a tertium quid here. It isn't just a choice between saying "Hell is spiritual, so there are no bodies there and thus it has no location" and saying "Hell must have a physical location because it contains bodies."
It would be contrary to Catholic teaching to deny that the damned--after the resurrection--will have bodies. They will indeed have them, and that raises the question of where or how these bodies will exist. It might be that they will exist in a spatially extended sense in some physical location, as they do here on earth in this life. However, it could also be that they will exist in some way that does not involve a physical location, which I suppose would mean that they would be real but not extended in spacetime.
The situation is analogous to that of heaven. I sometimes point out that heaven is at least capable of receiving bodies--we know that becaue that's where Jesus' and Mary's bodies are right now--but that doesn't mean that they are extended in the natural, physical manner that they were when they were here on earth. Heaven thus might or might not involve a physical location. What it does involve, for resurrected humans, is bodies, and the same will be true of hell.
I thus tend to accept union or disunion with God as the essential characteristic of these two states and leave the question of location open. To my mind, they might or might not involve a location, though for resurrected humans, both will be an embodied state.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (250)
March 15, 2007
CDF Sobrino Warning
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I am involved in our parish group and in one of the books we have to read was an extended article about Fr. Jon Sobrino, SJ. We though he was a hero until today.
In a Spanish newspaper I read the warning he has received from the Vatican for deny publicly Jesus divinity.
Can you clarify for me please?
I'll do my best. The story you read is based on an actual event. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has published a warning about two books by Fr. Jon Sobrino, SJ. The warning, among other things, notes Fr. Sobrino's failure to clearly affirm the divinity of Christ. That passages of the warning reads:
4. A number of Father Sobrino’s affirmations tend to diminish the breadth of the New Testament passages which affirm that Jesus is God: "[The New Testament] makes clear that he was intimately bound up with God, which meant that his reality had to be expressed in some way as a reality that is of God (cf. Jn 20:28)" (Christ the Liberator, 115). In reference to John 1:1, he affirms: "Strictly speaking, this logos is not yet said to be God (consubstantial with the Father), but something is claimed for him that will have great importance for reaching this conclusion: his preexistence. This does not signify something purely temporal but relates him to the creation and links the logos with action specific to the divinity" (Christ the Liberator, 257). According to the Author, the New Testament does not clearly affirm the divinity of Jesus, but merely establishes the presuppositions for it: "The New Testament…contains expressions that contain the seed of what will produce confession of the divinity of Christ in the strict sense" (Ibidem). "All this means that at the outset Jesus was not spoken of as God, nor was divinity a term applied to him; this happened only after a considerable interval of believing explication, almost certainly after the fall of Jerusalem" (Ibidem, 114).
To maintain that John 20:28 affirms that Jesus is "of God" is clearly erroneous, in as much as the passage itself refers to Jesus as "Lord" and "God." Similarly, John 1:1 says that the Word is God. Many other texts speak of Jesus as Son and as Lord.5 The divinity of Jesus has been the object of the Church’s faith from the beginning, long before his consubstantiality with the Father was proclaimed by the Council of Nicea. The fact that this term was not used does not mean that the divinity of Jesus was not affirmed in the strict sense, contrary to what the Author seems to imply.
Father Sobrino does not deny the divinity of Jesus when he proposes that it is found in the New Testament only "in seed" and was formulated dogmatically only after many years of believing reflection. Nevertheless he fails to affirm Jesus’ divinity with sufficient clarity. This reticence gives credence to the suspicion that the historical development of dogma, which Sobrino describes as ambiguous, has arrived at the formulation of Jesus’ divinity without a clear continuity with the New Testament.
But the divinity of Jesus is clearly attested to in the passages of the New Testament to which we have referred. The numerous Conciliar declarations in this regard6 are in continuity with that which the New Testament affirms explicitly and not only "in seed". The confession of the divinity of Jesus Christ has been an absolutely essential part of the faith of the Church since her origins. It is explicitly witnessed to since the New Testament.
HERE'S THE FULL TEXT OF THE WARNING.
AND AN EXPLANATORY NOTE ISSUED BY THE CDF.
AND SOME PERSPECTIVE BY JOHN ALLEN.
On a side note, I found it interesting that--though Sobrino has been active in Latin American liberation theology--he is of Basque origin.
Incidentally (sorry, but the linguist in me can't resist), Basque is one of the few language isolates that exists in Europe (or anywhere else). That is, it is a language that is not clearly part of a larger language family, like the Indo-European family, to which virtually all of the European languages belong. Basque, apparently, is a survival of a language that was already in place before the expansion of Indo-European into Europe. Almost everywhere else got swallowed up by speakers of Indo-European langauges, but the Basques held on to theirs.
Consequently, I'd really like to study their language some time.
MORE.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (56)
March 14, 2007
Does God Feel Pain?
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
A friend just sent me the following question and I'm not sure how to answer. I'm almost certain Aquinas or one of the Church fathers must have addressed this, but for various reasons I can't find it right now. Can you help? Thanks.
Does God the Father feel pain? If pain is a consequence of the fall, then is it possible for God to feel pain? Did God the Father experience pain of a father watching his son be tortured and killed, or is the Creator immune from pain? Pain exists because it it a component of the punishment He pronounced on a fallen creation. Pain therefore is part of creation. As the Creator is not creature, does he feel pain? God the Son most certainly did. Can God the Holy Spirit feel the pain of rejection? I assume the Holy Spirit knows the pain of Christ's suffering since He was within Christ at the time. The Holy Spirit is also in us, and therefore one could assume that He can experience our pain as well. But does God the Father - God the Creator - feel pain?
Pain can be understood in two ways: The sensation we experience when certain parts of our nervous system are stimulated and the physiological sensation of pain is produced--as when a person accidentally slams his hand in a door. We may call this physical pain.
This kind of pain is possible only for being that beings with nervous systems. Since the divine essence does not include a nervous system, this kind of pain is impossible for God apart from the acquisition of a second nature, as in the Incarnation. Thus only God the Son can experience physical pain, and then not in his divine nature.
Being omniscient, the other two Persons of the Trinity know about the Son's experience of physical pain, but it does not cause them physical pain any more than my slamming my hand in a door causes you physical pain. You recognize that I am in physical pain, but that doesn't put you in physical pain.
The second way in which pain may be conceived is as mental pain. For example, when a person experiences painful emotions, such as sadness or anger. In living humans this is closely tied to the operation of the nervous system, and particularly the central nervous system (especially the brain), but it seems that it is also possible for humans to feel it without physical form--as in the case of damned souls that have not yet been resurrected.
This also seems to be possible for fallen angels, who are completely free of physical form. At least, Scripture speaks of their being tormended following the last day, and this torment must consist of something at least analogous to the mental anguish that we experience in this life.
Scripture also speaks of God experiencing sadness and anger, but Christian theology has historically understood this to be non-literal language.
God in his divine essence experiences infinite beatitude, and this beatitude would be marred if he experienced anguish in his divine essence. This is analogous to the way in which, once we are glorified in heaven, we will be aware of the fact that not all humans are saved, but it will not "ruin heaven for us."
Further, Catholic theologically has historically understood God as not containing passions. There are things in God that may be said to correspond to the passions, but he doesn't experience them the same way that we do.
God does have DELIGHT AND JOY and LOVE, but he doesn't HATE anything. He is HAPPY, is HIS OWN HAPPINESS, and has the SUPREME FORM OF HAPPINESS.
In understanding these realities in God, we must recognize the vast difference between him and us and that these things aren't the same in him as they are in us. For example, in the case of love, we love things by recognizing the good qualities someone has and being attracted to those good qualities. In God's case, Aquinas would say, God's love is not attracted to the good qualities someone already possesses. Instead, it is manifest in bestowing those good qualities on the person. His love is active, whereas our is reactive.
