Homeschooling and College

I am utterly amazed at the passing of time and how quickly years can pass us by. There was a time, when I was a bit younger, in which I marveled that I was now an adult and in college. I have since gotten use to my adulthood, but now I am feeling it more keenly because kids I have known since they were 13 or 14 are now starting to go off to college themselves. It is one thing to feel oneself become an adult, but quite another when you see people you have always known as kids starting to become adults themselves!

As these youngsters grow up and start going off to college, and as most of them are from homeschooling backgrounds, I am led to reflect on some things I have been thinking about with regards to homeschooling and college. The one thing that constantly astounds me about homeschoolers is their phenomenal drive to accomplishment. Many homeschoolers are already taking classes at college when they are 16 and often graduate a year or two ahead of their public school counterparts.

This is praiseworthy, of course. But as these youngsters finish up, I have noted an extreme rush to get off to college immediately after high school. In fact, it is almost expected. Nobody asks anymore whether one is going to college, but simply asks what college one is going to. Most homeschoolers I have encountered are already fretting about college their junior year and by the second semester of their senior year are already accepted to some college somewhere, usually in a liberal arts program. Often, because of their extreme intelligence, they receive very large scholarships as well.

It is seeing student after student take this course that has led me to reflect on this matter, especially as I started noticing that I felt ill at ease with it. We homeschoolers (and I count myself among them) choose to home-educate because we believe it is in the best interests of our child's education and the good of their soul. But does rushing our children off to a liberal arts college immediately after the conclusion of high school really suit our children's best interest? I can't speak for any other family or pass judgment on anyone, but I will share my own thoughts on the matter, and why, for me, the idea of sending kids off to a liberal arts college, even a Catholic one, immediately after high school is not a good idea.

In the first place, I have always found a disconnect here between the protective motivation for homeschooling and the tendency to shove a child out into college prematurely. Here is what I mean: most homeschoolers choose to homeschool in part in order to protect their child from the corruptive influence of the world, which tends to rob them of their innocence prematurely. Public schoolers may learn about sex on the bus in 6th grade, but in a homeschooling family this topic will be brought up much later and in the safe environment of the home. Parents lovingly look after the moral upbringing of their children and forbid them from doing many things that their public school counterparts get to experience much earlier. Dating. Overnight sleep overs. Taking a car out unsupervised. Getting a job. In most cases, these are things that come for homeschoolers much later than public schoolers. 

But my question here is, why go out of the way to protect our children from some of the ways of the world only to shove them off to college when they are only 17? Why go out of the way to shelter from the world only to force them into it prematurely? In my opinion, a girl who is not allowed to date at 16 is not ready to go to college at 17. A boy who is not allowed to have or go to sleepovers at 16 is not ready to go to college the next year. My suggestion, of course, is not to let girls date earlier, but to postpone college till later.  If they haven't lost their "childhood innocence" by age 16, then shoving them off to college at age 17 is going to be a culture-shock that I am not sure they will be equipped to deal with. It doesn't matter what college - there are worldly people at every institution, even the most Catholic. If we go to such pains to preserve the innocence of our children and ensure that they are not robbed of it in their tender years, I see no reason to compel them to go off into the world at an age when most other kids are still living at home wondering what they want to do in life.

Which brings me to the second point: It can take awhile to discern what you want to do in life, not only what state of life you are called to, but what specific trade or career you want to pursue. Perhaps I am making an over-generalization based on my own experience, but I was absolutely in no position whatsoever to know what I wanted to do with my life at age 17. I had no clue; well I mean, I had some notions, but they turned out to be ephemeral, fleeting, based on emotion and sentiment rather than on any rational thought about a career. It was not until I was 22 that I realized what I wanted to do with my life. In fact, so unprepared was I to make such long-term judgments at age 17 that I ended up enrolling at a classy art school in 1998 on the premise that I was going to be an artist! A year later and about $8,000 in the hole shocked me out of that fantasy; I realized I hated art school and dropped out after one year and I stayed away from college for the next four years until I had matured. Like I said, perhaps this was only the case with me and many kids are better prepared to think about this than I was, but I think in many cases a 17 year old is a 17 year old...

Another problem I have with sending kids off to liberal arts colleges right out of high school is that they learn no trade, either before college or at college. Now, I love the liberal arts, but as one who has a liberal arts degree, it is about the most useless degree you can ever get. I don't think any college graduate gets paid as low as one who gets a liberal arts degree. You come out with no skills learned, no trade and no specific certification in anything at all.

Now some will say, "It is not about making money; it is about getting educated." Fair enough - in fact, I agree. But, if it is just about getting educated and not about money, then just stay home from college and read books on the side while you learn a valuable trade. College might not be about "making money", but when most college graduates are walking away with their BAs $30, $40 or $50,000 in debt (and that's on the low end), then you had better be thinking about money and earning potential before you sign away for those student loans. If a liberal arts education is really based on reading the "classics" or the "Great Books," then you can read those books at home. There is absolutely no need to go away to college to get a liberal arts education. In my opinion, high school is the time for liberal arts. College is the time to learn a practical trade, if you choose to go to college. If you choose to spend tens of thousands of dollars on an education, then good heavens, it ought to be on a practical education in something you can at least make your money back on.

Is it important to know a practical trade? As one who doesn't know one, I believe it is. I can't tell you how useless I feel when I meet people who have the ability to tear a car apart and build it back up from scratch, or can build a house, or do electrical work, or plumb a new construction, or do finished carpentry, or any number of skills that I lack. There is something liberating about knowing a trade, something that makes you free from subservience to others. The ancient rabbis used to compel their students to learn a trade before they were allowed to begin their rabbinical studies; St. Paul was trained in tent-making, for example. This was to prevent the proliferation of a class of useless intellectuals. I can see great value in this thinking          

Youngsters who go right to college from high school also will graduate with no real work experience. Most homeschoolers I know do not let their kids work during high school, preferring instead that their children focus on their studies. Then they go right to college and return with no real work experience. Besides having a degree that is not much valued in the workaday world, these persons will also come into the labor market doubly burdened with a lack of experience. Nowadays, since labor is so plentiful, employers are seeking applicants with experience over education. Besides this, a year or two of steady employment is the best education there is in teaching a teenager responsibility. In my opinion, a teenager who takes a full time job right out of high school and keeps it for two years is going to be much more mature and have a much better grasp of what it means to be an adult than one who goes right to college from high school.

Added to all this is the fact that many people, homeschooling or public schooling, are ignorant to the racket that college has become and that, due to our "culture of credentials", college is becoming increasingly a waste or time and useless, even as it becomes more mandatory for social mobility in our culture. College is no longer about being educated; it is about getting some credentials that says you are competent to do X,Y and Z. And, paradoxically, since our college culture has become mainly about credentials, we have many people getting "credentialed" who are not educated and may even be unfit for the job they are credentialed in. I witnessed this first hand at my University as every year dozens of people who should have been nowhere near a classroom were "certified" as teachers. There is the very real possibility that your kid may just be wasting their time at college.

Do I regret going to college? No, if only because a degree of some sort is a prerequisite for advancement in many areas of our society. But, yes, absolutely I regret that I had to go to college. Even at Ave Maria, which was a very quality school when I attended, I'd say no less than 50% of my classes were total wastes of time in which I learned very little. My other University where I obtained my teaching license was almost a 90% waste, day after day of wondering, "Why am I here?" and "What a waste of money!" and such thoughts.Realize, parents, before you send your kids to college, even to a Catholic college, that this is not about education or knowledge. With the advent of the digital age, there is no monopoly on knowledge anymore. Knowledge about anything is available for free. If this is really about education and bettering oneself, then read some books. You don't need to dump $25,000 and four years of your life to do it.

Like I said before, I judge no other family and admit that these opinions may be biased based on my own experience. But, here is what I plan to do when my kids finish high school, which in the case of my oldest, will be in about nine years. These are not set-in-stone rules, but general guidelines that can be modified as circumstances require; overall, I think they are prudent:

1) I will encourage my kids to think and pray about what they want to go into they grow up, but will in no way exert any pressure on them to come up with this answer as a teenager. The teenage years are fleeting and very precious, and I will not crowd out my children's enjoyment of them by compelling them to keep their minds fixed on their impending and boring adulthood.

2) I will discourage my children from going to college immediately out of high school. Upon graduation, if possible, they will move out on their own and maintain steady, full time employment for a minimum of two years before applying for any college, even community college. If they remain at home, they will definitely work. None of my children will participate in college programs that allow them to get credit while still in high school. If any of my children choose, on their own, to attend college right out of high school, I cannot prevent them, but I will not contribute a cent to it.

3) Each child of mine, even if they are bound for college or the academic life, will learn a skilled trade, even if it is just on the side. Some friend or uncle will teach them carpentry or mechanic work, or rough framing or something. I will encourage my kids to take part time jobs during high school to learn these sorts of skills.

4) I will not pressure any of my kids to go to college at all. I will encourage them to explore entrepreneurship, skilled trades and other avenues for their creativity. I will not discourage college at all, but will not push it either.

5) While I will be happy if some of my kids have their career plans figured out in their teen years, as a rule, I will not expect them to have it sorted out until their mid-twenties.

