Sacral Kingship:The German Influence (part 6)

The sixth installment of my series on the development of Christian Kingship, this time focusing on the early medieval period and the transition in the west from a Roman dominated Europe to a Germanic one and how German ideals of royal authority mingled with older regal traditions to produce a new concept of royal authority.

The German Influence

 By the advent of the Carolingian era, a decisive shift had taken place in the power structure of the European continent: the supremacy of the Germans. German influence in European affairs was nothing new. Tribes such as the Vandals and Goths had wreaked havoc on the late Roman Empire; other Germanic tribes such as the Alemanni, Suebi and Cherusci had been known of since before the time of Julius Caesar. But by the time of the ascent of the Carolingian kingdom under Charlemagne, the Germans had gone from barbarian tribesmen on the outskirts of civilization to being the dominant force in the west. With the proclamation of a Frankish emperor in the year 800, Western Europe became decisively and irrevocably a German entity and fell out of Mediterranean/Byzantine sphere of influence permanently. This had been the trend for sometime; the advent of Charlemagne did not so much create this new political situation as much as it made manifest and permanent what was already becoming true.

With their advent, the Germans brought into Christian Europe new ideas about kingship and authority. These were to have a decisive impact on western Christianity and on the development of the Middle Ages in general. Earlier in this series, two prevailing ancient ideologies about power were elucidated: the eastern model, which viewed authority as arbitrary and coming immediately from the gods to the king, who sat at the top of a social pyramid; and the western model, which viewed authority as being a collective manifestation of the power of the people vested into one magistrate, who was accountable to the gods and to society for the way he used this power. How did the German concept of kingship fit into this design?

Though the Germans certainly represent a third element to this equation, as they were neither Mediterranean nor Middle Eastern, they tend to fall more in line with the western, Greco-Roman idea of power than with the eastern concepts. At first, this may seem a bit of a stretch; what does the Visigothic king of Asturias in the 6th century have in common with the Roman republican idealism of the pre-imperial period? On the surface there is not much in common, but the differences are only accidental. Though the culture of the Romans and Greeks varied greatly from the culture of the Germans, their conceptions of political authority do resemble one another. A brief look at the similarities of the Germanic and classical political ideologies will clarify this.

Similarities

First and foremost, the Germans did not believe in any conception of a ruler wielding absolute power. Though they had a distaste for Roman law (Trial by Ordeal being their preferred method of jurisprudence), they had an equal distaste for the arbitrariness of eastern autocracy. The figure of the early German king is one shrouded in mystery. It is unknown how the Germans viewed their own rulers, but it was the Romans who first applied the word rex to the Germanic chieftains, finding no better terminology with which to classify them; lesser chieftains were called dux. The rex and dux seemed to have little coercive power originally.2

The authority of these chieftains came not by divine right, or even necessarily by birth right, but by merit on the battle field. Tacitus says in his Germania: “The authority of their kings [reges] is not unlimited or arbitrary; their generals [duces] control the people by example rather than command…”3 This is quite similar to early Greek and Roman notions of arête and virtus. A German tribal lord, a rex or dux, gained authority and notoriety by winning victories in battle. Based on his reputation, other warriors would either flock to his retinue or else desert him if they heard of some other lord more powerful. Their authority was by no means fixed, and could be supplanted by other lords. “A leader’s authority lasted only so long as his success in war.”4 In Roman times, whole tribes are known to have split and merged with other tribes in order to follow more promising leaders. This can be viewed as a kind of “election by migration.” Instead of an unhappy electorate voting out an unwanted magistrate (as in Rome and Greece), the disgruntled German electorate was content to leave the chief in place and simply remove themselves to another tribe!