When it comes to things like sadness or anger on the part of God, these have been historically understood as signifying things in a different manner as well, not as things that are literally painful to God, marring his beatitude. Thus when Scripture speaks of God being grieved by men's sins, it is understood that he recognizes the reality and severity of their sins, and when it speaks of him being angry, it is understood that bad consequences are visited on those who are sinning or that bad consequences would be visited on them or they are liable for bad consequences, even if something happens to stop those bad consequences from happening (e.g., someone making atonement or intercession that shields the sinner, as with Job and his sons and daughters or Moses and Israel or Jesus and the whole human race).
Ludwig Ott has more on this in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma if you have a copy of that.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (104)
March 02, 2007
The Nature of the Second Coming
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I am a Protestant who has recently been awakening to a newfound appreciation for the Catholic Church and her teaching.
For four or five years now my views have been solidly of the "full preterist" persuasion (heretical - yes, I know). Lately I've distanced myself somewhat from these views. Here's where I am now: I still cannot read the Biblical passages which explicitly refer to the return of the Lord as referring to a yet future event. The Olivet Discourse, and much (though I would not say all) of the Apocalypse seem to me to be about events that were quickly closing in on the Apostolic church. That said, I believe that we are definitely living "between the times" in that the kingdom of God is a present but mysterious reality which has yet to reach its fullness, and I believe that Christ is the bringer of this fullness. I also believe that everyone (past/present/future) has been and/or will be judged according to there deeds, and that Christ is the bringer of this judgment.
So, now to the question(s). What does it mean to confess with the Catholic Church that Christ will return? Must it mean that I picture Him coming bodily on a cloud and doing certain things (I think a lot of Protestants have Him throwing fireballs at people)? Or rather, in confessing this could I be confessing Him to be the future bringer of the fullness of the kingdom and judgment, but maintain an element of mystery as to how this will actually look (perhaps it will be bodily and on a cloud but like I said, I read no Biblical passages which make me think it MUST be this way). What is the dogma of the Church on the meaning of "He will come again?" I ask this question humbly and honestly because if my faith were to continue along the path it seems now to be on I would not want to be dishonest or less than genuine in anything that I confess (I mean, if you have to qualify the hell out of something can you really say you believe it?)
I want to thank the reader for his openness to Catholic thought and for his honesty and conscientiousness about wanting to make a sincere profession of faith and not deprive doctrines of their meaning via reinterpretation.
For those who may not be aware, "full preterism"--sometimes also referred to as "pantelism" (by its critics)--is, so I understand, the position that all biblical prophecy has already been fulfilled, including the Second Coming and the resurrection of the dead. Obviously, these would have had to have been fulfilled in ways that differ markedly from the way Christians have historically understood them. This position, being contrary to the Creed's confession of both a future Second Coming and a future resurrection, is materially heretical. Consequently, I'm glad to hear that the reader has begun distancing himself from it.
Regarding passages like the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24-25) that deal with the Second Coming, I would urge the reader to consider this possibility: If you look at the passage in question, much of the material does indeed refer to events that occurred in the early Church and, to my mind, in the first century. This includes some of the passages speaking of a coming of Christ, but not to all of them. There is a distinction to be made between the various ways that Christ "comes" to his people (in blessing or in judgment; just as Scripture speaks of God "coming" to his people in these ways) and the final, definitive Second Coming.
The Olivet Discourse begins with Jesus predicting the destruction of the Temple and then the disciples ask him two things: (1) When will this happen? (2) What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
What follows is a discourse in which Matthew organizes the prophetic teachings of Christ, including drawing together material that is found at various places in Luke. It seems to me that, in reflecting on this material, there is a marked difference between the material in chapter 24 and that in chapter 25.
The chapter 24 material is much more concrete and specific, whereas the material in chapter 25 is expressly parabolic, involving the parable of the ten virgins, the parable of the talents, and the parable of the sheep and the goats.
I would hypothesize that the material in chapter 24 answers the disciples first question--"When will these things (the destruction of the temple) be?"--and the material in chapter 25 deals with the Second Coming, which is by its nature an event that cannot be described in the kind of concrete terms that we find in chapter 24. It's too far outside the realm of human experience, making it more suited to parabolic treatment.
Whether the reader finds this interpretation convincing is not essential, though. The Church does not mandate a particular interpretation of these texts. What it does insist on is that there is a future Second Coming that will involve a radical rupture in the present world order and usher in a new and eternal state.
A significant text which seems to bear on this future coming (as opposed to other, non-definitive "comings," such as a coming in judgment on Jerusalem in A.D. 70) is found in Acts 1:
6: So when they had come together, they asked him, "Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?"
7: He said to them, "It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.
8: But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Sama'ria and to the end of the earth."
9: And when he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
10: And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes,
11: and said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven."
This seems to indicate that Christ's future, definitive coming will in one respect be an inverse of the Ascension. That is, just as Christ manifestly and bodily ascended into heaven, at his final and definitive coming he will manifestly and bodily descend from heaven. It is this manifest bodily descent that seems to mark the Second Coming in distinction from all other conceivable comings of Christ (e.g., coming in a vision, visiting blessing or judgment on a people without bodily descending from heaven, coming in the Eucharist in bodily but not manifest manner).
The fact that Christ will be reunited with us in a manifest and bodily fashion at the Second Coming does not mean that the event must be understood reductionistically, as it is sometimes understood in Fundamentalist circles, as if Jesus will return to the earth like an astronaut returning from space (but without the space capsule). The event will represent such a massive rupture with the present world order such that the laws of space and time as we presently understand them are likely to no longer apply.
For example, Scripture speaks of the day of judgment in ways that strongly suggest that the current rules of space and time will not apply. It is hard to imagine, for example, that Jesus will actually judge billions of people in a 24 hour period, reviewing their smallest deeds and making them publicly known to everyone ("what you have whispered in the ear will be shouted from the housetops"), literally dividing billions of people onto his right and left, etc. If we really do have a whole-life review and experience not only our own review and judgment but have awareness of the content of others' reviews and judgments then this strongly suggests we will occupy a mode of existence that is so vastly different from our current experience that it can scarcely be conceived at present, and certainly the language used to describe it in Scripture must be handled with a significant degree of caution about the mystery that is being described.
Ultimately, the precise mechanics of the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the eternal order on the new heaven and the new earth must be left up to God. While we have indications of what aspects of these will be like, and while we know they will be bodily and future events, their precise constitution is something that we likely cannot even conceive at present, and the Church does not attempt to settle these matters in detail.
So I would say that much of what the reader is presently thinking is in line with Catholic thought. He acknowledges that there is a future and definitive aspect to these realities. What I would recommend that he contemplate (as he may already be doing) is that these realities will have a bodily dimension, even if it is a mode of bodily existence that presently exceeds our ability to imagine.
Hope this helps!
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (83)
February 26, 2007
Finding Aquinas In Latin
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
Hello, I'm having trouble finding anyone who sells books by St. Aquinas in the original Latin. Do you know who sells them? Thanks.
I'm not aware of a bookseller specifically devoted to this, but here's what I'd do:
1) If you're looking for books that are in print, I'd check Amazon.com as my first stop. It might not have the ones you're looking for, though, since books by Aquinas in Latin are likely to be by smaller, academic, or overseas publishers, and Amazon don't always carry those. (Which is the publishers' faults, not Amazon's.)
2) If you're looking for out of print books or used but in-print books, I'd contact THOMAS LOOME BOOKSELLERS and ask them what they have in stock.
On the other hand, if you don't really need books by Aquinas in Latin but just texts by Aquinas in Latin, his whole corpus is available online and available for download.
Hope this helps!
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (13)
February 01, 2007
The Nine Choirs Of Angels
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I would like a brief description each of the 9 choirs of angels. Thanks you.
St. Thomas offers the best brief description of the nine choirs that I know of. It's found in two articles in the Summa Theologiae: HERE and HERE.
You also might want to read Pseudo-Dionysius's THE CELESTIAL HIERARCHY, which was the work that kicked off the whole nine choirs business.
There's a brief treatment of the subject in THE ARTICLE IN THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA.