That's enough for now, but next time I post I want to give a run down of the top ten fields I think homeschooled Catholics should go into (instead of liberal arts). In the meantime, what do you all think about college and sending homeschooled kids off right out of high school?

Click here for part two on the top ten careers Catholics should consider going in to.

Sacral Kingship: The Carolingians (Part 7)

Part seven in this already too lengthy series on sacral kingship in the Middle Ages, this time exploring the role played by Charlemagne and the Carolingians in turning sacerdotal kingship from a custom into a doctrine.

The Carolingians, Ottonians, and the Anglo-Saxon House of Wessex

As mentioned in the previous chapter, by the eighth century, a decisive and irrevocable change had come over the European continent: it had become a German entity and had fallen out of the sphere of the Mediterranean powers (by this time, consisting of only Byzantium). As the Western Roman Empire fell, Germanic tribes settled down and carved out little kingdoms for themselves in the old provincial territories. Examples of these are the kingdoms of Lombardy, Burgundy, Vandalic Africa, Saxony, Anglo-Saxon England, Ostrogothic Italy, Visigothic Spain and finally Frankish Gaul. Slowly, from the fifth century to the eighth, Europe gradually shifted from a Romanized civilization to a Germanic one. The advent of the Germans brought new ideas about kingship to the fore, as well as new conceptions of how the divine power was exercised on earth. These ideas are best exemplified by the most successful of the Germanic dynasties of the early Middle Ages: the Carolingians, Ottonians, and the Anglo-Saxon house of Wessex.

The Carolingians

The first Germanic kingdom to rise to any sort of dominance in Europe was that of the Franks. The first Christian king of the Franks, Clovis (r. 481-511) extended Frankish hegemony over most of Gaul and established the power of the Merovingian dynasty over the Franks until the coup of the Carolingians in 751. The reign of the greatest of the Carolingians, Charlemagne, ushers in what may be considered the high water mark of sacerdotal kingship in the Middle Ages. It was during this period that sacerdotal kingship went from a tradition implicitly taken for granted to a doctrine to be consciously defended, and a general historical rule is that by the time cultural traditions have to be defined and defended they are on their way out anyhow. Shortly after the extinction of the Carolingians (in 987 in the west, 911 in the east), new movements and philosophies would emerge within the Church that would challenge the idea of Christian theocratic monarchy that had been prevalent in Europe for almost seven centuries by the time of the Gregorian reforms.

Charles the Great, in many ways, is the archetypal Christian king. He was seen as such during his lifetime, and after his death his reign was always looked back on fondly as a period of peaceful coexistence between Church and State. The image of Charlemagne as a pious, yet victorious, Christian monarch was especially popular in the late Middle Ages when the Church and State were torn asunder and the future of the Holy Roman Empire was in serious jeopardy.

As with other alleged “Golden Ages”, the Carolingian period was not the blissful millennium of peaceful Church and State relations that later medieval historians and poets liked to imagine. The first Carolingian of significance, Charles Martel (d. 741), was notorious for pilfering Church lands and granting vacant bishoprics to the most loyal members of his retinue, much to the chagrin of the Frankish clergy, especially since he always made certain that it was the richest bishoprics that were given away (1). Charlemagne’s domination of the Church was not so blatant, and while the acts of Martel were condemned by the contemporary clergy, most of the acts of Charlemagne received clerical approbation. Charlemagne managed to keep a tight reign on the Frankish clergy through the well established policy of royal consent or veto (whereby an episcopal appointee would be presented to the king for his approval or disapproval) and still win the admiration of the Frankish clergy and laity alike (2). Clerical biographers, such as Einhard and Alcuin, tended to praise the virtue of Charlemagne while ignoring the less noble aspects of the Carolingian court, just as Eusebius had done with Constantine and his family so many centuries earlier. For instance, Charles’ donations to the poor are recorded in great length while his practice of Frankish polygamy and concubinage are only mentioned in passing, and his massacre of 4,500 Saxon prisoners in a single day is passed over entirely, saying only that he “sent his counts to wreak vengeance" (3).

When Charles was crowned Roman emperor by the Pope in the year 800, his kingship took on a much more sacral identity than had any previous Frankish king before him. The coronation of Charlemagne as Roman emperor was seen by contemporaries as falling directly in line with the imperial tradition of ancient Rome; thus, Charles is crowned as “Imperator and Augustus,” as Einhard tells us (4). This is the beginning of the medieval notion of the translatio imperii, the idea that the imperial authority, the highest secular power in Christendom, had been “transferred” from the Byzantines to the Germans by the Pope.

Though it is undeniable that Charlemagne was truly a devout a pious Catholic (“he cherished with the greatest fervor and devotion the principles of the Christian religion”, says Einhard (5)), the bestowal of divine imperium from the hands of the Pope gave him new incentive to portray his power as sanctioned by God. Thus began what may have been the most intensive and effective propaganda campaign of the Middle Ages, with the goal of establishing the Carolingians as the God-ordained rulers of the new Roman Empire. Charlemagne carried out this project by assembling at his court a vast array of scholars and intellectuals from around Europe, partly to consolidate and legitimize the authority he claimed, partly out of a genuine love of learning and scholarship.

The concept of kingship that comes out in writings of the Carolingian era is that of earthly kingship as a mirror of heavenly kingship, and vice versa. As society of the medieval world was dizzyingly hierarchical, so too did the Carolingians fit God into the social hierarchy. The Carolingian ruler, though as Holy Roman Emperor was owed the obedience of all Christian peoples, was himself subject to the Emperor of heaven. He was a “lieutenant of a greater power to whom he had to render the strictest account" (6). Heaven was depicted as a “large fortress”, and God the Father was the “highest and true Emperor" (7). Thus the Carolingian kingdom was seen to be a kind of holy reflection of the kingdom of heaven. God the Father, looking into the mirror, would see the reflection of the Carolingian Emperor, his earthly parallel. An elaboration of this ideology is provided by the Irish scholar Hibernicus, who was among one of Charlemange’s intellectual retinue: “There is only one who enthroned in the realm of the air, the thunderer. It is proper that under him, one only be the ruler on earth, in merit an example to all men" (8).

This view of the Christian monarch has been seen before, in the court of Byzantium, where God’s one emperor was said to rule all Christians (nominally, at least) in the name of God and with the authority and blessing of the Church. Charlemagne was conscious of the rivalry that his imperial title would provoke with the Byzantines and therefore did all in his power to portray an image of splendor and imperial glory greater than what the Byzantines could muster. For example, he obtained the official nomen of “David” from Alcuin, perhaps in conscious imitation of the long standing Byzantine tradition of referring to the emperor as “the other David" (9). He also mimicked the hallowed practice of Byzantine emperors of summoning a Church council, which he did at Frankfort in 794 to deal with the Iconoclasm controversy. However, the council ended up on what became the wrong side of the debate, condemning the use of images (in keeping with German tradition that generally frowned on the use of pictorial representations of the divine). This embarrassing deviation from orthodoxy was quietly forgotten after the controversy was over and the Pope had come out in favor of images (10).

Though he consciously copied the Byzantines in many things, such as his style of architecture, for example (11), he was careful to avoid some of the more ostentatious displays of Byzantine power, particularly the pomp and ceremony of the court at Constantinople. “Charles did not observe in his court the stiff dignity and ceremonious distance that became an emperor….he behaved naturally and revealed his true self' (12). Nevertheless, there was always room for a little gloss, as the Bishop Notker of St. Gall (c. 884) would later write of Charles and his family: “The king was standing by a bright window, radiant like the rising sun, clad in gems and gold”, and his family surrounded him “as if it were the chivalry of heaven" (13). It was proper for the earthly ruler of God’s kingdom to be the shining center of his realm; contemporaries praised Charles and said that his named radiated as far as the stars (14). He thus set himself up as a true competitor to the claims of the Byzantine emperor, and a competitor of no small consideration at that. The kingdoms of Europe, therefore, had to decide between acknowledging the Byzantine emperor as the true ruler over all Christians or praying for the well being of the Frankish emperor at Aix-la-Chapelle (15). This was the dilemma that many central European kingdoms fell into, such as those of Italy and the Balkans. Power struggles between east and west for the Balkans would be a bone of controversy for centuries to come.

How was it exactly that Charles went about creating his image? He largely modeled it on the examples of the great Christian monarchs of old, men such as Constantine, Theodosius, and within his own cultural tradition, Clovis. Like other Christian rulers before him, he went to considerable expense to fund the building of Churches and establishment of monasteries. Einhard mentions this as among one of Charles’ chief concerns:

"But, above all, sacred edifices were the object of his care throughout his whole kingdom; and whenever he found them falling to ruin from age, he commanded the priests and fathers who had charge of them to repair them, and made sure by commissioners that his instructions were obeyed"(16).

The church that received the greatest patronage was the Church of St. Peter in Rome, into which Einhard says:

"He…heaped its treasury with a vast wealth of gold, silver, and precious stones. He sent great and countless gifts to the popes, and throughout his whole reign the wish that he had nearest his heart was to re-establish the ancient authority of the city of Rome under his care and by his influence, and to defend and protect the Church of St. Peter, and to beautify and enrich it out of his own store above all other churches" (17).

