Exorcist Andrea Gemma on Medjugorje: "Absolutely diabolical"

We haven't heard much from Medjugorje lately - I was following the Ruini Commission for awhile, which was charged with investigated the alleged apparitions by the Holy Father and was supposed to come up with some sort of  definitive judgment. I still haven't heard anything from Cardinal Ruini, but this 2008 interview with Bishop Andrea Gemma, one of the Church's foremost exorcists, has recently come to light in which the bishop soundly condemns Medjugorje as a diabolical phenomenon.

Here's a background item on the Medjugorje case, a May 2008 interview with Bishop Andrea Gemma from Gianluca Barile's website Petrus. It was reported in the press at the time, and some quotations did appear, but I never came across the full text until recently. 

Medjugorje: the accusation of the bishop-exorcist Mons. Gemma: "The apparitions of the Madonna? Completely false: the seers lie under the inspiration of Satan to profit economically"

(Gianluca Barile, Petrus)

VATICAN CITY - A mixture of economic and diabolical interests, with the alleged seers and their collaborators directly involved in profits related to the increased flow of pilgrimages and visits in the area, and the Evil One well content to sow discord between the faithful most convinced of the validity of the apparitions of Medjugorje and the Church, sceptical as ever in the face of what she has declared more than once, through the words of two successive bishops of Mostar during that time, "a great deception." Monsignor Andrea Gemma, former bishop of Isernia-Venafro [served 1990-2006], among the greatest exorcists living, does not mince his words: instead of the Virgin, so far only rivers of money have appeared at Medjugorje, a grave accusation that sums up not only the courage but also the moral and spiritual capacity of the prelate who agreed to respond to questions from "Petrus" on such a prickly event.

PETRUS:  So, Excellency, how do you define Medjugorje?

"It is an absolutely diabolical event, around which numerous underworld interests revolve. The Holy Church, which alone can make a pronouncement, through the words of the Bishop of Mostar, has already said publicly and officially that the Madonna never appeared in Medjugorje and that this whole production is the work of the Devil."

PETRUS: You speak of "underworld interests". Of what kind?

"I'm referring to 'the Devil's dung', to money, what else? At Medjugorje everything happens for the sake of money: pilgrimages, overnight stays, the sales of trinkets. In this way, abusing the good faith of the poor people who go there with the idea of meeting the Madonna, the false seers have set themselves up financially, they have married and live a wealthy life, to say the least. Just think: one of them, directly from America, with a direct economic profit, organizes tens of pilgrimages every year. These people don't seem to be really disinterested persons to me. Rather, with all the people vulnerable to this noisy swindle, they evidently have a great material interest in getting people to believe that they see and speak with the Virgin Mary."

PETRUS: Monsignor Gemma, is there no appeal from your verdict?

"Could it be otherwise? These people claim to be in contact with the Madonna, but in reality are inspired solely and exclusively by Satan, are creating chaos and confusion among the faithful for the sake of absolutely deplorable interests and advantages. Think, then, of the disobedience they have fed in the bosom of the Church: their spiritual guide, a Franciscan friar expelled from the Order and suspended a divinis, continues to invalidly administer the sacraments. [NB: The interview took place in 2008, before the laicization of Tomislav Vlasic.] And numerous priests from all over the world, despite the express prohibition of the Holy See, continue to organize and participate in pilgrimages with Medjugorje as their destination. It's a shame! This is why I speak of a mixture between personal and diabolical interests: the false seers and their helpers are pocketing money, and the Devil creates discord between the faithful and the Church; the more fanatical faithful, in fact, aren't listening to the Church, which - I repeat - has, from the beginning, warned about the mendacity of the Medjugorje apparitions."

PETRUS: And if the alleged seers were really seeing the Madonna?

"In reality they would be seeing Satan under false pretenses. Because Satan has great interest in splitting the Church, setting the two currents of the 'pro' and the 'contra' Medjugorje against each other. Moreover, it wouldn't be the first time: St. Paul himself asserts that the Devil can appear as an Angel of Light and can, so to speak, camouflage himself. He did that, for example, with St. Gemma Galgani. But beyond his disguises, the Evil One has already intervened and I can assure you that it is he inspiring the false seers since the beginning with the promise of easy money."

PETRUS: You're not exactly fond of those seers...

"Please! It's enough to see how they act: they're disobedient to the Church, they should have withdrawn to private life and instead they keep on making propaganda for their lies, for the sake of money, and thus playing the Devil's game! My thoughts go immediately to St. Bernadette, the seer of Lourdes: that sweet creature wanted to shed her life and took up the habit of a Sister to serve the Lord. Instead, the impostors of Medjugorje continue to live comfortably in the world without showing any kind of love either for God or for the Church."

PETRUS: The supporters of Medjugorje emphasize that the Holy See has never expressed any position on the matter.

"That's another lie! As I pointed out before, the Vatican has forbidden pilgrimages by priests to the place and has spoken through the words of the two successive bishops of Mostar, Monsignors Zanic and Peric, with whom I have spoken personally, and who have always manifested their doubts to me. You see, even for Fatima and Lourdes, the Holy See didn't express any position directly on those Marian apparitions. So why would they have to make an exception in this case? The truth is that when the Bishop of Mostar speaks, the Church of Christ speaks, and is it to him, who speaks with the authority conferred to him by the Vatican, that we need to listen. Thus, the Holy See has already expressed itself with the words of the Bishop of Mostar, making evident that Medjugorje is a diabolical trick. But I will share a secret with you. You'll see that soon the Vatican will intervene with something explosive, to unmask once and for all who is behind this swindle."

PETRUS: The same supporters note that at Medjugorje every year they report a record of conversions and miracles...

"It's artificial. And who is counting all these conversions? You see, if someone has a conversion, it's because he had a certain predisposition, because he thinks to look inside himself, because he receives the gift of the Spirit. The place in which this conversion happens is completely relative. Let's think of St. Paul: he converted on the road, and now what should we do, all go out to the road and wait to be converted? As regards the miracles, I'll tell a personal anecdote. I owe the miraculous healing of a person in my family to the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary at Pompei, but that doesn't imply that the Madonna ever appeared to me at Pompei. So, just from believing, or from being healed inside or outside, it doesn't necessarily mean that Mary is letting people see her."

PETRUS: To the best of your knowledge, what opinion does the Holy Father Benedict XVI have of Medjugorje?

"I'll limit myself to underscore what he did as Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to send out official notes adverse to Medjugorje, such as the one which forbade priests and religious from going on pilgrimages in that country."

PETRUS: Yet it is said that John Paul II was convinced of the goodness of the apparitions.

"An unproven legend, considering that his opinions were personal and did not in any way represent an act of the Magisterium" [by the way, please see here for John Paul II's alleged "support" for Medjugorje].

If one of the Church's foremost exorcists, a man who spends his life observing the methods and schemes of the Evil One, says that Medjugorje reeks of diabolical influence, should we not pay him heed?

The sources for this story are this recent post from Catholic Light and another from the Italian site Petrus.

RELATED:
Understanding the Herzegovina Question
2017 Statement of Bishop of Mostar that Our Lady did Not Appear in Medjugorje
The Laicization of Fr. Vlasic
Bishop Ratko Peric's Directives on Pilgrimages to Medjugorje (2009)

Parishes in Sarasota area?

Next month my family and I are going down to Sarasota, Florida for a week and a half to stay with some family. Can anyone give me some recommendations of parishes to attend in the Sarasota-Bradenton area for Sunday and daily masses? The Extraordinary Form would be nice, but a reverent Novus Ordo would be fine as well. Last time we went to Sarasota we just went to the first Catholic Church we found in the phone book and wound up at some weird, roundish-shaped parish that was fairly progressive. Can anyone offer any input so this doesn't happen to us again?