And WIKIPEDIA'S ARTICLE may have some useful bits, but it's got a bunch of unreliable junk mixed in, so be careful.
In fact, I'd urge caution regarding the whole idea of nine choirs of angels. This is a highly speculative way of classifying angels and is not part of Church teaching (you will note, for example, that it's not mentioned in the Catechism). The foundations of it are also shaky, biblically. It rests on stitching together several different passages of Scripture and then making the assumptions that the things mentioned in them (1) are all angels and (2) are all different types of angels.
Both of these assumptions are open to challenge.
For example, I am not convinced that there is a difference in kind between an angel and an archangel. The term archangelos in Greek simply indicates a high ranking angel. Archangels may differ from ordinary angels in the same way that high ranking officials differ from low ranking officials or the way that high ranking military officers differ from low ranking military officers. In other words: The difference is one of rank, not of essence.
Indeed, that is what suggested by the very terms. "Angel" in the biblical languages simply means "messenger," with the understanding that the angels are the messengers one would find in God's heavenly court, just as earthly kings have messengers in their courts. In earthly courts, some messengers may hold higher rank than others, but they're all human beings. In the same way, the distinction between a messenger and a high-ranking messenger would seem to be one of rank rather than kind.
When we come to cherubim and seraphim, we're on a little bit firmer ground. These at least look different when they appear in Scripture, though because of the way visionary experience works, I can't rule out the possibility that there is one underlying class of beings behind both, and sometimes it manifests in a way that conveys one visionary impression and sometimes it manifests in a way that conveys another.
Even if we grant that seraphim and cherubim are different from each other, though, that doesn't mean that they are distinct from the choir or choirs of angels and archangels. It might turn out that all angels are either seraphim or cherubim (that there isn't another class). And it might turn out that there are high ranking angels (archangels) among both the seraphim and the cherubim.
So these classes may all co-penetrate each other. They may not be four distinct classes, contrary to assumption (2), above.
When we look at the other five classes--thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, virtues--we're on even shakier ground because it isn't clear from Scripture that these are angelic beings at all. These names are derived from three passages in St. Paul's writings (I'll stick the relevant names after the key terms where it isn't obvious in the English translation):
[God] raised [Christ] from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule [principality] and authority [power] and power [virtue] and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come [Eph. 1:20-21].
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places [Eph. 6:10-12].
[Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation; for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities [powers; it's the same word in Greek as in the former passage: exousiai]-- all things were created through him and for him [Col. 1:15-16].
It is not obvious in these passages that Paul is talking about distinct types of angels. That rests on a chain of assumptions that are open to challenge. It is not clear, for example, that he is thinking exclusively of the heavenly realm here. He may have earthly rulers in mind ("in heaven and on earth"), in which case some of these terms may be being used to describe humans. Even if we could identify which terms he's thinking of as referring to spiritual things, he may not be thinking of angels but of Greco-Roman religious concepts that use the same terms (e.g., virtues like Piety were often worshipped as deities, and the Roman emperor and many other rulers were worshipped as well), with the message being that Christ is superior to all of these and that we struggle against them as Christians. Even if we could show that these terms all referred to angels, this still wouldn't show that they are distinct classes of angels, any more than the fact that some humans could be described as principalities and some as powers wouldn't mean that they weren't all humans.
It strikes me as much more likely that Paul is speaking in a generalized way here, piling up near-synonyms that are intended to overlap--and overlap both the earthly and the heavenly spheres--in a way that makes it impossible to use this as a technical listing of different kinds of non-overlapping groups of angels that differ from each other in essence.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (171)
January 26, 2007
Prayer, Conversion, & Free Will
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I've been struggling with a question regarding prayer for some time now, and I'm not having much luck finding an answer. The qestion is this: what exactly are we praying for when we pray for someone else's conversion & salvation - i.e., what exactly are we asking God to do?
The difficulty I'm having with this question stems from the following:
a) God will give sufficient grace to each person to enable him to get to heaven; and
b) God will not infringe on man's free will and force him to accept the graces He offers.Given the foregoing, it would seem (to me) to be illogical to pray for someone else's conversion and salvation. Yet, we see St. Paul praying for the salvation of others in Rom 10:1.
Any help you can give me (or source to which you can point me) on this would be very much appreciated.
Several different resolutions to the dilemma you pose suggest themselves:
1) The Efficacious Grace solution:
According to the Thomistic point of view, while God gives sufficient grace to all for salvation, for a person to actually turn to God and be saved the person must be given a special kind of grace that is by its nature efficacious. Those who get this efficacious grace are saved, those who don't, aren't. The bestowal of efficacious grace is entirely a matter of God's choice, and it accomplishes its goal of bringing a person to salvation without violating his free will.
A Thomistic solution to the dilemma thus might say that what we are doing in praying for someone's salvation what we are asking God to do is to give that person efficacious grace--thus going beyond the sufficient grace he gives to all while (on the Thomistic understanding) not violating his free will.
Whether this solution works is dependent on whether it is possible to give someone a grace that intrinsically (by its nature) brings a person to salvation without violating free will. Non-Thomsits commonly dispute that this is possible.
2) The Middle Knowledge solution
Middle knowledge is a somewhat tricky concept (MORE HERE), but the basic idea is that God knows the truth of things that are not determined either by necessity or his own agency. Thus he knows what our free will decisions will be in all situations, including those we haven't been put in. (The latter is a class known technically as free will counterfactuals).
If it's true that God knows what we will freely choose to do in all possible situations then it would be possible for him to put us in the situation where we freely choose to act on the sufficient grace he has given us and thus achieve salvation.
On this account, what he would be doing in asking God to save someone would be asking him to put that person in a situation in which he knows that the person will freely choose to respond to sufficient grace.
There are at least two possible difficulties for this view. First, in order to engineer the situation in which person X freely chooses to respond to the offer of salvation, God might have to override the free will of other people--either on matters connected with salvation or with respect to neutral matters (e.g., causing me to choose to share the gospel with the person or causing me to choose to stay at a bus station long enough to meet the person and choose to share the gospel with him).
Or maybe he wouldn't. He might be able to manipulate non-volitional nature such that he sets up a cascade of free will decisions among different people leading a particular individual to choose salvation, not violating the free will of anyone in the cascade. Since we don't have a God's-eye view of reality, we don't know whether this would be a real difficulty for God or not.
Second, whether God has middle knowledge is disputed, the chief part of the dispute being whether this kind of knowledge is possible in situations that are not actual.
Note that middle knowledge solutions are commonly appealed to by Molinists, though they are not exclusive to Molinists.
3) The Easier Influence solution
On this theory we would be asking God to give a person more than just sufficient grace but less than the efficacious grace envisioned by Thomists.
While receiving sufficient grace means that a person receives enough grace to embrace salvation, it does not mean that it will be easy for him to do so. One could thus ask God to give him additional graces that influence him by making it easier for him to embrace salvation yet not override his free will.
For example, he might encounter an evangelist capable of giving an extra-clear and winning presentation of the gospel or he might be in a particularly good mood when he hears it or he might be shielded from evil influences while he's considering the question of whether to embrace the offer of salvation.
It seems to me that, whatever else is the case, God ought to be able to do at least this solution, and thus we have at least one way of making sense of what we're asking God to do when praying for the salvation of others.
4) The Redundant Prayers solution
It is, of course, possible to pray for things that God is going to do with or without our prayers. Thus I could pray for God to give a particular person sufficient grace to embrace salvation, even though (as an informed, theologically orthodox Catholic) I already know that he's planning to do that.
This solution is certainly possible, but it raises the question of whether it's a good use of our time to pray for things God is determined to do independent of our prayers and why God would set the example for us in Scripture of praying for the salvation of others. Why would he want us to pray redundantly?
5) The Extra Chance solution
It is Church teaching that God gives sufficient grace to a person at some point during his life, but it is not Church teaching that he does this on more than one occasion. We don't know whether a person has sufficient grace for salvation at every point in his life or only at some points. (It is common teaching that the baptized who are in mortal sin always will always be given sufficient grace to repent before the end of their lives, but that teaching does not apply to the unbaptized.)