Like wise King Solomon, the good Christian king must be a builder of sacred edifices. Whatever else may be said about Charlemagne, it cannot be denied that he excelled at this. It is possible that he might even have built or repaired more churches than his grandfather, Charles Martel, had plundered!

On the personal level, he was sincerely pious and generous, always desiring knowledge and always willing to give to the poor and needy (18). His love of wisdom, which prompted him to assemble the greatest body of scholars then known in Europe, carried over into his private life. He was very fond of reading stories of the lives of the saints, and Einhard mentions that he had a proclivity towards St. Augustine: “The subjects of the readings were the stories and deeds of olden time: he was fond, too, of St. Augustine’s books, especially of the one entitled ‘The City of God.’”(19) Thus it was that in his works and his personal piety (not to mention his military triumphs, with which this essay is not concerned), Charlemagne set the standard for what a Christian king of the high Middle Ages should be, just as Constantine had set a standard for the early Middle Ages.

One final thing must be said about the Carolingians: the mature development of the sacerdotal kingship doctrine during their heyday (c.768-843). It is during this age that idea of sacerdotal monarchy first develops as a doctrine. Hitherto, it had been an ancestral custom among the Christian peoples of Europe, something simply taken for granted without much reflection. Beginning in Carolingian times, and climaxing during the Investiture Controversy, sacerdotal monarchy starts to develop as a doctrine, complete with its own lines of argumentation and apologists.

Essential to this development was an emphasis on the ecclesiastical or priestly function of the king. This had been common in Byzantium for centuries, but the crowning of Charlemagne by the pope gave a new impetus to the development of this doctrine in the west. It was already a part of Frankish kingship for the king to supervise the bishops of his realm, since looking to the common weal involved both ensuring an orderly temporal governance as well as an orderly spiritual one. Part of the king’s duty was to protect the Church, and as has been noted in the section on coronations, this was often explicitly stated as the king’s duty in his coronation oath. Charlemagne and his successors viewed this prerogative in quasi-episcopal terms. Alcuin saw Charlemagne’s care over the condition of the Church as a truly priestly function. By caring for the Church, Charles was “preaching” the sermon of a godly life lived in accordance with the Gospels. Thus he makes his famous statement: “He [Charles] is a king in his power, a priest in his sermon”(20).

Alcuin, following earlier tradition, does not ascribe any sort of ordinary priesthood to Charles as a man, but rather implies a kind of priestly character to the office of the king. The king is a priest insofar as he had a concern and authority over the Church similar to what a bishop exercises in the spiritual realm. Notker, writing a generation after Charlemagne and following this line of thought, referred to him as the “bishop of bishops” (21). This phrase is noteworthy. Not only is Charles seen as possessing some kind of priestly dignity (as demonstrated by Notker’s choice of the word episcopus, predicated of the king), but by saying that the king is the bishop of, or over, the other bishops, the episcopus episcoporum. This implies not only a sacral authority, but one that is in some sense greater, or at least more unique, than the one exercised by the ordinary episcopacy. This view of Charlemagne gave his reign a kind of millennial optimism, for the God-anointed emperor was both temporal lord and clarifier of divine law. This comes partially from Charles’ identity as sacral king, partially from a typical inability of Germanic custom to distinguish between secular and spiritual laws (22). This view of Charlemagne would later be applied to the office of the Holy Roman Emperor, and the concept of the sacramental nature of the office pushed even further. But this would not be done until the waning days of the Holy Roman Empire, in the late Middle Ages, when sacral monarchy had long since died out in practice.

What was the enduring legacy of the Carolingians? For the first time, they established a strong authority among the Germanic peoples. When the papacy gave divine sanction to this authority, Charles and his successors consciously played up the image of the Holy Roman Emperor as theocratic monarch, and thus the seeds of the doctrine of sacerdotal kingship were first formally expressed. Charlemagne as a person became a figure of legendary significance in European history. Otto I modeled his state on the Carolingian model, and the coronation of Charles by the pope would be exploited on both sides during the Investiture Controversy. The Song of Roland presents Charlemagne as an ancient and royal patriarch:

Of fairest France there sits the king austere.

White locks are his and silver is his beard,

His body noble, his countenance severe:

If any seek him, no need to say, ‘Lo, here!’ (23)

He is depicted as living “two hundred years and more”, being a kind of quasi-eternal priest-king figure; in one scene, as Ganelon departs to go to the Muslims, Charlemagne makes the sign of the cross over him and absolves him of his sins! (24)

In any case, his impact on France and all of Europe was immense; all future Christian kings would look back on him in some way or another as an exemplar. “Charles the law-giver, Charles the protector of local rights and charters, Charles as an ancestor of the Hapsburgs, and Charles even as a saint: these conceptions show how much of…the destiny of the German people turned upon his influence and achievements" (25).

Footnotes

1 John J. Gallagher, Church and State in Germany Under Otto the Great (University Press: Brookland, D.C., 1938), 57

2 Ibid.

3 Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne, 8, 33; (also Gallagher, 38)

4 Ibid., 30

5 Ibid., 26

6 Heinrich Fichtenau, The Carolingian Empire, In “Studies in Medieval History”, vol. 9. Translated by Peter Munz, ed. Geoffrey Barraclough. (Basil Blackwell: Oxford, 1963), 56

7 Ibid., 47-48

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., 71

10 Ibid., 68

11Ibid. 68-69

12Ibid., 28


13One this one occasion, Notker says that when his attendants entered the room and saw Charles in such splendor, they spontaneously prostrated themselves before him on the floor! The picture of medieval Franks performing a Greek proskynesis is awkward and amusing, and such prostrations are not recorded elsewhere. Ibid., 51

14 Ibid.

15Ibid., 62.

16 Einhard, The Life of Charlemagne, 17

17Ibid., 27

18Ibid.

19Ibid., 24

20Fichtenau, 58

21Ibid.


22In the Germanic legals systems, “the boundary between sin and crime was indistinct.” Richard Abels, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (Longman: London & New York, 1998), 265

23The Song of Roland, 8:21-24

24Ibid., 41:3, 26:3-5

25Ibid., xi.

"So that man might become God"

In the treatise of St. Athanasius on the Incarnation, we come across one of the most profound but easily misunderstood statements of the Fathers; I am referring of course to St. Athanasius' dictum that "[the Word] was made man that we might be made God," which is found in De Incarnatione 54:3.What did St. Athanasius mean when he stated that man could "become God" as a result of the Incarnation? This question is not an obscure point of theology but strikes at the heart of Christology and soteriology alike; it is especially relevant both because the modern world lacks a general understanding of why Christ came to earth, and because progressive and New Age thinkers tend to wrongly interpret patristic or scriptural phrases such as this in the interest of promoting pantheism (for example, here and here).

The Greek word Athanasius uses here is theopoie, which literally means "to make divine." The phrase was written during the Arian controversy, and it is interesting to note that the Arians must have agreed to this phrase as well, since (a) St. Athanasius mentions it without defining it, assuming that his opponents knew what he meant, and (b) he bases his argument upon the principle, and one cannot make something a starting point for an argument unless both parties agree to it. We can see the concept being used this way in his Letter to Serapion, 1:24, where he says:

"If, by a partakability of the Spirit we shall become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), it would be madness then afterward to call the Spirit an originated entity and not of God; for on account of this also those who are in Him are made divine. But then if He makes man divine, it is not dubious to say His nature is of God."

Remember the Arians denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit as well as the Son. Athanasius uses the doctrine of divinization as a starting point to prove the Spirit's Godhead. Since it is through the Holy Spirit that men become "partakers of the divine nature", as St. Peter says, then the Spirit must Himself be divine, otherwise He would be unable to confer this divinization upon others. Notice that St. Athanasius takes the divinization of man for granted and assumes the Arians believe it, too.

Whereas some have seen this doctrine of "divinization" as a remnant of pre-Christian Greek philosophy, akin to Plotinus and Plato (such as Harnack), I think we can prove that this doctrine of divinization is found throughout the Fathers and can be understood as being original to Christianity without having to bring in Plato and Plotinus to explain it.

It of course has its origin in the words of St. Peter in 2 Peter 1:4, where the Prince of the Apostles says  "By whom he hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature: flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world." We can also find biblical precedents in St. Paul's doctrine of adoption. This concept is elaborated in the Fathers. In the preface to Book IV of Adversus Haereses, St. Irenaeus invokes the exaltation of man in opposition to the Gnostic dogma of the evil of the flesh:

"For whatsoever all the heretics may have advanced with the utmost solemnity, they come to this at last, that they blaspheme the Creator, and disallow the salvation of God's workmanship, which the flesh truly is; on behalf of which I have proved, in a variety of ways, that the Son of God accomplished the whole dispensation [of mercy], and have shown that there is none other called God by the Scriptures except the Father of all, and the Son, and those who possess the adoption" (Adv. Haer., Book IV, preface, iv).

Note that St. Irenaeus leaves out the Spirit when mentioning the divine persons, substituting instead "those who possess the adoption"; i.e., the Church, which is herself made holy through the Spirit. Irenaeus is obviously envisioning a very close union between the faithful and Christ in the Spirit; the Church, as Christ's Body, is so close to Christ in the Spirit that the Church itself is exalted and divinized.