Also acceptable would be a Uniate, Ukrainian, Maronite or Chaldean rite parish. I'm sure I could just Google these things, but just googling parishes and looking at their websites doesn't give you the kind of feedback that individuals can provide.

Blessings and grace!

Cathar Apocalypticism

I just got through with a really great article from an old edition of Koinonia, a journal of the Princeton Theological Forum, on the problem of Cathar apocalypticism, or rather I should say the mysterious lack of it. The basic problem is surrounding Cathar apocalypticism is that, despite the fact that the medieval world was a world in a constant state of eschatological expectation, and despite the fact that almost all of the other notable medieval heretical movements were shot through with eschatological apocalypticism, the Cathar system was notably lacking in any sort of apocalyptic fervor that characterized so much of medieval society. Why did the largest and most organized heresy of the Middle Ages fail ultimately to produce any apocalyptic strain, something that was present in other heretical movements as well as in orthodox Catholicism? To the best of my poor ability will I endeavor to condense seventeen pages of the original article into a few paragraphs here. Those interested in medieval heresy and the Cathars in particular should definitely read the original article, which draws on some very important (but not very well known) primary sources from the Cathars themselves.

To understand what we mean by "apocalypticism," we can use the following definition: The vivid expectation of a violent end to human history and the present world - an end preceded by conflict and the persecution of God’s faithful ones, centered on the resurrection of the dead and divine judgment, and culminating in the punishment of the wicked and the transformation of the cosmos into a glorious new home for the just (note that this definition says nothing about the issues surrounding millenarianism; it merely concerns itself with a violent end for the present world followed by its transformation).

The failure of the Cathars to produce any real apocalyptic expectation of this sort is especially odd given the fact that they were intensely persecuted by Church, and in the history of other persecuted sects, the persecution tends to engender apocalypticism, wherein the persecuted minority see themselves in terms of a "faithful remnant" being persecuted by a "whore of Babylon", which naturally suggests scenes from the Apocalypse. Why did the Cathars fail to develop this apocalypticism?

Like many other points of Cathar practice, the answer to this problem lies in the dualism of the Cathars. Cathars held that the world and everything in it was created by the agency of an evil principle (unmitigated dualism); this evil physical world was sometimes seen as a metaphysical parallel to the good, spiritual realm. If the good principle and the evil principle were equal, then so also were their creations equal. Thus, the evil, physical creation was just as eternal as the spiritual realm and could never pass away. In fact, it was something akin to hell, eternal in its duration and in its misery. If the world then was eternal, as the evil principle was eternal, then there was no place in this scheme for any sort of final conflagration of apocalytpic consummation. It was entirely irredeemable; earth was hell. An anonymous Cathar tract entitled "An Exposure" puts it simply: "“The present world ... will never pass away or be depopulated” Another Cathar text describes “this world” as “the last lake, the farthest earth, and the deepest hell,” while another asserts that “hell and eternal punishment are in this world only and nowhere else”

Some Cathars, on the other hand, did hold that this present world would perish, but this only confirmed them in the belief that it was outside the agency of the "good God," for everything the good God created was eternal. The very fact that the world was transitory only demonstrated that it was irredeemable. Another Cathar tract states: "[S]ince there are many ... who pay little heed to the other world and to other created things beyond those visible in this wicked world, which are vain and corruptible, which as surely as they come from nothing shall return to nothing, we say that in truth there exists another world and other, incorruptible and eternal created things .... ”

Another problem is that the traditional implements of apocalyptic destruction were not even available to the good god of the Cathars. In the Book of Revelation, God uses earthquakes, meteors, fire and brimstone and all sorts of plagues as means of judgment on the wicked. These means are not available to the Cathar god. According to a Cathar tract, "The Secret Supper", "Satan made fire ... also thunder, rain, hail, and snow ...” Fire was the handiwork of the evil god; it could have no purifying role in punishing evil or dissolving creation for the good god’s purposes. In fact, even the concept of God punishing or killing was attributed to the evil principle (remember, the acts of divine judgment presented in the Old Testament, such as the Flood, are also works of the evil god). Thus, the good god of the Cathars is faced with an irredeemable world and left without even the physical implements to execute judgment upon it. There can be no dies irae in Cathar theology.

The realm of the good god is a mirror reflection of the present world, not akin to the traditional idea of heaven at all. According to the Inquisiton records, the heretic John of Lugio taught that “the good God has another world wherein are people and animals and everything else comparable to the visible and corruptible creatures here; marriages and fornications and adulteries take place there, from which children are born. And what is even more base there the people of the good God, against his command, have taken foreign women to wife, that is, daughters of a strange god or of evil gods, and from such shameful and forbidden intercourse have been born giants and many other beings at various times.” It was actually in this other world that Christ was born and crucified. The work of the good god takes place in this other realm.

Since there could be no eschatological climax for this present world, passages in the Bible referring to a future end of the world were interpreted to apply to the past in a kind of radical preterism. For example, the seven seals of Revelation were interpreted to have taken place in remote antiquity and correspond to the original "fall" of purely, spiritually created humans into their fleshly bodies for imprisonment in the world of the evil god. Therefore, since this world was hell, the goal was to escape the world. The righteous would be translated to the world of the good god, but the unrighteous would suffer no other damnation than to remain on earth: 

"No soul will be saved other than the spirits who fell, who... will all be saved, ... other souls created by the devil, the evil principle, will be condemned ....This condemnation... is here in the darkness of this world, that is, to sustain hunger, cold, weariness and the like ... souls will not be condemned, that is, by a second condemnation, because they are already damned. Thus t[the Cathars] deny that future day when ... souls will be condemned because it is already past” (Anon.,‘Brevis summula’)

Naturally, if materiality were evil, then even for the just there was no anticipation of a general resurrection, a doctrine that was vehemently denied by the Cathars. There is no sense of redemption for this present world, and that longing for redemption, for a new creation and a day of justice, are what lie behind all apocalyptic ideals. Since there could be no redemption, no transformation of man qua man or of the world, then there was likewise no Cathar apocalypticism.

Anyhow, it's a really great article. I suggest you check it out for a fuller explanation of the concepts paraphrased above.

Bishop Boyea says Mass in the Extraordinary Form

Here is something you definitely don't see every day - on Laetare Sunday, our Bishop, His Excellency Earl Boyea, came to say Mass according to the Extraordinary Form in our parish. Before being elevated to the bishopric of Lansing, Bishop Boyea was a proponent of the Traditional Mass as Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit and used to say it monthly at the St. Josaphat-Sweetest Heart of Mart cluster. It was really awesome to be able to assist at an EF Mass said by a bishop. The church was absolutely packed; I spent the whole Mass standing (and kneeling) in the vestibule.

Here are some pictures. The third one is of myself and my daughter greeting the bishop; the fourth one is my wife.

St. Athanasius' doctrine of Divinization

Last time I blogged about St. Athanasius, we spent the entire post examining the famous doctor's statement that "God became man so that man may become God" and endeavored to show that this concept (called "divinization") ought not to be interpreted in a pantheistic or New Age sense, quoting other statements from Athanasius and other Fathers to establish this fact; thus, we were looking at Athanasius' statements negatively by showing what they do not mean. This time we will examine what exactly St. Athanasius' doctrine of divinization does mean in a positive sense.

Before we go any further, I have two corrections/clarifications to make from the last post. In the first place, I made the statement last time that divinization was basically the same thing as St. Paul's doctrine of adoption, since both have to do with transitioning from sons of Adam to sons of God. Though the concepts are somewhat related, they are not the same thing. St. Paul's doctrine of adoption precedes divinization, and divinization, in turn, presupposes adoption. Adoption as God's sons and daughters is what makes divinization possible, as divinization (of course) is something applicable only to Christians who are born again as God's children. Adoption, as the Council of Trent declared, is nothing other than justification, the "translation from that state in which man was born as a child of the first Adam to the state of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God through the second Adam, Jesus Christ." Catholic Tradition and Trent see this as occurring in and through the Sacrament of Baptism; Trent continues: "This translation, however, cannot, since the promulgation of the Gospel, be effected except through the laver of regeneration or its desire, as it is written: Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God" (Council of Trent, Session VI, caput. IV). Divinization is the process that follows upon adoption by which the newly born sons of God become conformed to His image; adoption makes divinization possible.