If somone has already had--and missed--whatever receptions of sufficient grace God would otherwise give him then praying for the person's salvation might be construed as asking God to give him sufficient grace once more or even many more times--in other words, giving him extra chances.
6) The Whatever Possible solution
The above solutions represent theoretical answers to the question of what one might mean when asking God to grant salvation to someone. This solution is different: It represents something I suspect is more like what most people actually do mean in asking this.
Most people don't have in mind the theoretical answers provided in the preceding solutions. They haven thought through the mechanics of how God giving salvation works in that kind of detail, they just want the person they're praying for to be saved. So in praying for the person they would like God to do whatever is possible to help that person to be saved.
On this understanding, you don't have to know which options are possible. There just has to be something that's possible, and I suspect that at least some of the above explanations fall into that category (and probably others that my tiny human intellect isn't even capable of comprehending). We can thus leave up to God what, in particular, is possible and just humbly request that he do it.
That's how I tend to think of it when I pray for others.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (62)
January 16, 2007
Thomist Or Molinist Or Neither?
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
I was just wondering whether you were a Thomist, Molinist, or neither. I understand that this is a question that you might choose not to answer, as it could lead to a pretty hairy blog post as a result, but I was simply curious. I've been looking into both schools of thought, and I wanted to know where you stood.
For those who aren't aware, Thomism and Molinism are the two best-known schools of Catholic thought regarding the subjects of predestination, grace, and free will. They are not the only two, however. If you look in Ludwig Ott's Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, you'll find additional schools listed.
At this point in my theological development, I'm not really either a Thomist or a Molinist. Originally, coming from conservative Presbyterianism, I had a strong predisposition towards Thomism. This led me to write A Tiptoe Through TULIP, to help illustrate the degree to which Calvinistic thought is compatible with Catholic thought. That piece explored how close one could get to Calvinism while remaining within the bounds of Catholic teaching. I have long wanted to write a companion piece exploring just how far away from Calvinism you could get and remain within the bounds of Catholic teaching as well, though I have not had the leisure to do so.
Currently I don't have strong opinions regarding which of the permitted Catholic positions on the relevant issues are correct. I believe that predestination exists, for Scripture says that it does. The question in my mind is how predestination works. It may be the kind of strong predestination that St. Augustine and St. Thomas believed in or it may be one of the alternative understandings that have been advocated by other thinkers, such as those of the Molinist or other permitted Catholic schools.
I'm not entirely sure that we have been given the data needed to address every issue relating to this subject. Scripture and Tradition allow us to establish certain points, such as the absolute necessity of grace for anyone to be saved, but they may not allow us to fully exhaust the mystery that we are confronted with here, just as they allow us to establish certain points regarding the nature of God without exhausting the mystery that he is.
I am particularly suspicious of strategies that attempt to handle biblical language as if it did not contain a large amount of ambiguity. There is a tendency among many Calvinist authors to treat biblical language as if it is a lot less ambiguous than is really the case. For example, many of the key terms connected with salvation--"redemption," "justification," "sanctification," and even "salvation" itself--occur in Scripture with more than one meaning. This is not often appreciated in some circles. Also, it is often assumed that certain terms are synonyms, when in fact they may not be. These tendencies appear particularly in Calvinist writings, and in reading them one often gets the feeling that a system is being imposed on the data of the text rather than being derived from it.
To ultimately settle what I think about many of these matters, I'd have to conduct an extensive review of the biblical literature and how thought on this question has developed over time. Given the practical orientation of my work--which involves defending the liberty of opinion that Catholics have rather than trying to prove one particular school of thought correct--I have not had the occasion to do that research. Thus I'm better at explaining the boundaries of Catholic teaching and what particular biblical verses might mean than what school of thought (if any) is correct and what the relevant verses definitely do mean.
In other words, I try to be transparent to the Church: If the Church allows a variety of opinion on a particular point, I tend to leave matters as they are. There are more urgent priorities in research that I need to pursue than trying to settle my views on highly complex, highly debatable matters of this type. At some point I may have the leisure, or the personal motivation, to do a systematic review of this area, but thus far I have not.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (21)
November 03, 2006
"St. Me, Pray For Me"?
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
If Heaven is beyond time and space, and the Angels and Saints can hear our prayers as the book of Revelation shows, then are the prayers the saints hear ones that are made after their death?
Angels don't have death, but yes, saints in heaven do hear prayers made after their deaths. Thus in A.D. 2006 I can pray to St. Paul, who died in the A.D. 60s. That doesn't require heaven to be beyond time and space, though. Even if St. Paul is still fully within the flow of time, so that for him it's also 2006, he can still hear the prayer as long as he has a way to perceive it.
The standard thought is that it is God who communicates to the saints the fact that someone is praying to them, so if I am in 2006 and St. Paul is in 2006, God can simply pass on my prayer to St. Paul. God, of course, is outside of time, but St. Paul doesn't have to be for him to learn about my prayer long after his death.
If, because Heaven is beyond time and space, I could hear prayers from all times, then if I pray now, die and go to Heaven, will I be able to hear my own prayers that I made before I died?
Possibly. There are a few caveats, though:
1) While God is outside of time, it is not at all clear that human souls are outside of time. Or at least they are not outside of time in the same way that God is. God does not experience any sequentiality; he lives in an "eternal now" in which all of history happens at once (or, to put it more precisely, every moment in the history of the world is equally present to God).
Souls, however, clearly do experience sequentiality. There is the point at which they die, experience the particular judgment, are purified (if needed), and fully glorified, are restored to their bodies at the Resurrection, experience the general judgment, experience the eternal order, etc. Even if you want to say that this sequentiality doesn't take place in time as we experience it (and I'm open to the proposition that it does take place in time as we experience it), you at least have to say that it takes place over something analogous to time that allows things to happen in sequence rather than all at once in an eternal now.
2) You don't need to posit heaven being outside of time, though, in order to get your prayer request to your future, sainted self. As we mentioned, God is outside of time, and so if you are alive in 2006 and praying to yourself in heaven then God could tell you about that prayer in 2306, when you die and arrive in heaven (let's assume that medical technology discovers something really fabulous that lets you live for more than three centuries).
3) It's not clear that this would be necessary, however, since Scripture seems to indicate that we will have a whole-life review at some point--possibly at more than one point (i.e., both the particular and the general judgments) and we may have constant, continuous access to the events of our own lives in the form of memory (unimpeded by our brain's faulty retrieval system). If that's the case then, or whenever the whole-life review takes place, we could come across our former prayer request and be able to fulfill it.
4) On the other hand, there may be limits to what we can pray for on behalf of our former selves. One thing that it does not make sense for us to pray for is something that we know was not God's will. For example, even today--with me still being alive--I could not ask God to make it so that I had never been born. I already know that it was God's will for me to be born, and I cannot legitimately pray for something that I know to be contrary to God's will.
(I could pray that God create an alternate timeline in which I was never born, but I cannot pray that I never existed in this timeline.)
Once we're in heaven and have had our whole-life review and know everything that happened to us, we wouldn't be able to pray that things turn out differently for us--at any particular moment of our lives--than they did, for to do so would be to pray contrary to God's will for us.
5) We could, however, pray for things to turn out as they did. Since God is outside of time, I can ask him in 2306 to allow something to happen to me in 2006 that I know did happen to me in that year. In this case, I'm praying in harmony with God's will--and such a prayer of mine in 2306 might (hypothetically) be a contributing factor to why God allowed the event to happen to me in 2006.
6) It is not clear, however, whether God would respond to this type of prayer. First, he might judge that the purpose of the Communion of the Saints is to build up the body of Christ by praying for each other. Praying for our own past selves might not be what he has in mind. For example, I'm not sure what God would think of me praying--now, in 2006--that he allow me to be born back in the 1960s.