Clement of Alexandria, who preceded Athanasius by over a century, wrote in almost the same terms as the great Athanasius when he stated in his Exhortation to the Heathen: "I say, the Word of God became man, that you may learn from man how man may become God" (Prot. 1). Of course, unless we are already coming at these verses from a pantheistic viewpoint, we understand that this divinization, this "becoming God", does not entail a substantial alteration in our nature; we are human beings, and will always be human beings. In the same work, Clement states that the process of divinization, "becoming God", is nothing other than "becoming a man of God." He says: "But if one of those serpents even is willing to repent, and follows the Word, he becomes a man of God" (ibid).

Therefore, in the Fathers we see a certain ambiguity; sometimes salvation is seen in terms of man "becoming God," at other times of man "becoming like God." Part is this ambiguity comes from the fact that, until the clarification of the Christological controversies of the day, there was not a consensus on what theopoie meant; the Church could not specific what it meant for man to become divine until it worked out what it meant to say that Christ was divine.

Origen sheds some light on the issue in his Contra Celsus, stating that the "divinization" is the result of adoption and is nothing other than the ennoblement of mankind by the commingling of our natures with the divine which was begun in the Incarnation and continued through the sacraments. He says:

"But both Jesus Himself and His disciples desired that His followers should believe not merely in His Godhead and miracles, as if He had not also been a partaker of human nature, and had assumed the human flesh which "lusts against the Spirit;" but they saw also that the power which had descended into human nature, and into the midst of human miseries, and which had assumed a human soul and body, contributed through faith, along with its divine elements, to the salvation of believers, when they see that from Him there began the union of the divine with the human nature, in order that the human, by communion with the divine, might rise to be divine, not in Jesus alone, but in all those who not only believe, but enter upon the life which Jesus taught, and which elevates to friendship with God and communion with Him every one who lives according to the precepts of Jesus" (Contra Celsus 3:28).

The union between God and man that was begun in the Incarnation is thus extended to all men through the agency of the Church. St. Athanasius himself clarifies the doctrine against any possible misunderstanding in several places. His third Discourse Against the Arians is worth quoting at length, for here we see the dogma laid out in full:

"[T]he Saviour says; 'Be merciful, as your Father which is in heaven is merciful;' and, 'Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.' And He said this too, not that we might become such as the Father; for to become as the Father, is impossible for us creatures, who have been brought to be out of nothing; but as He charged us, 'Be not like to horse,' not lest we should become as draught animals, but that we should not imitate their want of reason, so, not that we might become as God, did He say, 'Be merciful as your Father,' but that looking at His beneficent acts, what we do well, we might do, not for men's sake, but for His sake, so that from Him and not from men we may have the reward.

For as, although there be one Son by nature, True and Only-begotten, we too become sons, not as He in nature and truth, but according to the grace of Him that calls, and though we are men from the earth, are yet called gods , not as the True God or His Word, but as has pleased God who has given us that grace; so also, as God do we become merciful, not by being made equal to God, nor becoming in nature and truth benefactors (for it is not our gift to benefit but belongs to God), but in order that what has accrued to us from God Himself by grace, these things we may impart to others, without making distinctions, but largely towards all extending our kind service. For only in this way can we anyhow become imitators, and in no other, when we minister to others what comes from Him.

And as we put a fair and right sense upon these texts, such again is the sense of the lection in John. For he does not say, that, as the Son is in the Father, such we must become:— whence could it be? When He is God's Word and Wisdom, and we were fashioned out of the earth, and He is by nature and essence Word and true God...and we are made sons through Him by adoption and grace, as partaking of His Spirit (for 'as many as received Him,' he says, 'to them gave He power to become children of God, even to them that believe in His Name'), and therefore also He is the Truth (saying, 'I am the Truth,' and in His address to His Father, He said, 'Sanctify them through Your Truth, Your Word is Truth '); but we by imitation become virtuous and sons:

Therefore not that we might become such as He, did He say 'that they may be one as We are;' but that as He, being the Word, is in His own Father, so that we too, taking an examplar and looking at Him, might become one towards each other in concord and oneness of spirit, nor be at variance as the Corinthians, but mind the same thing, as those five thousand in the Acts, who were as one" (Third Discourse Against the Arians, 19).

Two points: first, our "divinization" is the process by which we become made like God. This does not happen by any sort of essential change in our nature that would make us gods in our own right or equal to God, as Athanasius goes to pains to explain would be impossible. Rather, it is by 'imitation" and by "taking an exemplar and looking at Him." Second, this "imitation" is not a simple, human imitation, a striving towards perfection by our own powers in the Pelagian sense, but an inner, dynamic imitation that is accomplished "by adoption and grace" as "has pleased God."

In case this is not proof enough that Athanasius means a divinization by adoption, we can also consult his First Discourse Against the Arians, in which he distinguishes between children by nature and children by grace, stating that our divinization is "by participation":

"For what is from another by nature, is a real offspring, as Isaac was to Abraham, and Joseph to Jacob, and the radiance to the sun; but the so called sons from virtue and grace, have but in place of nature a grace by acquisition, and are something else besides the gift itself; as the men who have received the Spirit by participation" (First Discourse Against the Arians, 37).

This is repeated again in his letter to the African churches: "For we too, albeit we cannot become like God in essence, yet by progress in virtue imitate God" (Ad Afros Epistula Synodica, 7).

I think we have established beyond a reasonable doubt what St. Athanasius did not mean by his statement that men "become God." But, if divinization does not itself entail an essential transformation into God, as pantheists would have it, then what do Athanasius, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Irenaeus and all the rest mean by the repeated statements that men cane become "divine" through participation in Christ? This shall have to wait until next time.

The Just Faith program is not Catholic

Occasionally I get queries about different parish programs and whether or not they are "safe" for parish use. Case in point is the JustFaith program, put on by Just Faith Ministries. Just Faith was founded in 1989 by a fellow by the name of Jack Jezreel, which is an interesting name from a Biblical standpoint; the Valley of Jezreel was where King Jehu had the apostate Queen Jezebel slain (2 Kings 9:1-10); it is also the location of the Battle of Armageddon at the end of time. But I digress. The program's website states:

JustFaith Ministries provides programs that transform people and expand their commitment to social ministry. Through these life-changing opportunities, members of a church or parish can study, explore and experience Christ’s call to care for the poor and vulnerable in a lively, challenging, multifaceted process in the context of a small faith community.

Have any of you come across the JustFaith program in your parishes or dioceses? Here is a run down of the program and some of its problems from Phyllis Sower. Mrs. Sower has practiced law for 33 years, now part-time, in Franklin County, KY. She is the co-founder and principal of Our Lady of Guadalupe Academy/Corpus Christi High School in Simpsonville, KY. and recently exposed the JustFaith program for the Los Pequenos Pepper publication in the Diocese of Santa Fe. So, is the JustFaith program Catholic? The following is from her article:

"I had already heard a little about the JustFaith program and some concerns regarding it just prior to the time that two members of our parish came to me to share their concerns. One of them had enrolled in the course and brought to me the full set of materials she purchased for the course requesting that I review it. I submit herein the results of my review in a spirit of fraternal correction and concern and to assist pastors and lay persons who lack time to read all the materials; a close examination of the program by the competent ecclesiastical authority is warranted to determine the advisability of its continued use.

In short, the program is a product of liberation theology and promotes the ordination of women, recognition of homosexual marriage, the feminization of God, extreme pacifism and environmentalism, using non-Catholic and Catholic dissenters to present “Catholic Social Teaching.” The JustFaith program is a partnership effort of Catholic Campaign for Human Development, Catholic Charities USA and Catholic Relief Services. It is billed as a ministry of the Church, “an invitation to a rich spiritual journey into compassion,” to “look more closely at the troubling issues of our times through the lens of compassion and Catholic social teaching.” According to page two of the Notes to participants, week 2, the program sets out to teach the "rich tradition of Catholic Social Teaching." However, there is little reference to the encyclicals, Catechism, conciliar documents or the Summa Theologica where the Church’s authentic social teaching is to be found. (Nota Bene: one of my sons is taking a course on Catholic Social Teaching at a Catholic University; the curriculum consists of: Rerum Novarum, Mater et Magistra, Quadragessimo Anno, Pacem in Terris, Gaudium et Spes, Popularum Progressio, Octogessima Adviens, Laborens Exercens, Sollicidudo Rei Socialis, Finitessimus Annus, section 10 of the 5th Lateran Council, and sections of the Summa on Justice and Cheating/Usury).

The very opening sessions of the JustFaith program are problematic. For example, in week 2, the opening prayer invokes 21 “witnesses of hope,” including Mohandes Gandhi–“great soul of peace,” Flannery O’Connor (note: from my acquaintance with the life and writings of this great American writer, I submit that she would strenuously object to JustFaith and being prayed to for she was a devout Catholic), Thomas Merton (much of his later work was heterodox), Martin Luther King, Jr., Joseph Bernardin, Albert Schweitzer, concluding with, “All you holy men and women, salt and light for our world, Pray for us.”Attachment B of the same week lists discussion and dialogue goals, including the search for the best “view,” incorporate varied perspectives, etc. There is no reference to seeking, teaching, or understanding the truth as taught by the Church. As Pope Benedict has reiterated, “real education is not possible without the light of truth.”