Second error I need to correct is my statement in the combox that divinization was the same idea as theosis. In this I was incorrect, for the two concepts are different in two very important ways. First, divinization is taught by St. Athanasius to be something normative that all Christians undergo as part of the typical Christian life. Theosis, on the other hand, was something the orthodox monks saw as applicable most perfectly to only those who had renounced the world and were living in a state of monasticism seeking union with God; it is something for an elect few. The second and more fundamental difference, related to the first, is that theosis is primarily a mystical concept, the idea of divinization transformed under the hand of Pseudo-Dioynisius the Areopagite into a mystical doctrine. Divinization, on the other hand, is taught by St. Athanasius as a soteriological concept, concerning itself not with mystical progression through various stages towards union with God in some kind of hesychastic vision, but as a fundamental soteriological statement about what it means for Christians (all Christians) to be saved. This is why the word for divinization (theopoie) is a distinct word from theosis.

Phew. Now that I have amended my errors (hopefully without stumbling into more errors), let us proceed with the main point of this post: what does divinization entail for St. Athanasius?

For St. Athanasius, divinization consists of the ennoblement of mankind by God - the working out of the effects of the grace merited by Jesus Christ on human nature. It is the process by which human nature is made conformable to Christ; since Christ is a divine Person, this process is rightly called "divinization", as in it we witness the glorification of human nature under the divine hand of Christ. Therefore, divinization means positively the perfection and glorification of human nature. In Scholastic thought, the final end of divinization is similar to those conditions of the just in the resurrection, found in the Summa (Suppl.Tertia Partis, Q 82-85).

In the first place, St. Athanasius mentions bodily immortality as the first result of divinization. Athanasius sees the attainment of immortality in a kind of reciprocal exchange between Jesus and humanity: Jesus, in the Incarnation, assumes mortality by putting on human flesh, enabling us to assume immortality by putting on Christ. He says, "As the Lord, putting on the body, became man, so we men are deified by the Word. as being taken to Him through His flesh and henceforth inherit life everlasting" (Third Discourse Against the Arians, 34).

Besides immortality, St. Athanasius also includes incorruptibility in the idea of divinization. This incorruptibility refers not simply to the incorruption of the body (which would then make it the same as immortality), but to the reality that the divinized, resurrected body will be free from all sin and its corruptions. He describes the Crucifixion as occurring so that "men might for ever abide incorruptible, as a temple of the Word" (ibid., 58), hearkening to 1 Cor. 6 where Christians are referred to as God's "temple" in the context of purity and holiness. He says again in the same place:

But now the Word having become man and having appropriated what pertains to the flesh, no longer do these things touch the body, because of the Word who has come in it, but they are destroyed by Him, and henceforth men no longer remain sinners and dead according to their proper affections, but having risen according to the Word's power, they abide ever immortal and incorruptible (ibid, 33).

So incorruptibility, though related to immortality (in fact, we could say that immortality is a result of freedom from sin, since the fruits of sin is death), is not the same; it has to do with freedom from sin and its consequences.  

Finally, St. Athanasius mentions impassibility as the third aspect of divinization, meaning the impossibility of suffering any pain or want, a state of insensibility to evil. A few articles I consulted on this aspect of divinization tried to attribute it to pre-Christian philosophy, especially the philosophy of Plato and Philo of Alexandria. Though these two philosophers certainly taught that the ideal state consisted in being freed from the sufferings attendant upon having a corporeal body, I don't think we necessarily need to look to pre-Christian philosophy for the source of this ideal. We need look no farther than Revelation 21:3-4: 

And I heard a great voice from the throne, saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men: and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people: and God himself with them shall be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes: and death shall be no more. Nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things are passed away.

This concept is also found in Isaiah 25:8 and Isaiah 35:10 as well,so it is quite biblical. As in the case with immortality, where there is a reciprocity between Christ's putting on mortality and our putting on Christ, so here Athanasius envisions a kind of relationship whereby the sufferings of Christ render us free from suffering. "We by His sufferings might put on freedom from suffering and incorruption, and abide unto life eternal" (Ad Maximus 4 [Letter 61]). Also, we could return to the very rich Third Discourse Against the Arians, from whence many of our quotes have been taken: "He let His own body suffer, for therefore did He come, as I said before, that in the flesh He might suffer, and thenceforth the flesh might be made impassible and immortal" (58). Like much else about the glorification of man in St. Athanasius' writings, this process is grounded in the Incarnation: "The Lord became man...that He might Himself lighten these very sufferings of the flesh and free it from them" (ibid., 56).

One final word on the concept of divinization. Though I thoroughly understand what St. Athanasius means by this concept, I do not think it is a helpful term to use in the modern climate. Because of the inroads that paganism, New Age thought, pantheism and all sorts of man-centered philosophies have made in our culture, I think the terms "divinization" and "deification" are simply too confusing to be used safely. I would never recommend utilizing this term in dialogue with anyone (save the Eastern Orthodox). 

Nor is this only my own opinion. This phrase never did catch on in the western Church, the Latin Fathers being apparently uncomfortable with the term, though perfectly at home with the concept. Even the Greek Fathers began to put qualifications on the terminology in later centuries, apparently sensitive to possible misinterpretations the phrases "divinization" and "deification" could lead to. The eastern Father Babai the Great (551-628) rightly rejected the idea that "we are sons of God as He is and are to be worshiped through our union with God the Logos." The Nestorian Patriarch Timothy strictly emphasized that divinization "did not mean that we become sons of God by nature or that we are worshiped by all men as our Lord is." Even St. Gregory Palamas felt the need to qualify St. Athanasius' doctrine by reminding that deified persons did not become God by nature or essence (I'm sorry, I found these quotes on other sites but was unable to find sources for them, so hopefully they are legit).

Of course, these authors are absolutely correct in their assertions, of course, but the fact that they felt the need over time to increasingly qualify St. Athanasius' doctrine shows the degree to which they must have been a little uncomfortable with the terminology, in my opinion.

At any rate, hopefully these posts on this topic will help shed some more light on this deep but misunderstood teaching of one of the Church's greatest minds.

Inspiration "for the sake of our salvation"

Dei Verbum 11. Few Conciliar documents give me more headaches than this one passage out of the Constitution on Divine Revelation. The passage states that the Bible "teaches, without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation."

As we know, this passage is universally misapplied by modern Scripture scholars to mean that only those things pertaining to salvation can be considered to be truly inspired. Nor is this interpretation made by liberal or modernist scholars either; otherwise orthodox Scripture scholars read the document the same way. Back when I was at Ave Maria, our professor of Sacred Scripture (who happened to be the Academic Dean and is still employed by AMU) had us read Dei Verbum and told us that only those parts of the Scriptures that pertained to faith and morals could be considered inspired, and therefore infallible. When I objected and stated that he was misinterpreting Dei Verbum 11, he looked at me blankly and said that he was "not aware of any other interpretation."

Reading any of the other pre-Vatican II Magisterial documents that treated on Scripture study would have put the passage in context; apparently this professor had never read them. When we read other documents, especially Providentissimus Deus of Leo XIII, we see that the correct way to interpret Dei Verbum's "for the sake of our salvation" passage is that the Bible is immune from error in everything it says, and everything it says God wanted there for the sake of our salvation.