In fact, I rather suspect that God might take a dim view of me making that request of him, at least while I'm in this life. Given that I already know what his will was on that matter, I suspect he would rather have me spending my time and energy praying for things where I don't know his will--like my present needs or the needs of others.
In this life I have limited time and energy to devote to things, and God might well deem it more productive for me to devote my petitionary prayer to matters that are not yet settled from my temporal perspective. I might praise and thank him for allowing me to be born, but in terms of what I should be asking for, he might want me to ask that he bless me or my loved ones or the pope or the poor of the souls in purgatory or someone who I don't already know it was his will to bless.
Here's one way God might want us to handle things in prayer:
* If we know it's his will, praise and thank him for it.
* If we don't know if it's his will, ask that he will grant the request if it's his will.
* If we know it's not his will, don't ask him for it.
For our future selves, things that we know did happen to us would go in the first category and things that we know didn't happen would go in the third. Once we're in heaven, presumably nothing about our past lives would fall in the middle category. If that's the case then praying for our past selves would not be in harmony with God's will.
That's assuming, of course, that God handles things according to the three categories mentioned above. He may not. As noted before, he might act on the prayers of our future selves in granting blessings to our present selves.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (42)
October 09, 2006
Limbo In Limbo?
(Jimmy Akin)
I've gotten a number of requests for comment on news stories that have been circulating recently regarding the possibility that the Church may repudiate the idea of limbo. As usual, the press has done its usual substellar job of reporting matters of religion, so here goes.
First, just in case there might be any doubt on this point, the limbo we're talking about here is the limbo of the infants (Latin, limbus infantium or limbus purerorum), not the limbu of the fathers (limbus patrum). The latter is a different concept (which, incidentally, is not to be too hastily identified with purgatory).
The idea of the limbo of the infants arose out of reflections on (1) the New Testament's clear teaching on the necessity of baptism for salvation and (2) the fact that many seemingly innocent people (babies, those who are severely and congenitally retarded, etc.) die without baptism and (3) the mercy and justice of God.
An early and influential attempt to address the question of what happens to children dying without baptism was formulated by St. Augustine, who held that--since baptism is necessary for salvation--children dying without it must be excluded from heaven. They thus do not receive the beatific vision of God. Further, since there are only two ultimate destinations for humans--heaven and hell--this meant that such children must end up in hell. However, because they do not have personal acts of sin, they would experience only the mildest of torments--those due to original sin only.
Later theologians rejected part of Augustine's solution--namely, the part about the children suffering. It came to be held that exclusion from the beatific vision is what dying in original sin causes to happen, but that the positive suffering that only occurs if one has committed actual, personal sin. You won't suffer in the afterlife in less you personally sinned, in other words. You'll only be deprived of the supernatural happiness of being with God.
Further theological reflection noticed another possibility: If someone is neither in torment nor in supernatural beatitude then it is possible for them to experience a non-supernatural or natural beatitude. In other words, they could be happy--indeed, very, very happy--but without having the specific happiness of being able to see God as he is. (Kinda like we on earth can be very, very happy without having the beatific vision in this life.)
Theologians thus came to speculate that babies dying without baptism could experience a natural happiness.
The resulting picture would be a rather odd one--technically, the children would be in hell (excluded from the beatific vision) but they would have potentially tremendous happiness, just not the supernatural happiness of union with God. This idea would be very comforting to parents, though from what I can
tell this point always remained private theological speculation. I
haven't been able to find any indication of it in magisterial texts.
In the fullness of time, the term "limbo" came to be associated with the resulting state. The term "limbo" is derived from a word meaning hem or fringe or border, and the idea that the infants in question would be in hell, but only on its hem or fringe or border--not where the real suffering goes on.
Various aspects of this found their way into magisterial texts, though I am unaware of any that has the full-orbed view of limbo-as-place-of-great-natural-happiness version. Generally there is a more reserved presentation that merely stresses the necessity of baptism for salvation, even for infants, but that such infants will not suffer on account of their lack of personal sins if they die without it.
A recent example of this kind of presentation may be found in Pius XII's Address to Italian Midwives, where he stated:
If what We have said up to now concerns the protection and care of natural life, much more so must it concern the supernatural life, which the newly born receives with Baptism. In the present economy there is no other way to communicate that life to the child who has not attained the use of reason. Above all, the state of grace is absolutely necessary at the moment of death. Without it salvation and supernatural happiness—the beatific vision of God—are impossible. An act of love is sufficient for the adult to obtain sanctifying grace and to supply the lack of baptism; to the still unborn or newly born this way is not open. . . . so it is easy to understand the great importance of providing for the baptism of the child deprived of complete reason who finds himself in grave danger or at death's threshold.
Here the pontiff affirms that a child cannot make the kind of personal act of charity needed to obtain sanctifying grace apart from baptism and thus, according to the clear implication of the text, such children cannot experience the beatific vision. The pontiff does not go into the fact that such children will not suffer (other documents do that) or affirm the idea of their natural happiness, but he does make it clear that such children will not be saved (in the proper sense of the term of receiving the beatific vision).
That was Church teaching (doctrine). It was not, however, Church dogma, and for some time (centuries, actually), theologians had been entertaining possible ways by which salvation could be achieved for such infants. These often centered on the idea that such children might experience a form of baptism of blood or baptism of desire.
Another time we can go into the mechanics of how these theories work, but as the Church's understanding of baptism of desire progressed in the 19th and 20th centuries, related to a greater emphasis on the universality of God's salvific will, the idea of limbo began to fall out of favor. This was clearly happening by the mid-20th century, and it may even be why Pius XII didn't go further than he did in articulating limbo in his address to the midwives.
In the 1960s the Second Vatican Council, using typically oblique language, seemed to affirm that God offers all individuals the possibility of salvation, even if it is in a mysterious way we cannot perceive or understand (Gaudium et Spes 22). One could argue that the Council was talking about people who attain the use of reason, but if it wasn't--if it really meant that God gives a universal offer of salvation--then it would apply to infants dying without baptism as well.
The Council didn't address this question explicitly, but in 1992 the Catechism of the Catholic Church did:
1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus' tenderness toward children which caused him to say: "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them," allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism. All the more urgent is the Church's call not to prevent little children coming to Christ through the gift of holy Baptism.
This represents a clear shift in doctrine. In Pius XII's day and before, private speculation had been permitted that there might be a way of salvation for such children, but official teaching was that this was not the case, as documented above. (The situation then was similar to the situation with respect to Feeneyites now: Official teaching is that it is possible for non-Catholics to be saved, but the Church still allows private speculation that this is not the case.) With the Catechism, we have a clear shift in what the magisterial texts are saying, so that now--instead of denying the possibility of salvation without baptism for such children--they are affirming at least the hope of it.
This doesn't mean that limbo doesn't exist, but it does mean that the Church is now actively pointing toward an alternative to limbo.
It also means that the Church's official teaching has already changed on this point, so if you are encountering a press story that seems to imply that the Church still actively proclaims limbo and is considering whether to shift its position on limbo, the article is misleading. It has already shifted its position, as the above documents show.
That's what folks in the business call "doctrinal development," and since it does not contradict prior infallible definitions (the Church has never infallibly defined that all children dying without baptism without exception are excluded from the beatific vision) it does not pose a challenge to the integrity of Catholic dogma.
An even more striking departure from prior teaching came in John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (section 99), where he wrote:
I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. . . . The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. You will come to understand that nothing is definitively lost and you will also be able to ask forgiveness from your child, who is now living in the Lord.
This would seem to affirm the salvation of children dying without baptism--or at least those who died by abortion--but there's something very strange about this passage, because when the official, Latin version came out in Acta Apostolicae Sedes, the passage had been rephrased so that it read:
I would now like to say a special word to women who have had an abortion. . . . The Father of mercies is ready to give you his forgiveness and his peace in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. To the same Father and his mercy you can with sure hope entrust your child.