When Germanic kingship is viewed as a kind of martial oligarchy, it is not difficult to find similarities between it and the ancient Greco-Roman systems. It is very likely that the German warlords of the late Roman period were driven by the same ideas of warrior-glory that motivated the early Greek warriors who were in turn inspired by the stories of their own legendary warrior lords, men such as Achilles and Diomedes. And were not the original ancestors of the Roman Senate said to be those patrician families who had won glory in war, such as the Brutii, Fabii and the Scipios?

The most important element in Germanic government was the king’s comitatus, the band of other war leaders that surrounded a chief. These war leaders were generally referred to as dux by the Roman authors. It was with the band of war leaders that the king made his deliberations and proposed courses of action. The king among the duces was a kind of first among equals. Though loyalty was given him by the comitatus only so long as his victory in war continued, once in battle this body proved fanatically faithful to their king. If a king or prominent war-chief were killed in battle, most of his comitatus would go down fighting with him. This was a matter of honor among the Germans.5 It is difficult to distinguish how the authority of the king and the other chieftains differed. Tacitus himself seems uncertain of the matter and sometimes uses the words rex and dux ambiguously. It seems certain, however, that the governance of the German tribe was carried out by a warrior aristocracy under the titular head of a king. This bears much semblance to the earliest accounts of the Greek and Roman civilization, such as the stories of a series of Roman warrior families gathered together under Romulus or the retinue of Greek kings mentioned by the Iliad under the leadership of Agamemnon.

Under this warrior aristocracy, as in the Greek and Roman states, there existed several tribal assemblies of lesser importance. Unlike what we know of the Greeks and Romans, what exactly constituted a Germanic assembly was uncertain and the body itself seems to have been rather fluid. Sometimes a tribal assembly was the gathering of the entire tribe at an appointed time and place under the leadership of the war council, where justice was then administered and important matters discussed. This assembly of the people is referred to as the "Thing" in ancient chronicles of Germanic law.6 A massive gathering of a Saxon Thing at the River Weser is recorded in the eighth century.7 These meetings were done at an annual cycle determined by the phases of the moon. Tacitus describes such a gathering:

On small matters the chiefs consult; on larger questions the community; but with this limitation, that even the subjects, the decision of which rests with the people, are first handled by the chiefs. They meet, unless there be some unforeseen and sudden emergency, on days set apart-when the moon, that is, new or at the full….then a king or chief is listened to, in order of age, birth, glory in war or eloquence, with the prestige which belongs to their counsel rather than with any prescriptive right to command. If the advice tendered be displeasing, they reject it with groans; if it please them, they clash their spears: the most complimentary expression of assent is this martial approbation.8

These gatherings were the basis on Germanic common law and continued until the tribes began to settle down into cities following the eighth century and their conversion to Christianity. Though it cannot be said that the Germans had a democratic society, at least in the way it was understood in classical times, it seems evident that there was a considerable degree of popular activity in tribal governance and that the early Germans had no tolerance for authoritarian despotism. This they shared in common with the Greco-Roman tradition.

There are instances, however, of experiments with autocracy in the ancient German tribes. The Germans who lived along the Rhine and Danube, and thus came into frequent contact with the Romans, picked up Roman ideas of authoritarian rule from such autocratic Romans as Julius Caesar. There are records of a few Germanic leaders attempting to solidify their power and rule autocratically, but they all came to nothing. Maroboduus and Ariovistus attempted it, and Arminius, in the time of Augustus, attempted to secure his power tyrannically. However, all were betrayed or killed by other German chieftains who had no tolerance for such heavy-handed rulership.9 Why did these experiments in autocracy ultimately fail among the Germans? Their independent minded, warrior mentality was too great to permit any such change. “The style of autocratic leadership…could not be maintained for long in a society of warrior-nobles who pursued their own paths to glory.”10 This German aversion to centralized control would emerge again and again throughout history and was a large factor in the failure of even the most powerful of the Holy Roman emperors to adequately unite the empire in the Middle Ages. It took the force of nationalism to finally unite the Germans, but that did not come until the days of Bismarck and Hitler.