There are 4 books in the program: Cloud of Witnesses by Wallis and Hollyday, Compassion by Nouwen, et al, The Challenge and Spirituality of Catholic Teaching, by Mich, and Amazing Grace by Kozol. None of them has a Nihil Obstat or Imprimatur despite the pretensions of this course to present the “rich tradition of Catholic Social Teaching.” An examination of the content of the texts reveals significant reasons there is not and should not be an official stamp of the Church’s stamp of approval on any of these books or the program.

The Cloud of Witnesses book is most revealing of the agenda of this program and of content contrary to the authentic social teaching of the Catholic Church. It is clearly stated that, “The articles and interviews in this book have been adapted from material originally published in Sojourners magazine.” The author, Jim Wallis, was founder and executive director of Sojourners. He has written in favor of gay “marriage.” The author, Joyce Hollyday, is a minister in the United Church of Christ. Sojourners is described as non-denominational according to its website, but includes left wing Catholic peace activists and dissenters, a Masonic veterans group, favors gay/lesbian partnerships, has a policy statement in favor of recognition and legal protection for the same, including gay “marriage,” and favors ordination of women, claiming five female ordinations and female bishops. This background should constitute sufficient cause to question inclusion of the book as a source of authentic Catholic Social teaching.

In addition, out of 35 articles, only 11 appear to be about known Catholics. I say “known” because the faith of some was not identifiable. For certain, most were not Catholic at all and included a Living Waters pastor, Georgia minister, Episcopal minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., Sojourner Truth, a Presbyterian pastor, a Quaker, three Baptists, one now non-denominational former Methodist then Presbyterian, a Dutch Reformed preacher and a number of others not Catholic but whose denomination was not mentioned. Among the persons featured were a draft-dodger, proponent of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church, one pastor and his wife imprisoned for non-payment of taxes, one whose “consciousness” came from liberation theology and another who said the truth was not the captive of any enterprise or religion.

Among the Catholics featured in the book were many known dissenters such as Father Daniel Berrigan, Sr. Joan Chittister, Father Pedro Arrupe and others who criticize the Church rather than advance her authentic teachings. Some examples will suffice:

• Joan Chitttister’s unabashed advancement of the ordination of women is championed. She said, “There’s either something wrong with the present theology of ministry, or there is something wrong with the present theology of all the sacraments. If women qualify for baptism, confirmation, salvation, and redemption, how can they be denied the sacrament of ministry?” Her arguments that women are ignored in church language and for the feminization of God are given ample play in the text.
  
  
• Jesuit superior general Pedro Arrupe openly rejected Humanae Vitae and his “restructuring” of the Jesuits did much harm to the Order; the circumstances of his removal are unclear to me, but Pope John Paul II passed over Arrupe’s designated successor for another.
  
  
• Father Miguel D’Escoto is not permitted to celebrate the Eucharist in public or private.
  
  
• Father Elias Chacour, a Catholic priest and pacifist in Israel, attacked the wealth of the Church and described his despair of the institutional Church and its hierarchy.
  
  
• Archbishop Dom Camara, who certainly sacrificed for the poor of his native Brazil, was a devotee of Gandhi and criticized the Church for its programs and priorities; at the closing session of Vatican II, he proposed that all the bishops surrender their crosses of precious metals for meltdown and distribution of the proceeds to the poor.
  
  
• Father George Zabelka is an extreme pacifist who accuses Christianity of seventeen hundred years of terror and slaughter.
  
  
• Journalist Penny Lernoux had distanced herself from the Church but returned in the “awakening” of Vatican II, which she described as “set to turn the Church on its head,” while she was herself under the inspiration of liberation theology.

The magisterial authority of the Church was not recognized in this book. There was a nice article on St. Francis of Assisi, who was called the “greatest saint.” This book would be perfectly suited to a study of liberation theology, which, of course, has been soundly refuted by the Church beginning with Divini Redemptoris. Pope Pius XI stated that the Church could not cooperate with Marxists. Liberation theology would divert the Church from her mission of salvation to one of social welfare agency.

One of the authors of Compassion was Henri Nouwen, who was described in Cloud of Witnesses as a Dutch priest and contributing editor to Sojourners. His funeral Mass was described in the book as a “carnival atmosphere” where actors and actresses “breathed life into the gospel reading.” In the Preface, the tone of the book is set with a quote from theologian, Gail O’Day, “Just as it is false to the richness of the Christian tradition to use father language as generic language for God, it ....” This book does more to diminish than to advance the true faith, for example:

• The authors assert that the Gospels support reference to the “womb” of God (pp. 14-16).
  
  
• They say we should see compassion not in moralistic terms (emphasis added; the implication is that we should disregard sin, p. 28).
  
  
• They wrote that choosing to suffer as “an obedient response to our loving God” is, for Christians, a “false belief that in so doing they were following the way of Jesus Christ.”
  
  
• The section on the breaking of bread omits all reference to sacrifice and the Holy Eucharist as the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, the real presence; the sole emphasis is on community and eating bread and drinking wine as a memorial, where we become intimately connected “to the compassionate life of Christ.” (p. 111).
  
  
• Our “bread connections” are a “call to action.” He writes that when people eat bread and drink wine in his (Christ’s) memory, "smiles appear on strained faces" (p. 132).

The Mich book has some good quotes, including some references to encyclicals and Saints, but they are interlaced with error. For example, St. Boniface’s challenge to the god Thor inspired conversions but led to the unintended consequence of “diminished awe for the sacredness of nature.” (p. 34). We are instructed that every creature, animate and inanimate, can be a “sacrament.” Life issues are discussed with no reference to the evil of contraception.

We are told that there was an early Catholic attitude, still present, that saw humans as the apex of creation and this too often led to exploitation of nature (p. 41). Quoting Sister Elizabeth Johnson, the author explains that “previous theologies would have human beings with their rational souls as superior to the natural world.” Such a ranking, he writes, easily “gives rise to arrogance, one root of the present ecological crisis.” We are told that we need ‘species humility’ (p. 43). I read this and wondered whatever happened to Genesis: man is made in the image and likeness of God and has dominion?

On pages 43-44, we read that we must “reimagine our place in creation” with these questions, each of which is directly or by implication in conflict with the truth:

• How to preach salvation as healing and rescue for the whole world rather than as solely an individual relationship with God?
  
  
• How to let go of contempt for matter, contempt for the body and sexuality, and how to revalue themas good and blessed?
  
  
• How to interpret human beings as primarily “earthlings” rather than as pilgrims or tourists whose real home is elsewhere?
  
  
• How to recognize the sacraments as symbols of divine graciousness in a universe that is itself a sacrament?
  
  
• What kinds of new spiritualities will emerge as we become creation-centered?

The author references Familiaris Consortio, then trashes it and exposes his real agenda:

"Today, Catholic theology and spirituality does not view the love of another human being as distracting from our love of God. In fact, love of a spouse and child is viewed as participation in divine love. Sexuality is viewed in more positive terms as a gift of God to be enjoyed and celebrated within committed love and not only tolerated for the sake of procreation. These positive themes provide the starting points for a reinterpretation of marriage and family within the Catholic tradition. This revisioning is only in beginning stages. Catholicism and other Christian denominations are still working on understanding the role of women in the church and society and the meaning of committed homosexual relationships." (p. 81, emphasis added)

No sugar coating can cover the bitter taste of this poisonous error!

The Kozol book contains wrenching stories from the author’s experiences in South Bronx, significantly centered around St. Ann’s Episcopal Church with its pastor, Rev. Martha Overall, who “confesses” the children. What this book contributes to an understanding of Catholic Social Teaching is a mystery. The book is interesting private reading, although the heralding of it by Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s Defense Fund would have otherwise steered me clear of it.

Interestingly, both of the parishioners who brought to my attention that Just Faith was in progress at our church are converts. They are actively engaged in learning the Catholic Faith. One said to me, “Something about this (Just Faith) material is really bothering me. I don’t know why, but I am disturbed and irritated when reading it.” She wants to deepen her understanding of the true Faith; most of this material does just the opposite, leads away from it. The disturbance of the spirit is easily understandable.

We possess the truth in all its beauty, richness and wonder; we possess the authentic Magisterium. Why not use it? As the Holy Father has reminded us, real education is grounded in truth."

Click here for another great article on the danger's of Just Faith from the Restore DC Catholicism blog, which has already amply documented the issue.

Click here for a follow-up article on the Marxist tendencies of JustFaith.

Dum Diversas (English Translation)

I apologize for sitting on this for so long, but I was hoping to wait until I got a better translation. Last summer I came across the Latin text of Dum Diversas of Pope Nicholas V (1452) in a book entitled Bullarium Patronatus Portugalliae Regum which I found in the rare documents depository at the University of Michigan. Since this encyclical is somewhat controversial, having been accused by some of ushering in the entire West African slave trade (for example, here), I thought it would be helpful to get this document translated into English and posted on the blog, especially since there are no other extant English translations. 

So, I turned it over to a friend, a distinguished professor of Latin with decades of experience, and asked her to translate it for me. It was originally supposed to be done by last August, but a lot of things happened and I didn't get it until shortly before Christmas. Even then I decided to sit on it, because the translation was a very word for word literal translation and my professor friend said that it still needed to be put into idiomatic English. Since I don't know when this will happen - and since some of my readers have been asking about it - I decided to post it as is and just warn you about the "rough" nature of the translation.