It would appear that the degree of departure from prior teaching in the original text was called to the attention of the pontiff, who then had the official Latin version altered. One would expect that the other versions of the text would be corrected in light of the Latin one and the prior text regarded as inauthentic, but I have seen individuals argue (I can't see on what basis) that both texts enjoy official status.
However that may be, both do continue to circulate, and in fact both are present on the Vatican's own web site (here's the first, here's the second).
The development of this area of theology led John Paul II in 2004 to ask the International Theological Commission to prepare a document discussing the fate of unbaptized children, with the clear expectation that the document would find a way to more fully articulate recent thought on the subject, without resorting to the concept of limbo. Here's what he said:
The themes chosen for examination by the Commission during the coming years are of the greatest interest. First of all is the question of the fate of children who die without Baptism. This is not merely an isolated theological problem. A great many other fundamental topics are closely interwoven with it: the universal salvific will of God, the one universal mediation of Jesus Christ, the role of the Church, the universal sacrament of salvation, the theology of the sacraments, the meaning of the doctrine on original sin.... It will be up to you to explore the "nexus" between all these mysteries with a view to offering a theological synthesis that will help to encourage consistent and enlightened pastoral practice [SOURCE].
The International Theological Commission, though run under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is an advisory body, and its documents do not have magisterial standing. What the pope was doing, in essence, was to ask a group of theological advisors to come up with a fuller way to articulate an alternative to limbo.
If the pope was pleased with the document they eventually came up with, he could order it to be published and, though it would not itself have magisterial status, it would serve as a pointer for future discussions of the topic and would likely shape future magisterial presentations of it.
John Paul II died in 2005, though, and His Awesomeness Joseph Ratzinger became His Most Awesomeness B16.
So what impact would that have on this question?
Back in the 1980s (see The Ratzinger Report), Cardinal Ratzinger had already expressed his personal opinion that the idea of limbo should be abandoned. Here's what he said:
Limbo was never a defined truth of the faith. Personally - and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as Prefect of the Congregation - I would abandon it since it was only a theological hypothesis. It formed part of a secondary thesis in support of a truth which is absolutely of first significance for the faith, namely, the importance of baptism. …. One should not hesitate to give up the idea of 'limbo' if need be (and it is worth noting that the very theologians who proposed 'limbo' also said that parents could spare the child limbo by desiring its baptism and through prayer); but the concern behind it must not be surrendered. Baptism has never been a side issue for the faith; it is not now, nor will it ever be."
So there is little doubt that he would be favorable to the general direction of the document (early versions of which may have been prepared when he was still the head of the International Theological Commission).
But will he order the text published?
Part of me wonders about that, because since becoming pontiff he has had the idea of reconciling the SSPX with the Church as one of his priorities, and it seems to me that this effort could be harmed by the publication of the document, since many radical traditionalists are keen on the idea of limbo.
On the other hand, he may view the matter as of sufficient pastoral weight to go ahead and allow what he perceives as doctrinal development to proceed on this point, regardless of how it will be received in such quarters.
Further, according to John Allen,
A Vatican Information Service news release of Oct. 2 indicated that Pope Benedict has furnished "precise indications" to the commission, urging it "to overcome the traditional orientation" of Limbo [SOURCE].
Unfortunantly, I haven't been able to find the original text of this news release on the VIS web site.
Last week the International Theological Commission (now headed by Cardinal Levada) had a big meeting (a "plenary session") in Rome in which they talked about the limbo matter, and this set off a lot of speculation in the media that an announcement might be imminent. It was widely thought that the document might be released or that B16 might address the matter in his homily at the Mass he celebrated on Friday for the ITC, but neither happened.
The accounts I've come across are mixed regarding whether the document is yet-to-be-drafted or has already been drafted but is now being tweaked. Presumably, they've drafted something--at least points for discussion--but the final document is still a ways off.
How far off?
Well, the ITC has discussion themes that it takes up in five-year blocks. The current block runs from 2004-2008 (which is why JP2 asked them to take up this question back in 2004). Presumably, the document will be finished and presented to the pope before 2008--quite possibly in 2007--but we'll have to wait and see. Even then, there's a possibility that B16 might not order it to be published, though my best guess at the moment is that he will.
MORE HERE.
One final prediction: If the document is published and if it starts to shape future magisterial statements on the subject then there is one provision in the current Code of Canon Law that may get revisited at some point in the future. Here it is:
Can. 868.
§2. An infant of Catholic parents or even of non-Catholic parents is baptized licitly in danger of death even against the will of the parents.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (129)
September 28, 2006
The Saints & Purgatory
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
Sorry to trouble you, however, you are the person that comes to my mind when I think of Purgatory.
Hmmm. I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not. . . . Well, let's press on. . . .
I've heard you mention that Purgatory is sort of a cleansing process that we would go through because we are all guilty of sin and nothing unclean can enter heaven. We know saints have been sinners too, some very great sinners at one point in their life. How can we assume they make it to heaven and why would they not have to have their souls cleansed by Purgatory?
I have run into Catholics who have advanced the opinion that the saints did not go through purgatory (because they didn't need it), but I can find no Church teaching to back up that claim. As far as I can tell, it is quiet possible that individuals who are now saints did indeed go through purgatory.
This is not to say that everybody does. The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes:
1472 To understand this doctrine and practice of the Church, it is necessary to understand that sin has a double consequence. Grave sin deprives us of communion with God and therefore makes us incapable of eternal life, the privation of which is called the "eternal punishment" of sin. On the other hand every sin, even venial, entails an unhealthy attachment to creatures, which must be purified either here on earth, or after death in the state called Purgatory. This purification frees one from what is called the "temporal punishment" of sin. These two punishments must not be conceived of as a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without, but as following from the very nature of sin. A conversion which proceeds from a fervent charity can attain the complete purification of the sinner in such a way that no punishment would remain.
So it seems possible that some individuals are purified by the end of life such that they do not need to experience purgatory, and the saints would presumably be among the better candidates for that.
Nevertheles, I can find no Church teaching to back up the idea that anyone who ends up as a canonized saint by definition avoided purgatory. That strikes me as a pious belief, but not something that the Church teaches.
As to how one could reason that a canonized individual is now in heaven, there would seem to be two lines of reasoning by which one could do this.
First, one could infer it from the fact of the canonization itself, which is infallible. In making canonizations, popes use the formula
We declare and define that X is a saint.
(See the decree of canonization for Jose Maria Escriva for an example.)
If one takes the term "saint" in this context to mean "a person who is completely purified and in heaven" then the canonization itself would function as a guarantor of the fact that the individual is no longer in purgatory.
However, there is another basis, which precedes and prepares the way for canonization, and that is the verification of miracles performed through the individual's intercession. These miracles are regarded as a sign that, in some sense, God wishes the individual to be known as a saint and thus can be taken as an indication that the individual is in heaven and no longer experiencing purification.
In keeping with my own inclination to be reserved about what can be asserted with confidence about the afterlife, how time works there, and similar matters, I would employ such arguments with a measure of caution, though those are the arguments that suggest themselves and that cohere with the historic sensus fidelium regarding the fact that canonized saints are already in heaven.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (34)
September 25, 2006
The Species Of Angels
(Jimmy Akin)
Note that the title of this blog post is ambiguous since the word "species" in English can be either singular or plural.
There's a good reason for using such an ambiguous title.
A reader writes:
I had a Priest tell me that every angel is it's own species rather than angels as a whole being a single species. Where would he have got that?
Probably from Thomas Aquinas, for it's a notable theme in the history of Catholic theology.
YOU CAN READ ONE OF AQUINAS'S DEFENSES OF IT HERE.
The reasoning Aquinas uses is based on his Aristotelian understanding of metaphysics, according to which (among other things) matter is regarded as "the principle of individuation"--the thing that allows two things to belong to the same species and yet be different from each other. Since angels don't have matter, they thus can't be the same species, for there would be nothing (no matter) to differentiate angels within a particular species.