Modern interpretation tends to favor a narrower scope for infallibility: that the Bible is immune from error in so far as it teaches about salvation, but can err when it treats of other topics. By the way, lest we think that this narrower interpretation of inspiration is not as widespread as I am making it out to be, we need only look to the 2008 Synod on the Word of God and their working document, "The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church." In this document, in which the Synod proposed to "rediscover Dei Verbum" (2), we see the following restatement of Dei Verbum 11 on the topic of inspiration:

...with regards to what might be inspired in the many parts of Sacred Scripture, inerrancy applies only to 'that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation' (15)

If Dei Verbum 11 is problematic, this passage is downright useless. With such qualifying statements as "might" and "only", we are left wondering if there is any way to tell what is inspired and what isn't. Clearly, the Synod was leaning more towards the liberal intepretation of Dei Verbum (thankfully this document never turned into an encyclical). This should serve as a sober reminder of how widespread this narrow view of inspiration is in the Church.

While I have already dealt elsewhere with the proper understanding of the "for the sake of our salvation" passage, it remains to be explained what the Council Fathers were thinking exactly when they chose this phrase, "for the sake of our salvation." To get an insight into this, we can turn to the memoirs of Augustine Cardinal Bea, primary author of Dei Verbum. Regarding the drafting of the document, he says:

An earlier schema (the third in succession) said that the sacred books teach 'truth without error'. The following schema, the fourth, inspired by words of St. Augustine, added the adjective 'saving', so that the text asserted that the Scriptures taught 'firmly, faithfully, wholly and without error the saving truth.' In the voting which followed one hundred and eighty-four council fathers asked for the adjective 'saving' to be removed, because they feared it might lead to misunderstandings, as if the inerrancy of Scripture referred only to matters of faith and morality, whereas there might be error in the treatment of other matters. The Holy Father, to a certain extent sharing this anxiety, decided to ask the Commission to consider whether it would not be better to omit the adjective, as it might lead to some misunderstanding. (Augustin Cardinal Bea, The Word of God and Mankind

(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1967), 188.

Bea then proceeds to raise the question: "Does the inerrancy asserted in this document cover also the account of these historical events?", which he answers:

For my own part I think that this question must be answered affirmatively, that is, that these 'background' events also are described without error. In fact, we declare in general that there is no limit set to this inerrancy, and that it applies to all that the inspired writer, and therefore all that the Holy Spirit by his means, affirms.... This thought, which re-occurs in various forms in the recent documents of the Magisterium of the Church is here clearly understood in a sense which excludes the possibility of the Scriptures containing any statement contrary to the reality of the facts. In particular, these documents of the Magisterium require us to recognize that Scripture gives a true account of events, naturally not in the sense that it always offers a complete and scientifically studied account, but in the sense that what is asserted in Scripture - even if it does not offer a complete picture - never contradicts the reality of the fact. If therefore the Council had wished to introduce here a new conception, different from that presented in these recent documents of the supreme teaching authority, which reflects the beliefs of the early fathers, it would have had to state this clearly and explicitly. Let us now ask whether there may be any indications to suggest such a restricted interpretation of inerrancy. The answer is decidedly negative. There is not the slightest sign of any such indication. On the contrary everything points against a restrictive interpretation."

(189-190).

From Cardinal Bea's commentary we can see that the use of the adjective "saving" was considered too ambiguous; unfortunately, the final phrase, "for the sake of our salvation" nostrae salutis causa) proved equally problematic. We see that the use of this concept of "saving truth" was disputed from the very beginning.

This idea, though open to misinterpretation, is certainly not unorthodox, however. I'm guessing the Council Fathers probably had in mind the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, who says in the very first article of the Summa:

It was necessary for man's salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: "The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee" (Isaiah 64:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man's whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation (STh, I. Q. 1 A. 1). 

This is what Dei Verbum was getting it - it is not the specifically the content of Scripture that it is referring to when it says "for the sake of our salvation," but the fact of Divine Revelation: because God willed to save us, He graciously and condescendingly chose to impart to us such truths as we could not have known without His revealing them to us. Of course, the content of Divine Revelation is salvific as well, but the context of the passage is referring not to Revelation's content but to Revelation as a mode of transmission.

Pope Pius XII echoes Aquinas in the first paragraphs of Humani Generis:

For though, absolutely speaking, human reason by its own natural force and light can arrive at a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God, Who by His providence watches over and governs the world, and also of the natural law, which the Creator has written in our hearts, still there are not a few obstacles to prevent reason from making efficient and fruitful use of its natural ability. The truths that have to do with God and the relations between God and men, completely surpass the sensible order and demand self-surrender and self-abnegation in order to be put into practice and to influence practical life. Now the human intellect, in gaining the knowledge of such truths is hampered both by the activity of the senses and the imagination, and by evil passions arising from original sin. Hence men easily persuade themselves in such matters that what they do not wish to believe is false or at least doubtful. It is for this reason that divine revelation must be considered morally necessary so that those religious and moral truths which are not of their nature beyond the reach of reason in the present condition of the human race, may be known by all mean readily with a firm certainty and with freedom from all error (Humani Generis, 2-3).

Once again, what is necessary for our salvation is the fact of Divine Revelation - because man is incapable of coming to the fullness of the truth with certainty by his own unaided reason, God has made a revelation of Himself to mankind, in the Scriptures but ultimately in the Person of Christ; the giving of this revelation was done "for the sake of our salvation."

The memoirs of Cardinal Bea, the teaching of Aquinas and the words of Pope Pius XII, coupled with the teachings of other popes on the issue of inspiration, should give us no doubt as to the true interpretation of Dei Verbum 11. Thus we can unhesitatingly affirm with Pope Leo XIII that:

It is absolutely wrong and forbidden either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Sacred Scripture or to admit that the sacred writer has erred... For all the books which the Church receives as Sacred and Canonical are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can coexist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the Supreme Truth, can utter that which is not True. This is the ancient and unchanging Faith of the Church... [T]hose who maintain that an error is possible in any genuine passage of the sacred writings, either pervert the Catholic notion of inspiration, or make God the author of such error (Providentissimus Deus, 20).

New papal encyclical - Rectificare Errata!

After months of speculation that the pope was about to release a new document or encyclical dealing with tightening up on abuses in the Church, the Benedict XVI stunned the world today by releasing the hard-hitting encyclical Rectificare Errata ("To Rectify Errors"), which takes the form of a lengthy condemnation of several of today's most abominable errors in matters of faith and liturgical practice. I am frankly shocked that the modern papacy, so used to ambiguous, wishy-washy statement and endless dialogue, was capable of making such bold, declarative statements. But, once again this pontiff has surprised me.

The document addresses errors concerning creation, biblical interpretation, salvation, the necessity of entrance into the Church, liturgical abuse, communion in the hand, and it even speaks about Medjugorje and finally calls for the consecration of Russia to our Lady!

Click here to read Benedict XVI's new and revolutionary encyclical, Rectificare Errata.

In the meantime, let us offer up Te Deum's to God for providing us with such a glorious and bold pontiff!

Related story: ZENIT says JP2 beatification "postponed indefinitely."

Hey Missa Gregoriana em Portugal Guy, Take My Blog off Your Blog Roll

Hey Missa Gregoriana em Portugal guy, I don't know how else to reach you, but please take my blog off your automatic blog-roll. Every single post I do gets six or seven links to your blog and it's mildly irritating since the links are all in Portuguese. If you choose to link to my blog, please do it manually, but take me off your blog-roll.

To those of you who subscribe to this blog, sorry for the useless post.

Is Gandhi in Hell?

No "Saint Gandhi"

This post is really not about Gandhi; rather, it is using Gandhi as an example of a lot of what is wrong in the way a lot of Christians are thinking today regarding the Church's perennial teaching on the reality of hell as well as the abuse of the concept of invincible ignorance.