It is evident from these considerations that the Germans, though different in culture and much later in developing their civilization, fall securely into the realm of Greco-Roman political tradition. They viewed authority as coming from merit and martial prowess and held the leader accountable for his actions. A good leader would be followed fanatically while a bad leader would be deserted by his people. Legal decisions were made a matter of popular concern and justice was meted out at tribal assemblies where all the free men had a say in judgments. Common law, not arbitrary whims of autocrats, decided matters. When autocrats did attempt to seize power, like Maroboduus, they were only put up with for so long before being betrayed or murdered. In this they almost resemble the independent and civic-minded Greeks of the classical age or the most virtuous of the Roman republicans.

Divergence with Classical Tradition

Though there were many similarities between the German and classical ideologies of power there were certainly crucial differences as well. Since the time Christianity had been established in the late Roman world, Christians had always been used to living under a centralized government ruled by a civil bureaucracy, as in the late Western Empire until 476 and in the Byzantine Empire until much later. When the Germans began taking control in the west in the 5th century, the manner in which political authority was implemented shifted, despite underlying similarities in conceptions of power. Two are of significant importance: the return of the martial spirit to political life, and the massive decentralization of power. Though these factors do not concern themselves directly with the image of royal power in the Middle Ages, which is the focus of these essays, they do form a political backdrop against which the people of the Middle Ages developed their theories of royal power.

Whatever else can be said about the Middle Ages, it cannot be denied that it was a very violent time. The ancient world had been very violent as well, but the advent of the Germans represents the return of something to European life that had been gone for some time: civil rule in the hands of military war-lords. By the time of the conversion of Clovis in 496, the Eastern Roman Empire had been ruled for almost two centuries by a civil bureaucracy whose sphere of influence was distinct from that of the military. In the west, however, authority had been concentrated in the hands of a series of powerful barbarian chieftains in the pay of the empire, men like Stilicho and Aetius. However, these de facto military rulers seldom concerned themselves with civic or administrative duties, which largely fell to the crusty remnants of the old Roman civil service, later to the jurisdiction of the local bishop. In the Germanic kingdoms, for the first time in several centuries, the military lord was also the law giver. Germanic rulers were quite conscious of their duties as law givers and several important law codes were promulgated throughout the early Middle Ages, such as the Salic Law of the Franks, the Lex Gundobaba of the Burgundians and the Laws of Ethelbert among the Saxons.

This military-civil rule caused all elements of life in the Middle Ages to be charged with a kind of martial spirit that had long been extinguished in the late Roman world of the west. Germanic peoples were always very prone to war; Tactitus reminds us that glory in war was the highest honor a chieftain could obtain.11 Though the Germans settled down in cities and converted to Christianity in the early centuries of the medieval period, this transformation did not rob them of their martial spirit in the least. In fact, the Christian impulse probably strengthened it, giving military exploits new impetus. Violence was an acceptable answer to every problem. Civil cases were often decided by “Trial by Combat”, personal disputes settled by feuds and vendettas, political disputes by war, arguments of succession by civil conflict and pagan peoples beat back by the sword. In all aspects of life, heavy handed military force replaced the rule of Roman law, which lay dormant in Europe until the 12th century.

It is well known that Christians during the patristic period generally held to a position of non-involvement when it came to the military; some even advocated strict pacifism across the board (e.g., Tertullian). By the time of the establishment of the Germanic kingdoms, warfare was not only permissible to Christians but was seen as a noble and glorious endeavor. This is emphasized by the liturgical texts examined in the last chapter invoking the blessing of the king as he rode off to do battle with the pagans or Saracens. The existence of hostile peoples, be they Arabs on the frontier of Visigothic Spain, Vikings in the north or Avars and Magyars in the east, provided a plethora of belligerent foes to be battled. This martial spirit, especially against pagans, is prevalent in medieval literature, the Song of Roland being a prime example.