(WARNING: Aquinas' understanding of matter is obviously somewhat different than the modern one. Don't assume that he's using the word in the same way we would. His use of the word "form" is also different.)
Aquinas also has an argument that even if angels had matter they would still have to be of different species, which he explains in the above link.
Unfortunately, his reasoning on some points connected with this view is not entirely clear, and commentators have struggled to figure out some of what he means.
THIS ARTICLE TAKES NOTE OF SOME OF THE ISSUES.
I should point out that the reasoning Aquinas uses is tied to a particular theory of metaphysics in such a way that the Church does not require one to agree with his conclusion. The Church does not endorse any particular system of metaphysics, and some individuals (whether they are differentiated by matter or not) have liberty of opinion here. (His Most Awesomeness B16, for example, is known to generally favor approaching things from an Augustinian rather than a Thomistic perspective.)
Personally, I am open to Aquinas's view on this but am not presently convinced by the reasoning he uses on this point. I tend to think that we just don't know enough about how the supernatural world works to be able to say with confidence that, for example, there is no second principle of individuation that would allow there to be multiple angels within a given species.
Scripturre makes it clear that angels are all part of some common kind of being (otherwise they wouldn't be referred to by the common name of "angel") and that there are multiple individuals within this kind. My own inclination is to note these facts and then not worry about whether this kind is a species or a genus or what have you. There may be multiple angelic species or only one. I'm not persuaded that we know enough about the supernatural world to settle this question, and so I'd prefer to stick with the data of revelation on this point and not try to get too definitive about what metaphysical theory best explains the data.
But that's just me. You're free to take whatever view you feel is best supported by the evidence.
Which on this point is how the Church would have it.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (28)
September 22, 2006
Two Quick Purgatory Questions
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
1.) Will souls in purgatory be purged at the end of the world? If so, what will happen to the souls on earth that would need to go to purgatory to be cleansed?
This one we have a pretty clear answer on. Speaking of the end of the world, St. Paul says:
Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep [i.e., we won't all die before the end of the world], but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality [1 Cor. 15:51-53].
So anybody who is still alive at the end, or who is still in purgatory when the resurrection happens, will have whatever purification they need taken care of in an instant, "in the twinkling of an eye."
What we don't know is whether purgatory takes place that fast now. It may or it may not. We don't know a lot about how time works in the afterlife. (Though since God is outside of time, he can apply your prayers to whenever a person was in purgatory, even if he is "already" out.)
What amazes me is when anti-Catholics throw out the question of what will happen to people in need of purification at the end of the world who don't have "time" for purgatory as if it were some kind of objection to the doctrine. I always want to respond, "What? God doesn't have enough omnipotence to clean someone up fast?"
2.) Is it possible that those in purgatory are angels on earth helping us out, or are angels beings of their own?
It's not impossible that God may have folks in purgatory do things to help us here on earth. If doing so would further their purification, he might well assign them posthumous chores to do. But they would not be angels. Angels are a different order of being than humans. Thus the Compendium states:
60. Who are the angels?
The angels are purely spiritual creatures, incorporeal, invisible, immortal, and personal beings endowed with intelligence and will. They ceaselessly contemplate God face-to-face and they glorify him. They serve him and are his messengers in the accomplishment of his saving mission to all.
Angels are thus different than humans, who are not purely spiritual beings, but embodied spiritual beings (i.e., whose natural condition is to be in a body, which is why we get resurrected at the end of time).
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (93)
September 15, 2006
More On Adding Wine To The Precious Blood
(Jimmy Akin)
Recently I wrote about a priest pouring wine into a chalice of the Precious Blood and alluded to the fact that he might add enough that the point was reached where the Real Presence ceases.
Following this, Ed Peters wrote:
And Jimmy, what point is that? We're not talking about adding water, etc., which at some hard-to-identify point would render what is in the cup no longer "Wine" (yes, you know what I mean), since at no point would this not still have the appearance of "Wine". Little help? Great question and a good start toward it. Thx, edp.
Excellent question!
Obviously, we cannot in this case use the test of when the accidents of wine cease to be present since the accidents do not cease to be present.
That fact might lead one to suppose--and I'm not at all saying that Ed supposes this, those someone might--that one could continue to add wine to the Precious Blood without the Real Presence ceasing at all.
This would not be the historic understanding of the Church.
This can be seen from the document De Defectibus in Celebratione Missae Occurentibus ("On Defects Occurring in the Celebration of Mass"), which is a document that deals with liturgical abuses and used to be printed in the front of every Missal before the reform of the liturgy following the Second Vatican Council.
It so happens that I have just translated this document (and will be putting it online soon, after I polish the translation and have it vetted), but since Ed has raised an excellent question, I'll share one bit of the draft translation here:
If a fly, or a spider, or something else falls into the chalice before the Consecration, he [the priest] pours out the wine in a decent place, and he puts other [wine] in the chalice, mixes in a little water, and offers it, as above, and the Mass proceeds. If after the Consecration a fly or something of this sort has fallen in, he removes it, and washes it with wine. After the Mass is finished he burns it, and the ashes and the liquid of this kind is poured into the sacrarium [De Defectibus X §5].
The document thus expressly directs priests to wash whatever has fallen into the chalice with wine. This would make no sense if the addition of wine did not cause the Real Presence to cease, since the whole point of washing the thing that fell in the chalice is to cause the Real Presence to cease, so that it can be reverently burned.
The Church--in a document that was part of the Roman Missal for 400 years--thus has understood the addition of wine in sufficient quantity to cause the Real Presence of the Precious Blood to cease.
Which gets us back to Ed's question: At what point does this happen?
My answer would be that this would happen when, in the opinion of reasonable men, so much wine had been added that what is in the chalice would no longer be judged by the senses to be the same wine that was there before. I'm talking, in this case, about the wine that was in the chalice as a whole, not the taste or color or other properties it has.
It's difficult to verbalize what I mean since "wine" in this context if functioning as a mass noun rather than a count noun, and we don't have a good word in English for the particular body of wine that is poured into a chalice, but I can offer a couple of examples that should be illuminative:
1) Suppose that a priest had a chalice with the Precious Blood in it and the accidents of wine in this case were of white wine. But then suppose that (God forbid) he started pouring unconsecrated red wine into the chalice. If he poured in only a drop and then mixed it throughly, it seems to me that a reasonable man would say that he had not substantially changed the accidents that were in the chalice--any more than pouring a drop of water in would substantially alter them. The Real Presence would thus remain.
But if he poured in a large amount of red wine then at some point a reasonable man would say, "That's not the same wine any more" and at that point the accidents masking the Real Presence would have changed so much that the Real Presence would have ceased.
In this case it would be easy(er) to tell because the color would have changed (and the taste as well), but I think the same thing would hold even if the color and taste and smell don't change. At some point so much wine is added that it no longer appears to be "the same wine" (meaning the same unit of wine) that was in the chalice.
Thus my second illustration . . .
2) Suppose that the priest had a large vat full of white wine and then put some of this in a chalice and consecrated it. He then (God forbid) took the Precious Blood in the chalice and pours it back into the vat and mixes it thoroughly.
It seems to me that a reasonable man would say that the unit of wine that appeared to be in the chalice is no longer present. It has been mixed into the vat of wine and has no independent status any longer. Consequently that unit of wine is no longer present, and neither is the Real Presence.
Now, at what precise point the Real Presence would cease is not something that can be determined, any more than the precise point that so much water is added that it ceases can be determined. We can say, in general terms, that this happens when so much water has been added that it would no longer appears to be wine, but we can't specify a percentage of change where this happens. It's a fuzzy boundary, like the boundary between red and orange on a color spectrum.
In the same way we can't specify precisely when too much wine has been added to the Precious Blood, but in principle it seems to me that it would be the point where the unit of wine that appeared to be in the chalice is so substantially altered that it no longer appears to be the same unit. It has been mixed into another unit of wine and no longer has independent status.