The Bull was issued to King Alfonso of Portugal in 1452 authorizing an expedition against the Saracens of North Africa and granted a plenary indulgence to all who went on the campaign. It grants Alfonso the right to confiscate all the lands and property of any Saracen rulers he might subjugate and authorizes him to reduce such conquered persons to "perpetual servitude." Much has been made of this phrase "perpetual servitude", though since the Bull comes in the late medieval period and not in the early modern period, I am not sure the phrase "perpetual servitude" should be interpreted in the same light it would be if the Bull was written in, say, 1650. I think we need to see it in a more "feudal" sense than a colonial one. At any rate, it needs more study.

The sentences are very long with tons of sub-clauses, sometimes so many that the meaning is difficult to decipher (there's a couple of sentences that just don't make sense as they stand); in a few places I had to infer punctuation. If anybody wants to crosscheck this with the Latin, I encourage them to do so. The Latin original is available here. Please do not use this translation for any scholarly purpose since it is so rough; in places where there could be a differing interpretation, I have included other possible words in [brackets].

I will be updating this post periodically as my translator and I hash out some of the phrases and get it into a more readable, idiomatic form of English.  But, until then, please enjoy Dum Diversas of Pope Nicholas V, courtesy of Unam Sanctam Catholicam, the only place on the net where you can find an entire English translation (albeit a sloppy one). God bless you.

Bishop Nicholas

Servant of the Servants of God. For the perpetual memory of this act:

To the dearest son in Christ Alfonse, illustrious King of Portugal and the Algarbians,Greetings and Apostolic Blessing

While we turn over in our mind the diverse concerns of the office of Apostolic service entrusted to us (although we do not deserve it) by celestial Providence, concerns by which we are every day urgently pressed, we are also moved  by a persistent encouragement: we chiefly carry in our heart that the well-known anxiety, that the rage of the enemies of the name of Christ, always aggressive in contempt of the orthodox faith, could be restrained by the faithful of Christ and be subjugated to the Christian religion. To this purpose also, when the occasion of the matter demands it, we laboriously expend our free [desire/eagerness/devotion], and indeed remember to follow with fatherly affection all the faithful of Christ, especially dearest sons in Christ, illustrious Kings, professing Christ’s faith, who, for the glory of the Eternal King, eagerly defend the faith itself and with powerful arm fight its enemies. We also look attentively to labor at the defense and growing of the said Religion and all things pertaining to this healing work, should proceed from our undeserved provision, we invite, with spiritual duties and grace, the faithful of Christ and also individuals to rouse their [positions/duties?] in help/support of the faith.

1. As we indeed understand from your pious and Christian desire, you intend to subjugate the enemies of Christ, namely the Saracens, and bring [them] back, with powerful arm, to the faith of Christ, if the authority of Apostolic See supported you in this. Therefore we consider, that those rising against the Catholic faith and struggling to extinguish Christian Religion must be resisted by the faithful of Christ with courage and firmness, so that the faithful themselves, inflamed by the ardor of faith and armed with courage to be able to hate their intention, not only to go against the intention, if they prevent unjust attempts of force, but with the help of God whose soldiers they are, they stop the endeavors of the faithless, we, fortified with divine love, summoned by the charity of Christians and bound by the duty of our pastoral office, which concerns the integrity and spread of faith for which Christ our God shed his blood, wishing to encourage the vigor of the faithful and Your Royal Majesty in the most sacred intention of this kind, we grant to you full and free power, through the Apostolic authority by this edict, to invade, conquer, fight, subjugate the Saracens and pagans, and other infidels and other enemies of Christ, and wherever established their Kingdoms, Duchies, Royal Palaces, Principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps and any other possessions, mobile and immobile goods found in all these places and held in whatever name, and held and possessed by the same Saracens, Pagans, infidels, and the enemies of Christ, also realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, lands, places, estates, camps, possessions of the king or prince or of the kings or princes, and to lead their persons in perpetual servitude, and to apply and appropriate realms, duchies, royal palaces, principalities and other dominions, possessions and goods of this kind to you and your use and your successors the Kings of Portugal.

We carefully ask, require, and encourage your same Royal Majesty, girded by the sword of virtue and fortified with strong courage, for the increase of the divine name and for the exaltation of faith and for the salvation of your soul, having God before your eyes, may you increase in this undertaking the power of your virtue so that the Catholic faith may, through your Royal Majesty, against the enemies of Christ, bring back triumph and that you earn more fully the crown of eternal glory, for which you must fight in lands, and which God promised to those who love Him, and our benediction of the See and grace.

2. For we, by the dignity of your sacrifice, grant that you undertake this work with more courage and fervent zeal, together with chosen sons, noblemen, dukes, princes, barons, soldiers, and other faithful of Christ, accompanying your Royal Serenity in this fight of faith, or contributing with their means, and that they undertake or contribute from their possession, or send, as said before, from which you and they hope to be able to pursue the salvation of their souls, and they hope, by the mercy of omnipotent God, and his apostles the blessed Peter and Paul, entrusted with authority, to you and indeed all individual faithful of Christ of either sex accompanying your Majesty in this work of faith. Indeed to those who did not want to accompany you personally, but will send help according to their means or exigency of allegiance, or they will reasonably contribute from those possessions assigned by God, we grant, by the power of your sacrifice, a plenary forgiveness of all and individual sins, crimes, trespasses, and digressions which you and they have confessed with contrite heart and by mouth, to you and to those who accompany you, as often as you and they happen to go into any war against the mentioned infidels, and indeed to those who do not accompany you but are sending and contributing, as mentioned before, to those who persist in sincerity of faith, in the unity of the Holy Roman Church, by our obedience and devotion and of our successors Roman Pontiffs entering canonically, to the remaining a suitable confessor whom you and anyone of them selected can forgive merely once at the moment of death. Thus, however, the confessor sees to matters in which there is an obligation to a third party and that you, those who accompany you, who send and contribute fulfill it if you and they survive or your heirs and their heirs if you and they perish, as mentioned before.

3. And nevertheless, if it should happen that you or others of those accompanying you against the Saracens and other infidels of this kind, on the way there, staying there, or on the way back, departed from this world, we restore you and those accompanying you, remaining in sincerity and unity, through the present letter, to pure innocence in which you and they existed after baptism..

4. But we demand that all and each thing which the faithful of Christ, who do not accompany you, contributed for your support to carry out this undertaking, be taken by the noblemen of individual places in which these contributions were given and as time permits at once be repaid and given to you through secure messengers, or letters of the bank, without any reduction, expenses, and salaries, merely reasonably reserved for those working in this undertaking, and that they are transmitted under authentic sum-total, and that if the noblemen themselves, or anybody else deducted, or transferred or seized for his own use from the sum sent for support of this undertaking anything except expenses and salaries, or if they allowed or conspired for money to be either fraudulently or deceitfully subtracted, transferred or seized, that they incur eo ipso the sentence of excommunication, from which they cannot be absolved except by the office of the Roman Pontificate if they are in articulo mortis (at the moment of death).

5. For the rest, since it would be difficult to carry this present letter to individual places where perhaps it would be doubted about its credibility, we want and decree with authority that to its transfer signed by the hand of Notary public and provided with seal of a bishop or High Court, same credibility is shown, as if the original letter were presented or shown.

6. Consequently, it is not allowed to any person to infringe this sheet of our granting, pardon, will, indulgence, and decree, or dare to oppose it rashly. If, however, anyone tried to tamper with it, he would incur the indignation of the Omnipotent God, and of blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Given in Rome at St. Peter, in the year of the Incarnation of the Lord 1452 on June 18th, in the sixth year of our Pontificate.

Last Supper and Liturgy

Ancient depiction of an early Christian "agape" love-feast

It is a well attested fact that there was no such thing as a Mass versus populum in antiquity, as all liturgies were done facing East in anticipation of the Second Coming of the Lord. In those situations where, for geographic or architectural reasons, the church building has to be constructed facing some other direction in which the priest celebrated Mass from behind the altar, there was still no real versus populum Mass, as all the congregation would have turned and faced the East during the Canon, so that priest and people were still oriented in the same direction. Thus, even if certain antique churches of Rome appear to have designs facilitating versus populum liturgies (as do most modern churches with altars removed from the wall), we must remember that the faithful, too, would turn to face East along with the priest. If there were circumstances where the priest and the faithful were facing each other, as at the homily, it was certainly not for the purpose of seeing the Eucharist as some sort of "communal meal" or celebration of the community; this would have been the last thing the Fathers would have cared about.

Praying East was universal in the early Church. St. John Damascene, writing around 740, said:

It is not without reason or by chance that we worship towards the East. But seeing that we are composed of a visible and an invisible nature, that is to say, of a nature partly of spirit and partly of sense, we render also a twofold worship to the Creator; just as we sing both with our spirit and our bodily lips, and are baptized with both water and Spirit, and are united with the Lord in a twofold manner, being sharers in the mysteries and in the grace of the Spirit.