According to the manner in which the doctrine of invincible ignorance is popularly (and errantly) understood in the Catholic Church, those who are ignorant of the Gospel and Christ's Church in such a way that it is "not their fault" that they have not heard are not guilty of their sins and we can safely presume that will go on to heaven, saved, as it were, by their ignorance. Thus, we need not worry ourselves about Hindus, African bushmen, the natives of the Amazon or the Muslims, because so long as it is "not their fault" that they do not know Christ, we can presume salvation.

This is, of course, an errant interpretation of the concept of invincible ignorance, an idea that is contrary to two thousand years of tradition and something that undermines the missionary impulse of the Church. It leads to things like Mother Teresa's nuns visiting Hindu temples for prayer instead of evangelizing the Hindus, the Columban missionaries having "role playing" sessions with Muslims and teaching that all religions lead to God, and the Trappist monks of Tibhirine, Algeria praying with Sufi Muslims instead of trying to teach them about Christ (they were rewarded for their interest in Islam by being beheaded, by the way). I don't know if in any of these cases the concept of invincible ignorance was cited specifically, but we cannot deny that an ecclesial culture that keeps tossing around this concept is going to breed these sorts of abominations.

As an interesting aside, evangelicals have an interesting answer to the question about what happens to remote natives and persons who never heard of Christ. They basically say, "If anyone of them is open to the truth, God sends them a missionary. If they never hear of Christ and nobody comes to them, it is because God knows they will not listen. Thus, they are without excuse, even if they have never heard."St. Thomas and St. Augustine seem to have opined similarly, though neither taught this as definitive as far as I can tell. I don't know that we can always presume that God will work this way; Ezekiel 33:6 states that when a righteous man fails to warn sinners of their plight and the sinners perish, it is the righteous man who is guilty for not spreading the word: "And if the watchman see the sword coming, and sound not the trumpet: and the people look not to themselves, and the sword come, and cut off a soul from among them: he indeed is taken away in his iniquity, but I will require his blood at the hand of the watchman." Irregardless of whether or not those in true invincible ignorance are saved, Scripture is clear that if they are not reached by the Gospel, it is our fault. I don't think it is responsible to just write them off and say, "Well, if they never heard it is because God knew they wouldn't listen." But this is a digression.

The Catechism says this on invincible ignorance: "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation" (CCC 847), quoting Lumen Gentium 16. It must be understood that this is not "another way" to salvation outside of Christ; the Catechism is stating that some may "stumble" into salvation through Christ ignorantly, but just not be cognizant of it, much like the Calormene at the end of C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle. There is only one door, but some may enter through it even if they don't realize it. So the Catechism at least says that salvation is possible for those in invincible ignorance, but does not by any mean state it as a given.

Invincible ignorance is originally a premise in moral theology that has been transplanted to soteriology. The Catechism mentions it in this context in paragraph 1793 regarding culpability for moral actions: "If...the ignorance is invincible, or the moral subject is not responsible for his erroneous judgment, the evil committed by the person cannot be imputed to him. It remains no less an evil, a privation, a disorder. One must therefore work to correct the errors of moral conscience" (CCC 1793).

So, applying this to soteriology, we must first understand that this is not saying that those who have never heard of Christ are absolved of all their sins by this ignorance. According to the principle of invincible ignorance, they may at least be innocent of the sin of unbelief, but invincible ignorance does not negate culpability for sins against natural law (theft, murder, adultery, etc).  The Catechism says this clearly:

"However, no one is presumed to be ignorant of the principles of moral law since these are written on the heart of every man" (CCC 1860).

So one can be innocent of the sin of unbelief but still be guilty of a host of other damnable sins,  first among them idolatry, but also theft, adultery, fornication, lying, etc. Therefore, being invincibly ignorant of salvation does not in any way "secure" salvation - it merely means you can't be imputed with the guilt of the sin of unbelief. It is in this context that Pope Pius IX said, "It is equally certain that, were a man to be invincibly ignorant of the true religion, he would not be held guilty in the sight of God for not professing it" (Pius IX, Allocution of December 9, 1854). He speaks here only of the guilt of not professing the true Faith, not he guilt relating to sins against the natural law.

To see invincible ignorance as somehow being salvific is entirely misleading and destructive to faith. How could ignorance ever be salvific? St. Thomas reminds us that ignorance is a result of sin and remains penal in character. This passage from the Summa wraps up the teaching from the Catechism and Pius IX nicely:

"Unbelief has a double sense. First, it can be taken purely negatively; thus a man is called an unbeliever solely because he does not possess faith. Secondly, by way of opposition to faith; thus when a man refuses to hear of the faith or even condemns it, according to Isaiah, "Who has believed our report?" This is where the full nature of unbelief, properly speaking is found, and where the sin lies. If, however, unbelief be taken just negatively, as in those who have heard nothing about the faith, it bears the character, not of fault, but of penalty, because their ignorance of divine things is the result of the sin of our first parents. Those who are unbelievers in this sense are not condemned for the sin of unbelief, but they are condemned on account of other sins, which cannot be forgiven without faith” (Summa Theologica II-II, Art. 10 Q. 1).

Ignorance is penal. Furthermore, St. Paul teaches that, even though many of the nations are in ignorance of Christ, God will no longer overlook their ignorance but calls them all to repent:

 

"Since therefore we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the divinity is like an image fashioned from gold, silver, or stone by human art and imagination. God has overlooked the times of ignorance, but now he demands that all people everywhere repent because he has established a day on which he will 'judge the world with justice' through a man he has appointed, and he has provided confirmation for all by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:29-31).

Note that the call to repent is for "all people everywhere." This is totally contradictory to the creeping universalism within the Church which seems to optimistically believe that, not only those who are invincibly ignorant, but even Muslims and Jews will be saved without converting so long as they are "good people."

Gandhi is the most common example of a pagan "righteous man" that is given. Do a Google search on "Gandhi in hell" or "Gandhi in heaven" and you will see that the use of Gandhi as an example in this discussion has become as standard as the use of Socrates in learning logical syllogisms. Does Gandhi in any way fulfill the criteria for someone who was "invincibly ignorant" of the faith? Let's look at a quote from his autobiography:

"It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate Son of God, and that only he who believes in Him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then ...all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by His death and by His blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it .... I would accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept" (Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi An Autobiography: My Experiments with Truth, pp. 170-71).

If anything is clear from this passage, it is that Gandhi was emphatically not in any ignorance about Christianity, Jesus or the central beliefs of the Christian Faith. He knows enough about Christ to paraphrase the Gospel of John at the top of the passage and to understand the Christian concept of Christ being God's "incarnate" Son. He knows Christians believe that "His death and blood redeemed the sins of the world." He understands very well the Christian idea of Jesus' death being unique and atoning. Based on this, we can hardly call Gandhi ignorant, let alone invincibly ignorant. Gandhi knows Jesus' claims to lordship but will not accept them; as a teacher, as a martyr perhaps, but not as Lord. He understands the tenets of Christianity perfectly well and yet consciously chooses to reject them.

Let us remember that the word "invincible" literally means "unconquerable." Gandhi was raised among Christians in British India and his ignorance can hardly be said to be unconquerable. "But," it might be said, "perhaps the example of Christianity he was given was so poor that it spoiled any chance of him ever believing." Well, if we take this line of reasoning then basically every person on the planet is invincibly ignorant unless someone as perfect as Christ Himself comes to preach to them, since we could always cite sins or faults on the part of the one presenting the Gospel. Secondly, Gandhi did not say he rejected Christianity because of Christians (although he was not impressed with the Christians he met), but because he could not accept the message of Christ. It was Christ that Gandhi rejected, and did so quite openly and deliberately.

By the way, even if Gandhi was in "invincible ignorance", it would mean only that he was incuplable for the sin of disbelief, not for any other sins.