Incidentally, we know by faith that these accidents are divisible in the sense that you can drink part of it and leave enough of the apparent unit of wine in the chalice that the Real Presence stays. The apparent unit of wine can be diminished through drinking without losing the Real Presence as soon as the first sip is taken, and the sip also retains the Real Presence. Though at some point, so much can be removed that the Real Presence does cease--as would happen if there were only an undrinkably thin film of wine molecules (or apparent wine molecules) that refuses to form a drop were left in the chalice.
But it seems to me that the accidents masking the Precious Blood can be altered in two ways that cause the Real Presence to cease: (1) they can alter in quality such that it no longer seems to be wine at all or (2) they can alter in quantity such that they no longer appear to be the same unit of wine that was consecrated.
At least that's the best I can make out of the Church's historic understanding that the addition of wine to the Precious Blood can cause the Real Presence to cease.
PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: After writing the above, I decided to check the Summa Theologia to see what Aquinas said, and he says the same thing. He even uses some of the same examples, like adding red wine to white, and speaks in terms of the wine having to be not just qualitatively but "numerically" the same wine that was consecrated, which is what I was getting at by talking about it being the same "unit" of wine that was consecrated.
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (26)
September 14, 2006
Flattening The Real Presence
(Jimmy Akin)
Blogger Catholic Mom writes:
I've been engaging in an online discussion with some folks and the gist of the discussion is they believe Christ is as present when 2 or 3 are gathered in His name or in the faces of the poor as He is in the Eucharist. Therefore, all this fuss about tabernacles and reverence is irrelevant. As long as we are out there ministering to our fellow man we are meeting Christ just as much as we would in the Eucharist.
I can explain that the Eucharist is the True Presence of Christ, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. I am not sure how to describe the presence of Christ we find in the gathering of Christians or when we minister to the poor. I know it is distinct from the Eucharist. How would you verbalize this difference?
It is somewhat difficult to answer this question because in telling us that he is present wherever two or three are gathered in his name, he didn't give us a lot of detail about what this manner of presence entails. The same is true for the "if you did it for the least of my brethren, you did it for me" passage.
It is clear that Jesus is present in these places in that his divinity is omnipresent, but he seems to mean more than that.
Yet it is also clear that he is not present there in the same way that he is in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is Jesus--just disguised. But it is clear that a poor person to whom we are ministering is not Jesus himself. It would not be appropriate to react to the poor person exactly the way we would react to Jesus himself. For example, it would not be appropriate to offer the poor person the worship of latreia, which is due only to God.
Common sense thus tells you that--whatever Jesus' mode of presence is in such cases--it is less than the full reality of that presence which is found in the Eucharist. Therefore, one does an injustice to the Eucharist--and to Jesus himself--if one attempts to flatten the uniqueness of the Eucharistic presence and reduce it to the other modes of his presence which Scripture and theology speak of.
To do so speaks of either gross ignorance of the faith or an agenda of some sort that is so strong it overrides what is patently obvious.
If I were to attempt to unpack what Jesus meant in referring to these alternate and lesser modes of presence, the best I could probably do would be to say that Jesus is speaking metaphorically when he makes these statements in the gospels. It is important to point out that a metaphor is not the same as a fiction. Metaphors are ways of expressing a truth that is otherwise difficult to convey, or at least to convey with the same vividness that hte metaphor carries.
Consequently, I would say that--while Jesus' divine nature is present in such instances since it is omnipresent--he is also "present" in the sense that he spiritually guides and works through and helps people gathered in his name. Similarly, since we have a duty toward Jesus to exercise charity toward others, when we show charity or fail to show it to the poor we are fulfilling or failing to fulfill a duty toward Jesus and thus our action has reference to him even though we are outwardly acting toward someone else.
But in these cases Jesus' Body, Blood, and human Soul are not present, as they are in the Eucharist. Jesus uses the metaphor of his presence in these cases not to signify that he is fully present in them as he is in the Eucharist but that he is guiding and working through and helping people or that our actions toward others have to be viewed in relation to our obligations to him.
There may be more to it than this, for we are not privvy to all of the divine mysteries, and Jesus may be present in more mystical ways that I am not able to articulate, but it is clear that Jesus' presence in the Eucharist is both unique and supreme and not to be flattened onto a par with other modes of presence.
There is absolutely no difficulty demonstrating that from Church documents, as the following indicate.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says this:
282. How is Christ present in the Eucharist?
Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist in a unique and incomparable way. He is present in a true, real and substantial way, with his Body and his Blood, with his Soul and his Divinity. In the Eucharist, therefore, there is present in a sacramental way, that is, under the Eucharistic species of bread and wine, Christ whole and entire, God and Man.
While the Catechism itself says:
1373 "Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us," is present in many ways to his Church: in his word, in his Church's prayer, "where two or three are gathered in my name," in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, in the sacraments of which he is the author, in the sacrifice of the Mass, and in the person of the minister. But "he is present . . . most especially in the Eucharistic species."
1374 The mode of Christ's presence under the Eucharistic species is unique. It raises the Eucharist above all the sacraments as "the perfection of the spiritual life and the end to which all the sacraments tend." In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist "the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained." "This presence is called 'real' - by which is not intended to exclude the other types of presence as if they could not be 'real' too, but because it is presence in the fullest sense: that is to say, it is a substantial presence by which Christ, God and man, makes himself wholly and entirely present."
One of the most important discussions of this topic is found in Paul VI's encyclical Mysterium Fidei, which was written precisely to combat erroneous understandings of Christ's presence. Sections 35-39 of the encyclical are in particular devoted to the topic, and the pope offers an explanation of different ways in which Christ is present in different things and activities, concluding, under the heading "The Highest Kind of Presence":
These various ways in which Christ is present fill the mind with astonishment and offer the Church a mystery for her contemplation. But there is another way in which Christ is present in His Church, a way that surpasses all the others. It is His presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist [38].
Posted by Jimmy Akin in Theology | Permalink | Comments (42)
September 07, 2006
Praying For Earthly Blessings
(Jimmy Akin)
A reader writes:
My question for you is something that struck me as I was walking down the street today; I'm relatively new to Christianity, so it's a pretty basic question. Essentially it's this: why do we bother to pray to God for earthly blessings, i.e. curing illness, ending abortions, etc? Firstly, God as an omniscient being already knows our general wishes as humans to end illness etc, and he even knows our specific wishes, i.e. 'please cure Grandma Ruth's cancer,' so the goal cannot be to inform God of our desire. Secondly, I don't see how being plaintive about our problems would motivate God to do anything to help us--after all, there's nothing we have to offer Him. Finally, it might not be in our interest to end our sufferings, for out of suffering often comes the greatest growth of faith.
I can understand that the purpose of prayer is to bring us closer to God; as we meditate on Him we grow closer to Him. But why do we pray for earthly blessings? I just don't get it.
While this question is basic in the sense that it applies to one of the most basic elements of religious life--prayer--it is actually a very sophisticated on that many people wonder about, and from that perspective, it is very high-end!
What you've written also contains the seed of the answer: drawing closer to God.
The basic reason that God wants us to pray to him is that doing so builds virtue. In fact, prayer builds several virtues, and this applies even when we are praying for the needs of this life.
Let's take an obvious example first: Praying for an end to abortion. This is indeed an earthly good. But whose good is it? Cui bono? Who benefits? First and foremost, the babies who would be aborted if the horrible practice isn't ended. By praying for an end to abortion we are led to recognize the needs of these babies (their need to live!) and thus praying for and end to abortion ends up drawing us out of ourselves and causing us to care for others--even others we will never meet. It builds the virtues of love and compassion in us.
And this does not stop with the babies, for anyone who prays regularly about pro-life matters eventually ends up praying for the mothers who have abortions, the fathers who push them into it, the doctors and nurses who perform them, the legislators and Supreme Court justices who enable the practice, the American public who needs to become more strongly against it, and the conversion of the people in evil organizations like Planned Parenthood and NARAL.
All of this helps us grow in love and charity and it helps us to re-orient our values to recognize