Since, therefore, God is spiritual light, and Christ is called in the Scriptures Sun of Righteousness and Dayspring, the East is the direction that must be assigned to His worship. For everything good must be assigned to Him from Whom every good thing arises. Indeed the divine David also says, "Sing unto God, you kingdoms of the earth: O sing praises unto the Lord: to Him that rides upon the Heavens of heavens towards the East. Moreover the Scripture also says, "And God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed:" and when he had transgressed His command He expelled him and made him to dwell over against the delights of Paradise, which clearly is the West. So, then, we worship God seeking and striving after our old fatherland. Moreover the tent of Moses had its veil and mercy seat towards the East. Also the tribe of Judah as the most precious pitched their camp on the East. Also in the celebrated temple of Solomon the Gate of the Lord was placed eastward. Moreover Christ, when He hung on the Cross, had His face turned towards the West, and so we worship, striving after Him. And when He was received again into Heaven He was borne towards the East, and thus His apostles worship Him, and thus He will come again in the way in which they beheld Him going towards Heaven; as the Lord Himself said, "As the lightning comes out of the East and shines even unto the West, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be."

So, then, in expectation of His coming we worship towards the East. But this tradition of the apostles is unwritten. For much that has been handed down to us by tradition is unwritten (De Fide Orthodoxa, IV. 12).

It is this orientation towards the East that is the principle we must keep in mind when looking at early Christian liturgies. The Mass was seen (and rightly so) as eschatological and sacrificial, not as a communal celebration. It is quite interesting to note that, historically, the first individual to propose a versus populum celebration of the Mass was none other than Martin Luther, and that he made this recommendation explicitly for the purpose of detracting from the sacrificial nature of the Mass. In 1526, Luther wrote:

"The Mass vestments, altars, and lights may be retained till such time as they shall all change of themselves, or it shall please us to change them: though, if any will take a different course in this matter, we shall not interfere. But in the true Mass, among sincere Christians, the altar should not be retained, and the priest should always turn himself towards the people as, without doubt, Christ did at the Last Supper. That, however, must bide it's time" (The German Mass and Order of Divine Service, III, "On Sundays for the Laity")

The two points of interest here are, first, that Luther sees a celebration "facing the people" as much more in keeping with his teaching on the Mass than the traditional ad orientam orientation, but second, that he supports this opinion by appealing to the seating arrangement at the Last Supper, where Christ "without doubt" also faced the people.

Here we have an excellent example of archaeologism, the practice of throwing out long-standing liturgical traditions in favor of a return to some presumed apostolic simplicity. Archaeologism is, of course, fallacious, as Pope Pius XII pointed out in Mediator Dei, because it denies the Providential guiding of the Church by the Holy Spirit in traditional developments for the simplicity of the early Church. In Mediator Dei, the Pope stated that "it is neither wise nor laudable to reduce everything to antiquity by every possible device" (MD, 62). It was in this vein that Newman made his famous statement in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: "They are ever hunting for a fabulous, primitive simplicity; we repose in Catholic fullness" (Part II, Chap. viii, Sect.12).

But, for the sake of this argument, we should also mention that archaeologism fails on another account: that it is rarely accurate in its descriptions of what is and is not "apostolic." Communion in the hand, deaconesses, vernacular liturgies, Masses facing the people and a whole mess of modern innovations are said to be of apostolic origin when in fact none of them are found in the primitive Church (or if there are traces of them, as in the case of altars removed from the wall, the modern liturgists completely miss the point as to why this was the case). We will see that this is indeed the case with Luther's assertion that Jesus ate the Last Supper facing His disciples and that ergo Mass should be versus populum because of this.

Where did Luther get his idea about how the Last Supper was eaten? Since the New Testament itself offers scant evidence, it was probably from contemporary, Renaissance era depictions that Luther formed his opinion, works like Da Vinci's famous "Last Supper." Renaissance depictions, for concerns of symmetry, perspective and establishing a focal point, invariably positioned our Lord at the center of the scene, but this was for artistic reasons rather than out of care for historical accuracy. Luther, along with many since, have taken these famous depictions to reflect what actually occurred.

Ancient meals were eaten in the reclining position, and as far as I know, this was universal throughout the Roman, Greek and Semitic worlds. Diners would recline upon their elbow on cushions seated in a semicircle around a very small, circular serving table. All the guests would have been seated around only one side of the table, leaving the other side completely open; it was from this empty side that servants would serve the food. You can see this all depicted below in the famous Constanza fresco, which portrays a secular Roman meal:

Furthermore, and more importantly to our discussion, the head or master of the banquet would certainly not have been seated at a central location. In antiquity, the center did not denote prominence as it does today; rather, the master of the banquet would have been seated at the far right of the table, as the "right hand" was the most honored seat. We see this in several ancient and medieval depictions of the Last Supper, the most famous being the San Apollinaire Nuevo mosaic in Ravenna, dating from early Byzantine times. Notice the semicircular seating arrangement with Christ clearly at the right hand:

We see the same thing in the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Most Holy Mother of God in Monreale in Sicily in a depiction dating from the Norman period. Again, we see the semicircular arrangement with Christ at the extreme right, only this time seated instead of reclining, reflecting the change in dining customs that had taken place between the Byzantine and Norman periods:

Over time, what was originally the small, circular table in the center grew to dominate the scene. Below, in the Russian "Mystical Supper" icon, dated around 1497, we can see that the table has grown tremendously. Nevertheless, one will notice that the icon retains the semicircular seating with Christ at the extreme right of

semicircle.

 

The form endured in the East much longer than the West, perhaps because the Byzantine Empire preserved many of the cultural customs of the ancient world longer more intact than the Latin west. In the west, the advent of the Renaissance in the early 14th century, with its emphasis on technique, symmetry, proportion and perspective, altered the manner in which the Last Supper was depicted. Seeking symmetry and focus, the Italian artists inevitably put Christ at the center; the only way to realistically depict twelve apostles seated around the Lord was to elongate the table into a very long rectangular structure, as in Da Vinci's version. Though Christ had occasionally been put at the center Last Supper depictions even in the early Church (here and here, for example), it was not until the Renaissance that this became the norm.

To bring this back to Luther and the Mass, those who want to move the altar out into the congregation to attain a more "table-like" arrangement and cite the Last Supper as a justification are in error. In the first place, all of Christ's disciples would not have been gathered around him, but were in a semicircular line, one next to the other. Furthermore, they were not "facing" Christ, nor He them, but they would have had to turn slightly at a 90° angle to look at Him as He spoke. But then again, those who make such arguments don't really care what the early Church did or why she did it; like Luther, they are merely concerned with adopting the liturgy to suit modern ideas about what the Eucharist and the Church are. Rather than try to force a return to a past that never was, or revert back to a Semitic dinner seating arrangement that would be impractical for large liturgical gatherings such as the Mass, it is best to simply stick with the Tradition of the Church, not as it was frozen in time at the year 100, but as it developed through the ages and came down to us: with priest and people facing the Lord, showing forth the sacrificial nature of the Mass in anticipation of His glorious return.

Click here for a related post by Anselm on the Holy Father's theology of the liturgy and how the Last Supper is abused by modern liturgists.

Click here for the history of the Mandatum ceremony of Holy Thursday

Summer Theology Course in Italy

The following message is from Anselm. This was something we discussed a little bit when we met last week and I am so happy he finally put this together. Please, please, please pass the word on to your friends, post this to your blogs, etc. Let's help Anselm get the people he needs! And the price is right - $975! Here is his message:

Please allow me to introduce you to the St. Albert the Great Center for Scholastic Studies, founded by yours truly together with two of my colleagues at the International Theological Institute.

The St. Albert the Great Center for Scholastic Studies is an organization dedicated to the revival of higher studies in theology undertaken according to the mind and method of the great scholastics. This purpose is realized principally through the regular hosting of two-week long Summer programs, in which participants are invited to an intensive course of studies in Catholic theology presented in the form of the great Catholic universities of the high Middle Ages. Unique to these programs is the combination of scholastic form and content, namely the study of St. Thomas Aquinas in the way that St. Thomas himself would have studied. Hence the dedication of the Center to his own teacher, St. Albert the Great.

The inaugural Summer program is taking place from June 20 - July 1, 2011 in Norcia, Italy. The academic focus of this year's program is Sacramental Theology, with readings taken principally from St. Thomas Aquinas, but also from St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, Ven. John Paul II, et al.

Participants are invited to attend daily Mass and to pray the Divine Office with the Benedictine Monks of Norcia.

Optional organized excursions include hiking in the beautiful Mount Sibiline National Park and trips to nearby Assisi and Cascia. For the Feast of Corpus Christi (June 23), we will organize a special trip to Rome in order to join the Holy Father for Eucharistic procession and adoration.

Who: Qualified applicants over the age of eighteen.
When: June 20 - July 1, 2011.

Where: Norcia, Italy. Cost: $975.

For more information on the program, or in order to apply, please see our website: www.albertusmagnuscss.org.

If you are willing to help us advertise, please feel free to print and make use of this poster.

"David danced before the Lord"

Anyone who has ever been engaged in any earnest discussion about liturgy with persons of the progressive camp (or sometimes with charismatics) has probably come across the story of David dancing in front of the Ark of the Covenant being cited as a precedent for liturgical dance and other such exuberant manifestations of piety. The argument as it is usually put forward is that since King David danced before the Ark of the Covenant, there can be no objections to dance being incorporated into modern liturgies. This argument is an interesting one - on the one hand, I don't know a single person against liturgical dance who has been convinced by this argument; on the other hand, I have yet to hear anyone give a real cogent response, either.