Some Catholics assert that it is impossible for those in invincible ignorance to be saved. Following the Catechism and Lumen Gentium, I have to at least admit the possibility, though as opposed to modern, progressive Catholic universalism, I must insist that the criteria for this be understood as narrowly as possible, and that we do no more than admit the possibility without asserting salvation in any specific cases. We should certainly never, ever, ever engage in any of the nonsense like making icons of Gandhi, as we see at the head of this post. In my opinion, those who are in a state of invincible ignorance are few and far between. And even if they are not guilty of unbelief, this does not mean they are not guilty of a host of other sins, much less that they do not need the message of Christ preached to them.

Is Gandhi in hell? Of course, there is no way to know; I can admit the possibility of a hypothetical last-minute, interior conversion known only to God alone. But barring that, and knowing how Gandhi thought about Jesus, I think it is an insult to the Gospel to suggest that such a man could gain heaven just because of his social and political activism while ignoring the insulting things he said about Jesus and the Church.

Evolutionary Christianity

Last time we dug into a questionable program or seminar, it was Just Faith. This time Evolutionary Christianity is on the chop-block. So have you ever heard of Evolutionary Christianity? Evolutionary Christianity is a website established to make an online seminar series available on the topic of seeing Christianity through an evolutionary world view. “Join thirty-eight of today’s most inspiring Christian leaders and esteemed scientists,” it explains on the home page, “for a groundbreaking dialogue on how an evolutionary worldview can enrich your life, deepen your faith, and bless our world.”

The goal of the talks and discussions is to present a path between what its participants call “science-rejecting creationism and faith-rejecting atheism.” They find “no conflict between faith and reason, heart and head, Jesus and Darwin. For us, religious faith and spiritual practice can be strengthened and deepened by what God/Reality is revealing through science.”

The explanation continues: “Evolutionary Christianity points to those who value evidence, in a very real sense, as ‘divine communication.’ Whatever our [i.e., referring to those committed to the ideas of Evolutionary Christianity] fascinating and at times infuriating differences, we all have deep-time eyes and a global heart—that is, we are all enriched by the evolutionary history of the universe and we are all committed to a just and healthy future for humanity and the larger body of life.”

The differences among the thirty-eight leaders participating in the Evolutionary Christianity tele-series are important to the group. One section of the website divides them into categories that include two Nobel Laureate scientists, two Templeton prize-winners, and a soup of thinkers speaking about process theology, the “emerging” church, eco-theology, progressive and integral Christianity, and evolutionary Christian mysticism. Four of the thirty-eight identify themselves as Evangelicals and six as Roman Catholics. The labels aren’t particularly useful, as one might reasonably argue that all participants embrace the “inclusive” philosophy of Evolutionary Christianity and are therefore coming from a similar perspective. It is basically a Teilhard de Chardin fanclub.

The better known in the group are Matthew Fox, a Roman Catholic priest who switched to Episcopalianism in the early 1990s after being expelled from the Dominican order for teaching Creation Spirituality; Sr. Joan Chittister, a Benedictine religious who has participated in the dissenting movement Call to Action and is an advocate of women’s ordination; John Shelby Spong, homosexual Episcopal bishop emeritus who has called for a new Reformation to reformulate basic Christian doctrine “[s]ince God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms…;” and perennial new age heretic Father Richard Rohr, a Franciscan who, over the years, has promoted a host of programs that make one wonder why he calls himself a Catholic at all.

Father Rohr is not so much an originator of these programs (among them the Enneagram and male spirituality) as a brilliant popularizer of them, able to articulate their complexities and make them available to wide audiences. Therefore, as an introduction to some of the ideas espoused by the proponents of Evolutionary Christianity— at least as they will be sold into Catholic circles—it is profitable to take a closer look at Father Rohr’s interview with Michael Dowd, the evangelical minister who founded the Evolutionary Christianity project.

Interview of Fr. Richard Rohr by Michael Dowd, Dec. 18th, 2010: " Radical Grace and Evolutionary Spirituality"

Dueling Dualism

Father Rohr begins the interview with a bit of personal background, explaining that the mission of his Albuquerque-based Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) is to help people on both the right and left to transcend the dualistic thinking that divides the world into “bad guys” and “good guys.” The contemplative mind, he argues, rejects that dualistic thought.

"Again and again," says Fr. Rohr,  "I saw the tremendous social needs of our time and our world. And yet, to be perfectly honest, I often was disappointed in some of the responses, which I would now call “dualistic thinking”…“either/or thinking”… “all or nothing thinking.” I found dualistic thinking to be as much on the left as it was on the right. Different vocabulary, but such thinking still split the universe into the good guys and the bad guy — totally right or totally wrong."

Dowd interjects that the contemplative mind is “non-dogmatic.” Father doesn’t correct that description but develops the idea that the spirituality of youth, whether in individuals or institutions, is engaged in creating a self-identity – a container. The spirituality of age is more concerned about what’s in the container, such as patience, inclusion, and the forgiveness of reality for not being perfect. God, Rohr says, is comfortable with a diversity that follows different sets of rules. That’s creative and is the sort of thinking that allows one to be compassionate and forgiving.

Pause. What makes this line of discussion particularly difficult is that the term dualism has been used in several different ways. As a philosophical or theological worldview that sees the universe locked in an eternal struggle between the equal powers of good and evil, dualism is clearly an unchristian perspective and has been dogmatically rejected by the Church as heresy. However, not every discussion of contrasting positions comes from a dualistic perspective. To call one line of reasoning “true” or “real” and another line of reasoning “false” or “not real” isn’t dualism – it’s descriptive. Remember the "Two Ways" mentioned in the early Church manual the Didache? How about the City of God and the City of Man from Augustine's Civitas Dei? How about the beginning of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Humanum Genus on Freemasonry, which begins by dividing the world into two categories:

"The race of man, after its miserable fall from God, the Creator and the Giver of heavenly gifts, "through the envy of the devil," separated into two diverse and opposite parts, of which the one steadfastly contends for truth and virtue, the other of those things which are contrary to virtue and to truth. The one is the kingdom of God on earth, namely, the true Church of Jesus Christ; and those who desire from their heart to be united with it, so as to gain salvation, must of necessity serve God and His only-begotten Son with their whole mind and with an entire will. The other is the kingdom of Satan, in whose possession and control are all whosoever follow the fatal example of their leader and of our first parents, those who refuse to obey the divine and eternal law, and who have many aims of their own in contempt of God, and many aims also against God."

To say that conceiving of the world in terms of right and wrong, true and false is dualism is a foolish misunderstanding of what dualism is. But I digress.

Changeless Change

Dowd asks Father Rohr, “How has an evolutionary understanding of reality, an evidential understanding of reality, made a difference in your own faith walk?” 

Father answers: "It’s become almost foundational. If what’s happening is evolving, then of course you’ve never got it. So an evolutionary understanding keeps you with a beginner’s mind. It keeps you with that kind of humility — an expectation of an open horizon. I think the bane of religion, and not just Christianity, has been a closing down of such openness way too early, because of the assumption that ‘I understand; I know.’ And I think this is the arrogance that so many people have come to resent in religious people."

The “evolutionary understanding” of reality, which Dowd defines as science-based understanding, may believe that what has been revealed by God about Himself may evolve to “reveal” something quite different – say, that the personal One, Creator God of yesterday is today revealed to be the universe itself - is as much an “I understand; I know” position as any other. Knowing certain truths, however, doesn’t mean one has exhausted their meaning nor does rejecting what little one can know guarantee freedom from arrogance. Having true knowledge about a thing does not mean we have come to the end of the mystery.

Incarnation

Here's where Fr. Rohr really demonstrates his ignorance of what the Incarnation means. The topic of Incarnation (materialized deity) affords some of Evolutionary Christianity’s greatest departure from traditional Christian thought. The incarnation, Father Rohr says, is the big trump card of Christianity:

"The mystery of the Enfleshment of Spirit began 14.5 billion years ago, approximately. That’s the real birth of Christ. When I say that to Christians, they’re shocked. So I point them to the prologue to John’s gospel and to the hymn in the beginning of Colossians, the hymn in the beginning of Ephesians, the first chapter of the first letter of John. These passages all say, without any equivocation, that Christ existed from all eternity."