Another novel tendency of the Germanic kingdoms was the decentralization of authority. Both in the classical world (pagan and Christian) and in the Middle East, authority was almost always centralized. The only difference was that in the east, the power was centralized in the hands of a single man, while in the west it was centralized in “the State.” The Germans abhorred the autocracy of the east, while the Greco-Roman idea of “the State” was utterly foreign to them. Instead, they generally preferred a decentralized form of government wherein a tribal “king” ruled the realm, whose power was then mediated through several layers of social strata which consisted of other chieftains, warriors, family and even clergy; in medieval terms, through the king’s vassals. Over time, the people’s direct accountability to the king decreased as their local reliance on the dux or petty lord increased. A man was bound to his immediate lord by the oath of fealty, which was similar to the bonds that bound an ancient Germanic warrior to his war-lord or a Roman client to his patron. The kingdoms that emerged are best viewed, not as nations in the modern sense, but as mass conglomerations of lords and vassals united by oaths of fealty. Therefore, while it is proper to speak of French or English “kingdoms”, it is improper to refer to French or English “states” during this period. During the early Middle Ages, “France”, “England” and “Germany” are more geographical expressions than political entities.

By the time of Charlemagne, what had been a centralized, albeit weak, Romanized government had been replaced by an amalgamation of dukedoms, counties and manors farmed by peasants under fealty to local lords, who in turn were under fealty to higher lords, and they in turn to the king. Though the Germanic kingdoms lacked national unity, they made up for it by an ardent militant spirit, motivated in part by their zealous adoption of Christianity. This militant spirit ensured that there was always much turmoil in Western Europe during the Middle Ages. Sometimes there was so much upheaval that the popes had to step in and attempt to mitigate the wars being waged, as in the “Truce of God” and “Peace of God” movements, which attempted to limit fighting to certain days of the week.

The Germanic character of the western European kingdoms comes into play greatly when examining three of the greatest dynasties of the early Middle Ages: the Carolingians, the Anglo-Saxon house of Wessex, and the Ottonians. Each had a profound impact upon the way royal authority was viewed in medieval Europe.

Endnotes

1 The phrase “Germans” in this section refers to all the tribes of northern Europe that are commonly referred to as Germans in ancient accounts. This includes tribes like the Goths, Vandals, Suebi, Lombards, and Burgundians, but also the Franks and Anglo-Saxons as well.

  

2Malcolm Todd, The Early Germans, (Blackwell Publishing: Malden, MA., 1992), 34

3 Tacitus, Germania, 7

4 Todd, 33

5 Tacitus, Germania, 14

6 Todd, 104-105

7 Ibid., 31

8 Tacitus, Germania, 11

9 Todd, 34-35

10 Ibid.

11 Tacitus, Germania, 11

 

Bishop Vasa: defanging the USCCB

Many of you may have already heard about Bishop Robert Vasa's recent statements on the relationship between the USCCB and individual bishops, in which the bishop reminds us that the directives of the USCCB have no binding authority on bishops. Too often the USCCB is viewed as a kind of authoritative regulatory agency for the episcopacy. Vasa has given us a timely reminder that the USCCB exists to serve bishops, not vice versa.

His comments have already been widely disseminated via Lifesite News and the Wanderer. I couldn't find an actual transcript of the talk, so what I have done here is pulled his comments out of the Lifesite article and strung them together to get a basic paraphrase of his comments, which I think are tremendously important. No true reform can hold in the United States until the USCCB is defanged. Bishop Vasa said:

[S]tatements from bishops’ conferences necessarily tend to be "flattened" and "vague," allowing certain teachings to "fall by the wayside through what could be called, charitably, a kind of benign pastoral neglect." While some call this compassion, “in truth, it often entails a complicity or a compromise with evil.  The harder and less popular teachings are left largely unspoken, thereby implicitly giving tacit approval to erroneous or misleading theological opinions... I fear that there has been such a steady diet of such flattened documents that anything issued by individual bishops that contains some element of strength is readily and roundly condemned or simply dismissed as being out of touch with the conference or in conflict with what other bishops might do. USCCB pastoral documents are “are open to a broad range of interpretation and misinterpretation. ... A charge could be brought that such documents are intentionally vague and misleading. While I have had an occasional suspicion of this myself, it would be a serious defect of charity on my part to speculate about whether this is actually the case, I would say that the vagueness, whether intentional or not, has occasionally been a cause of concern and even consternation. 