Any such response to this argument must both affirm David's antics in front of the Ark (as the Bible seems to) while at the same time explaining why such behavior is not appropriate for the liturgy. Such a response I will attempt to give in this post.

First, the  back story. The account of David dancing before the Ark comes from 2 Samuel 6. In this chapter David is bringing the Ark of the Covenant up to Jerusalem from Kiriath Jearim, where it had sat in the house of Abinadab for the past twenty years (1 Sam. 7:2). The bringing of the Ark up to Jerusalem was a highly festive occasion, for it was the first time in over a generation that the Ark was being returned to the holy tabernacle, its proper dwelling place. According to Scripture, this translation occurred in the context of a great procession. It was in this festive procession that David danced before the Lord:

And when they that carried the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed and ox and a ram: And David danced with all his might before the Lord: and David was girded with a linen ephod. And David and all the house of Israel brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord with joyful shouting, and with sound of trumpet. And when the ark of the Lord was come into the city of David, Michol the daughter of Saul, looking out through a window, saw king David leaping and dancing before the Lord: and she despised him in her heart. And they brought the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place in the midst of the tabernacle, which David had pitched for it: and David offered holocausts, and peace offerings before the Lord (2 Sam. 6:13-17).

In the first place, those who use this verse as a precedent in support of liturgical dancing do so in a very arbitrary, selective manner. David danced before the Lord, true enough; he also did so immodestly dressed, yet none of the proponents of liturgical exuberance would suggest we imitate the King of Israel in this regard. Note that Michal, daughter of Saul "despised" David for his dancing. A few verses later we see the reason for this contempt:

And David returned to bless his own house: and Michol the daughter of Saul coming out to meet David, said: "How glorious was the king of Israel to day, uncovering himself before the handmaids of his servants, and was naked, as if one of the buffoons should be naked" (2 Sam. 6:20).

Apparently, though David was "girded" with a linen ephod, this ephod did not in any way constitute a complete outfit, for David is accused of immodesty and indecency for wearing only the ephod; clearly this ephod didn't leave much to the imagination if he can be described as "naked" while wearing it. Do all of those who use this verse to support the use of dance in the liturgy because of King David's example also propose that we should follow David in doing it while half-naked?

More importantly, however, is the oft forgotten fact that David, besides being a king, was a prophet. The New Testament even declares him so in Acts 2:29-35. Anyone who has read the prophets knows that, besides delivering oral prophecies, the Lord sometimes has them actually "act out" the prophecies to get the point across. St. Thomas says that this is one of four ways in which prophecy may occur, which he calls "outward presentation of sensible images" (II-II, Q. 173, art. 3). A few examples of this sort of prophecy:

Isaiah 20:2-3: The prophet Isaiah is told to prophecy naked for three years time "as a sign and portent against Egypt and Ethiopia", signifying that the Assyrians will lead their captives away naked and barefoot. 

Jeremiah 27:2: To prophecy to coming captivity of the Israelites, the Lord tells the prophet Jeremiah to actually construct a heavy yoke and walk around with it on his shoulders as a sign of the coming bondage to Babylon.

Ezekiel 4: This passage offers us one of the most radical examples of the prophets acting out a prophecy. Ezekiel is told: As for you, son of man, take a clay tablet; lay it in front of you, and draw on it a city [Jerusalem]. Raise a siege against it: build a tower, lay out a ramp, pitch camps, and set up batteringrams all around. Then take an iron griddle and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city. Fix your gaze on it: it shall be in the state of siege, and you shall besiege it. This shall be a sign for the house of Israel. Then you shall lie on your left side, while I place the sins of the house of Israel upon you. As many days as you lie thus, you shall bear their sins. For the years of their sins I allot you the same number of days, three hundred and ninety, during which you will bear the sins of the house of Israel.When you finish this, you are to lie down again, but on your right side, and bear the sins of the house of Judah forty days; one day for each year I have allotted you. Fixing your gaze on the siege of Jerusalem, with bared arm you shall prophesy against it. See, I will bind you with cords so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege (Ezk. 4:1-8). This is a total of 430 days that Ezekiel spends laying down to signify the coming siege!

Hosea 1: To signify the infidelity of Israel, God commands the prophet Hosea to marry a harlot. The anguish the prophet goes through witnessing his wife's infidelities give him insight into the offense that Israel's idolatry gives to God.

These actions are all uniquely prophetic, and as such are not meant to be copied or used as precedents. Should David's dancing be interpreted in a similar light? I think so, for the simple fact that this episode of the dancing is prophetic of the coming of Christ in the New Testament. Just as David rejoiced and leaped to see the presence of God in the Ark coming into its rightful sanctuary of Jerusalem, so St. John the Baptist leaped before the presence of God in the womb of Mary as she came to the house of Elizabeth - and as the Ark had been three months in the house of Obed-Edom, so was Mary three months in the house of Elizabeth. Granted, the dancing of David is not prophetic in the sense that it specifically foretells the future, but in the sense that his actions are typologically related to one of the mysteries of the New Covenant (similarly, the selling of Joseph into slavery was a "prophecy" of the betrayal of Christ).

This means that the dancing was not "normal" behavior even in David's time. There is no prescription in Jewish liturgy anywhere for dancing, and if this sort of thing were normal, David's wife Michal would not have been scandalized by it. David was a man full of the Holy Spirit, and this action was carried out in a sort of inspired prophetic euphoria at the presence of God. This does not indicate an undue familiarity on the part of David; after all, this dancing occurs just after the episode of the slaying of Uzzah by God for merely touching the Ark (2 Sam. 6:7-9), an event that so thoroughly frightened David that he delayed bringing the Ark into Jerusalem for another three months. Another indication of the prophetic nature of this action was the wearing of the linen ephod, a garment reserved for the priests (see Exodus 28:4, 29:5, 39:2; Lev. 8:7), and as such should not have been worn by the king. The fact that the king does in fact wear one nonetheless points to Christ as both priest and king. We are in the presence of a prophetic moment.

Here is the crux of the matter: David's dancing was a prophetic act, not a liturgical one. As such, it should not be incorporated into the liturgy. Liturgical actions should come from other liturgical actions as their precedents; actions that are prophetic should not be forced into liturgical settings. In fact, because of the often bizarre or disarming nature of prophetic actions, a key characteristic of them is that they not be repeated. Consider how the apostolic Fathers regarded prophetic actions in the Didache:

[E]very prophet, proved true, working unto the mystery of the Church in the world, yet not teaching others to do what he himself does, shall not be judged among you, for with God he has his judgment; for so did also the ancient prophets (Didache 11).

What does this passage mean? The writer of the Didache warns his readers that the actions of the prophets may seem a bit bizarre, yet by their actions they signify the "mystery of the Church in the world." It is recognized that this was always how prophecy worked. Therefore, despite the oddity of their prophecy at times, they should not be hindered, so long as they do not try to teach others to do what they themselves are doing. It is one thing for Isaiah to preach naked, or Jeremiah to walk around wearing a yoke, or the prophet Agabus to tie his own hands and feet with the belt of St. Paul (Acts 21:10-12), for these are prophetic acts; but as soon as anybody starts insisting that such behavior be imitated by all, then there is a problem. Thus, the writers of the Didache state plainly that, so long as a prophet does not teach others to "do what he himself does," his prophetic actions should not be judged, regardless of how bizarre they may seem, "for so did also the ancient prophets."

A main characteristic of prophetic activity is that it is for a specific time and person alone and is not to be imitated. If we recognize, as the St. Luke tells us in Acts, that David is a prophet, and if we recognize in his dancing a spirit-inspired prophetic action, we immediately see that this action falls into the same category as Hosea marrying a harlot and Jeremiah walking around with a yoke on his neck, and as such should not be imitated. If there remain any doubt as to whether this is in fact the case, I challenge you to search the Scriptures for even one more account of any person dancing in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant. The fact that this display was apparently never repeated in the Old Testament should be enough to convince us of its uniqueness for that time, place and event (a similar prophetic action permissible only to David at a certain time and place was his eating of the Showbread; see Matt. 12:3-4, 1 Sam. 21:2-7).

Therefore, if even in Old Testament times this was considered an aberration, something permissible to David at that point but not done by any previous or subsequent ruler, why would we take David's prophetic action and say that its one, solitary occurrence in salvation history is a good enough precedent for it to become a liturgical norm? This would be quite an argument, especially considering that many of these same folks who use this one example from David's time to justify liturgical dancing would also be against ad orientam Masses and communion on the tongue, practices with vastly greater degrees of precedent than liturgical dancing. Thus, the fact that an inspired prophet and King of Israel, a "man after God's own heart", should dance in front of the Ark emphatically does not mean that the sort of thing seen here should become the norm.

David's dancing was not liturgical. There never was any such thing as liturgical dancing in Judaism; there was celebratory dancing and prophetic dancing, but never liturgical dancing - and to take something that is not liturgical and try to force it into liturgical constructs destroys the very liturgy it attempts to enliven.