Is he serious? Does he not understand what the Incarnation is, or does he not know the difference between our Lord's eternal preexistence and His coming as a man in time? To say that Christ existed from all eternity isn’t to say that he was enfleshed from all eternity. Nothing in the scripture passages mentioned, or in any other scripture passages for that matter, suggests that he was; quite the contrary, scripture is clear that he existed before creation. (Col 1: 15-20).

Father Rohr continues that the material world is the “hiding place,” the “revelation place,” of God:

"So to get to your notion of deep time, you’re right on. Deep time is not just taking my moment as if it’s the reference point — the be-all and end-all. Rather, I must look to how I fit in to past and future. How am I connected to this universal history, this geological history, this history of civilization? How do I situate myself inside of all of that history? This seems to me to be the real appreciation for incarnation. Incarnation is planted inside the very nature of the world that God created and through which God is revealing God’s self in every creature. Every creature is a word of God. St. Bonaventure was a philosopher. He took the experience of Francis and made an entire philosophical system out of it, in which he made the point that every step of creation and every piece of creation is another word of God. Each is another footprint, another fingerprint, another revelation of the mystery. So the whole distinction between sacred and profane just doesn’t work anymore. It’s not helpful. It’s not true. There is only one universe. It’s all sacred, and it’s all revealing the divine."

The confusion of God with His creation as expressed by Father Rohr, has been addressed by the Vatican document on the New Age, Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: “For New Age the Cosmic Christ is seen as a pattern which can be repeated in many people, places and times; it is the bearer of an enormous paradigm shift; it is ultimately a potential within us. According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ is not a pattern, but a divine person whose human-divine figure reveals the mystery of the Father's love for every person throughout history (Jn 3:16); he lives in us because he shares his life with us, but it is neither imposed nor automatic. All men and women are invited to share his life, to live “in Christ” (3.3). Later in the Vatican document, some brief formulations about New Age thought are detailed, including the idea that the “new consciousness” – sounding rather like the “evolutionary understanding” above – “demonstrates itself in an instinctive understanding of the sacredness and, in particular, the interconnectedness of all existence. This new consciousness and this new understanding of the dynamic interdependence of all life mean that we are currently in the process of evolving a completely new planetary culture” (7.1). 

At one point in the interview, Dowd says that his dualism collapsed when he realized the universe had started to become conscious of itself (though he doesn't explain how this is evident in anyway). Rohr responds that when one isn’t operating on the mystical level, all one is left with is a "low-level morality."

The Inclusiveness of Evolutionary Christianity

Dowd asks Father Rohr how Christianity relates to other faiths in light of evolution. Rohr calls for a “vocabulary” for the “relational truth of the universe”:

"If God is Trinity, then God himself, herself, itself is relationship. This is my foundation — that God is not a noun. God is a verb. God is an eternal circle dance. The Cappadocian Fathers in the third and fourth century said this — that God is a circle dance. Once that becomes your template for the very shape of the divine, and therefore the very shape of creation, then there’s nothing that can be understood outside of relationship."

"God is an eternal circle dance." I'm not sure if the Cappadocians ever said that, but even if so, that phrase used in this context makes me want to puke.

In that "circle" relationship, then, Rohr argues, one is not believing things or judging things but simply participating with “the mystery” and honoring the divine expression in all people, because humanity’s survival depends on not excluding one another with sectarian “truths.” The new, emergent, participatory religion is entirely inclusive, rejecting a Jesus who is the exclusive son of God for an inclusive son of God. Rohr quotes Thomas Merton as saying that if this is the sacred dance, it’s always the general dance and if you’re not in the general dance you’re not in it. If you’re compassionate only for your own self, or your own group, you’re not compassionate.

"Compassion can’t be just for my group or my political party or my baseball team or my religion.That’s the very thing Jesus was critiquing in his own Jewish brothers and sisters. So I say, “Why was Jesus inclusive in his lifetime, and then afterwards we created an exclusive religion in his honor?” It doesn’t make a bit of sense."

Even “truth” must be inclusive, it seems, encompassing contraries and contradictions. Dowd remarks that one can’t expect everyone to have all the truth but everyone has something useful to offer, even atheists who help others to evolve their own religious expression. Father Rohr develops that thought, adding that religious people can’t build on their superiority but must build on commonality of humanity.

"There are billions of us on this planet. If we can’t start honoring the divine presence in all people, all religions, and all things, I don’t know what hope there is for the world."

As indebted as Father Rohr and his cohorts may be to the thought of Teilhard de Chardin, its roots go much deeper. Rather than being an evolutionary step in religious thought, if one considers evolutionary steps to be progressive, positive developments, Evolutionary Christianity is constructed from quite ancient ideas, such as incarnated by the Hindu greeting “Namaste,” meaning the divine in me greets the divine in you. Not that this fact would bother an Evolutionary Christian. These people seem positively proud of their pagan associations. I know that Catholics are free to believe in evolution if they want, but it is interesting to me that the folks who are on the cutting edge of promoting evolution within the Church, people like Rohr and de Chardin (and Fr. Ron Rohlheiser, too, for that matter), are always huge heretics and progressives as well. In my opinion, this is what you get when you start mixing evolution up in your theology.

Thanks to the Los Pequenos Pepper, who did most of the research for this and where most of this post was lifted from. 

Blessed Ash Wednesday!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the penitential season of Lent. May you all be richly blessed as you turn towards the Lord in humility, recalling that we are but dust and ashes, and that absolutely everything is grace.

Check out this post from 2008 on how Ash Wednesday is one of the highest attended liturgies of the year due to the fact that people "get something" when they come to Mass. Sigh.

On the Liberal Arts

Apparently my comment in my previous post that the liberal arts are "useless' have scandalized a few persons, so if you all will indulge me on this topic one last time, I will endeavor to explain what I mean when I say that the liberal arts are "useless." What I hope to get through is that, though the liberal arts may be "useless" to a degree, they are not valueless, as to have value and to have usefulness are not the same thing.

First, let's go back to the beginning, to the definition of the terms we are talking about: What are liberal arts? If we start with etymology, we see that the word 'liberal" in liberal arts derives from the Latin word liber, which means free. The primary context of the original Latin meaning is free in the sense of politically free, as opposed to a slave or freedman. The liberal arts were those disciplines which it was considered fitting for free men to study, men who would have to be well-formed human beings in order to responsibly take up the burdens of representative government in the ancient world. Thus, a "free" man was encouraged to study philosophy, literature, history, geometry and the like while servants or slaves would obviously not, both because they did not have the time, and because to the degree that they specialized in anything, it was in menial tasks. Sometimes free men wrote treatises on manual tasks, like horticulture, husbandry and cattle breeding, but only because these agricultural pursuits were seen as fitting for free men. So liberal was originally contrasted to manual, just as free men were to slaves. Thus, the liberal arts were for free men of the higher classes; in the classical dichotomy between practical and theoretical, the liberal arts were certainly not practical.

Later, the phrase "liberal arts" came to take on another connotation. Besides the idea of political freedom, the term came to mean free in the sense that the liberal arts were ends in themselves; i.e., they were "free" from being put to utilitarian ends. For example, an architect will put the skills he learns to work building bridges, houses or other structures of practical usefulness. An electrician will take the electrical-working skills he learned as an apprentice and put them to practical use in the actual wiring of homes. One who studies history or philosophy, however, does not later put his knowledge to "work" for any practical or utilitarian ends. The sole purpose of such education is simply to educate the learner and make them a more perfect human. The liberal arts are thus free also in the sense that they are free from being put to utilitarian uses. This means that, by their very definition, the liberal arts are indeed "useless" in the truest sense!