While [the USCCB] is both practical and desirable” for communication and joint efforts such as liturgical translations and disaster relief, there is “room for concern about the tendency of the conference to take on a life of its own and to begin to replace or displace the proper role of individual bishops, even in their own dioceses. It is easy to forget that the conference is the vehicle to assist bishops in cooperating with each other and not a separate regulatory commission. There may also be an unfortunate tendency on the part of bishops to abdicate to the conference a portion of their episcopal role and duty. Statements from individual bishops "are often stronger, bolder, more decisive, and thus more likely to be criticized as harsh and insensitive. Gentle appeals have their place but when constant appeal produces absolutely no movement toward self-correction, reform or conversion, then reproving and correcting, become necessary. At some point, there needs to be a bold resistance to the powers of the world in defense of the flock the fear of offending one contemptuously dissident member of the flock often redounds to a failure to defend the flock. It can redound to a failure to teach the truth.” (source)

 By the way, what Bishop Vasa is speaking of when he refers to certain "difficult" teachings being allowed to simply fall by the wayside by "benign pastoral neglect", he is affirming what I was getting at in my previous post on the modern Church's "ex voce" teachings: official teachings aren't contradicted, but rather ignored, giving way to erroneous or ambiguous teachings that are promulgated through lower, unofficial organs such as bishop's conferences. Kudos to Bishop Vasa for saying what needed to be said and for doing so in a manner more eloquent and forceful than what I could have done.

Dogma "ex voce"

It seems to me that there are certain dogmas or declarations of the Catholic Church that some in the Magisterium wish they could forget about. I'm thinking of declarations like those found in Unam Sanctam (1302),  the Syllabus of Errors, the Council of Florence, etc. These declarations on issues such as the reality and eternality of hell, the necessity of membership in the Church for salvation, the permanent invalidity of Jewish ceremonial law, the condemnation of secular political concepts and many other such un-ecumenical positions stand out to them as embarrassing monuments of a bygone era. I think many in the Church would like to get rid of these declarations, if they could - and I am speaking not only of liberals, but of mainstream, even certain "conservative" members of the hierarchy. These teachings are like antiquated family heirlooms that one can't get rid of but effectively hides by stuffing them in the attic.

Obviously and thankfully, these declarations cannot be gotten rid of. They can be ignored and wished away, but they will not go away. Definitive, infallible ex cathedra statements remain for all time and are irreformable of their very nature. No matter how much any bishop or cardinal would like to contradict or get rid of these dogmatic heirlooms, they cannot.

Yet, though these declarations will not go away, there is a way that the hierarchy has found to get around this problem. I have noticed that, in areas where the modern hierarchy takes vastly different positions than the traditional Church, novel positions are not given to the faithful by means of encyclicals or dogmatic statements, but are found throughout lower-level pronouncements, such as speeches, letters, addresses, bishops' statements etc. By repeating these novel positions again and again in very low-level pronouncements, the faithful get accustomed to hearing certain novelties "from the Church" and over time come to accept them as "Church teaching."