We could phrase it this way: liberal arts were never meant to be studied for the end of making people money; they were studied by people who already had money. They were never meant to make a living; they were the course of study for those who already had a living. They were never meant to be put to use because they were studied by those who had no need to go into any "useful"trade.

This does not mean that a liberal arts education has no value. On the contrary, it is of immense value in forming the person, acquainting one with the greatest treasures of civilization and teaching one how to think. But, because they are not ordered towards any utilitarian or vocational end, a liberal arts degree is not likely to make its recipient much money. In this sense a liberal arts degree is "useless" as far as earning potential goes.

There is one exception to this, of course, and that is unless you are actually going to be a literature professor or a history professor. In this case, you are studying the liberal arts for the purpose of teaching the liberal arts to others, in which case the degree would be "useful" to one's career. But the problem with so many Catholics going to liberal arts colleges is that not all of them are intending to go on to be professors of literature or philosophy; many do not know what they want to do in life. They just go off to get their liberal arts degree, imagining that their job opportunities are going to be better after getting it. To some level this is true; any degree looks better than no degree. But, comparable to how much money they are likely to spend attaining that degree, it is unlikely that they will get a job whose pay is commensurate with the debt they are likely to incur. I know of many people with liberal arts degrees who do not make in one year what it cost them for their education, which is disappointing since most people go to college with the intent of at least having a modest increase in their earning potential.

Absolutely all Catholics should be educated in the liberal arts. This is essential. The liberal arts teach one, not only knowledge, but how to acquire knowledge for oneself. The liberal arts, more than any other field of study, equip one to be a self-directed learner. This is the end goal of all education: not to teach a subject, but to teach others how to teach themselves. But, unless one is planning on becoming a professor of the liberal arts themselves, and given the tremendous cost of college, I do not think Catholic kids ought to choose the liberal arts as a major. It is best taught during the high school years, in order that they may already have this liberal arts template over which they can view everything else they learn college.

Teach the liberal arts? Absolutely without a doubt. Spend $40,000 and four years of your precious life getting a degree in them that will not give you an adequate return on your investment and for which you could have gotten the same knowledge for free by reading some books? That arrangement should give us pause, and that is all I have been saying.

Top ten careers for Catholics

Following up on my previous post on homeschooling and college, the following is my list of the top ten  lay fields that we desperately need good Catholics to go in to. I offer these suggestions for Catholic youth to consider instead of spending their college years getting a useless Liberal Arts degree. These fields are in need of an infusion of Catholic values and are also capable of providing a decent income.

10. Music 

We are in dire need of some good music. Right now, we pretty much have our high-end, intellectual music like Mozart and Bach, then our liturgical chant, then our often-times sappy Christian rock, which is of questionable quality, and then the secular stuff. What we really need is for some excellent Catholic musicians to start writing "secular" music that is inspired and formed by a Catholic worldview (as opposed to remaining segregated in the narrow genre of "Christian rock").

9. Journalism

Even though print-journalism is on its way out, there will always be a need for journalists, especially journalists whose fidelity to the truth and commitment to objective reporting trumps any ideological concerns. Catholics would be especially welcome in this field, especially since the Church has suffered so much from the media in the past. Ross Douthat of the New York Times, a convert to Catholicism,  is a good example of a journalist who seems to have a good, solid grasp of the issues facing our country and the Church and can report about them with insight and objectivity.

8. Video game design

No matter how you feel about video games, the fact is that they are not going away and will probably be a permanent fixture of our culture for a long time to come. Since video games are so endemic in our society, why not get some good Catholics in the design industry to create games that are more aesthetically pleasing, ethically acceptable and just plain funner than those currently being designed? As a former gamer myself, who appreciates a fine video game, I believe that, just as Catholics have written some of the best novels in history, so Catholics, with their creative mind, knowledge of the classics, themes of love, good and evil and and eye for the beautiful, have the potential to design some truly excellent video games that are not morally offensive. I would love to see this happen. There will definitely be a demand for this in the future, and the average video game designer makes $68,000 per year.

7. Architecture

There are simply too many ugly, utilitarian buildings around. We need good Catholics with a sense of beauty to design beautiful homes and businesses. This also applies to the more engineering-based forms of architecture, like the building of bridges, roads and weight-bearing structures.

6. Medical 

With the increasing expansion of medical and scientific procedures into questionable ethical practices, it is imperative that the medical field be infused with Catholic doctors, nurses, specialists and administrators who, allowing their consciences to be formed by the Church's teaching, will adhere to strict moral principles in all medical procedures and can bring Christian compassion into their practice.

5. Film making

I say "film making" instead of acting, because the problem with Hollywood is not that there are too many immoral actors, but too many immoral screenplays and too many degenerate directors. An actor will act whatever he is given to act, a murderer or rapist in one film and a saint in the next, if the money is there. This is why the key to getting some really good quality films is raising up a generation of Catholic screenplay writers, producers and directors who can effectively and beautifully bring Catholic values to the screen. A good example of this is the John Paul the Great University, which offers degrees in communications media such as film making. While I disagree with calling John Paul "the Great", the intuition of the university is right one. Unfortunately, JP the Great is not accredited, so I can't really recommend it.

4. Clothing design

It is so hard to find modest clothing, especially for girls. This would be a great field for some creative, young Catholic women to go into. We are in great need of clothes that are modest, but not dour or frumpy; clothes that accentuate a woman's natural beauty rather than debase it or hide it. Clothes can be stylish, aesthetically pleasing and modest and (hopefully) not too expensive. 

3. Finance

Some of the greatest crimes and immoralities in our civilization occur in the halls of finance. There is a desperate need for moral individuals in our financial markets who understand that matters of finance are not amoral and can make responsible decisions about the management of money, including offering people investments that do not fund questionable organizations. For the past two hundred years, our whole banking system has been ruled by crooks; it would be great to get some loyal, pious Catholics in there instead.

2. Education 

By education, I mean primarily public education, both at the elementary, secondary and college levels. I know how we all feel about the public schools; but be that as it may, the fact is that the vast majority of our citizens will go through the public school system. If this is the case, then it is imperative that we get some excellent Catholics in there who can guide the youth of this country in the right direction. Even if the Faith cannot be promulgated openly, a skilled Catholic teacher, with his mind at rest in the certainty offered by the truths of the faith, can be a bedrock of support to young people looking for values. A skilled Catholic teacher can point kids towards beauty and truth and inculcate in them habits of prudence, temperance, justice and fortitude, serving almost as a preparatio evangelium in the secular schools. Whatever we think about public education, we cannot just let the 79 million kids in our public system slip through our fingers. We should see this as mission territory to be embraced, not something to flee from. This is apart from any consideration of the value of getting good Catholic into administrative positions in our public institutions. I would also mention the good to be gotten from alternative forms of education, such as Homeschool Connections Online.

1. Government

This is where I think faithful Catholics are most needed - local, state and federal government, including school boards, township supervisory positions and positions in county government. Our republic will ultimately be only as good as the character of the people who govern it. We need to zealously encourage Catholics to get involved in public service, Catholics who will put their service to the Truth above their love of mammon and power.


Any of these fields who be much more productive and helpful to society (and more lucrative) than getting a liberal arts degree. Again, I am not knocking the liberal arts - I love the liberal arts. My life was changed by studying the liberal arts. But the liberal arts can be appreciated with the aid of just one or two talented tutors and a pile of books; it is not necessary to spend tens of thousands of dollars and several years on a college degree in the liberal arts, especially when there are very few jobs that a liberal arts degree will actually qualify you for. The liberal arts themselves are not worthless; they teach you how to think, how to write, how to construct an argument, how to understand your place in history and how to be a more complete human being. But these are all things kids should have down before they even apply to college.

Anyhow, if you are a parent or a teen on the cusp of college, I hope you will give this some prayerful thought.