A classic example is the death penalty. Granted, JPII called for a lesser application of the death penalty in Evangelium Vitae; but besides this, most of the very strong words offered against the death penalty have come from bishop's committees, papal speeches, statements and letters and articles in publications like L'Osservatore Romano and on Zenit. Many of these statements condemn capital punishment absolutely, in contradiction to Church teaching and tradition. The Catechism, the official teaching of the Church, of course says that capital punishment is licit and that the state cannot be denied the right to wield it. That is the official teaching and it cannot be altered. But, at every level lower than official teaching, capital punishment is condemned absolutely, and with such frequency that many orthodox Catholics no longer know that capital punishment is allowable. They have heard the voices of the popes and the bishops (in low-level pronouncements) condemn it so much that this erroneous position has effectively become "the Church's teaching," leading to a situation where something other than Church teaching takes the practical place of Church teaching while allowing the contrary and official position to remain in place.

Thus the strategy for "changing" Church teaching seems to be this: If you want to teach something contrary to what the Church has always taught, just do it at low enough levels of authority and eventually people will start to accept your low-level declarations as "Church teaching" if they are trumpeted about long enough.

Let me offer another example: Balthasar's concept of an "empty hell." This idea can in no way be said to be orthodox and (in my opinion) is a very nefarious doctrine. It is condemned by the constant opinion of theologians throughout the ages, who argued not only that hell is real but that people do actually go there - of many private revelations of the saints, especially those of St. John Bosco, Sister Lucia and St. Teresa of Avila, who said that she saw souls falling into hell "like snowflakes." Yet, despite this, we find persons within the heirarchy teaching the Balthasarian empty hell theory, not on the level of official teaching, but in personal letters, books, speeches, etc.

For example, the late Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in his book New World of Faith, which is meant to be an exposition of Catholic teaching in a way understandable to the modern world, Cardinal Dulles, in his section on hell, mentions Balthasar's theory and gives it credence by citing several arguments in its favor while not providing any arguments against it, thus leading the uninformed reader to suppose that Balthasar's theory is a credible one and on par with the traditional teaching. Only one sentence is given mentioning the teaching of the "Latin theologians from Augustine until recently" while a whole page is given to expound and defend Balthasar's theory. Is this not a veiled way of "teaching" Balthasarian heresy, at least as a hypothesis, without actually teaching it officially?

Cardinal Ratzinger gave Balthasar's theory similar credibility at Balthasar's funeral when, despite Balthasar's novel teaching on hell and his bizarre notion of Christ's atonement, Ratzinger said:

"What the pope intended to express by this mark of distinction [elevation to the Cardinalate], and of honor, remains valid, no longer only private individuals but the Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the faith" (see here).

This isn't officially teaching the empty hell theory, but it is endorsing it in an unofficial way. The Church's endorsement of Balthasar continues in the elevation of Balthasarians to the cardinalate (Scola, for example).

But this is just one example. My point is that theologians, bishops, cardinals and even popes regularly teach novelties in unofficial organs with such frequency that the faithful mistake these pronouncements for the teaching of the Church. The main reason for this is a confusion between a Church official and official teaching. When an official of the Church speaks, it is taken for granted that what he is speaking is official Church teaching. For example, it usually doesn't occur to people who would read Cardinal Dulles' book that what he is presenting in his section on hell is not the official teaching of the Church but his own opinion; why should they? Dulles is a Cardinal and his book is on Catholic teaching. It is natural that they should make this assumption, just like it is natural that they should assume that what the bishops' say on the absolute prohibition of the death penalty is the Church's official teaching. The conflict between what officials say and what the real teaching of the Church is can lead to much confusion.

Thus, I fear, we have come to a place where instead of taking our bearings by teachings given ex cathedra we are now accustomed to assimilating teaching "ex voce," from statements repeated over and over again in low-level pronouncements. Novelties are put forward as teaching, absurd hypotheses are given credence and things abhorrent to the Christian faith are stated as matter of fact (a great example is Kasper's sloppy Reflections on Covenant and Mission regarding Judaism). Basically, I see a working out of the old dictum that anything repeated long enough is believed. It is really quite disingenuous, because everybody knows that lay people expect to hear official Church teaching from members of the hierarchy - the hierarchy also knows that, if they are using means of communication that are considered "low-level" in their authority, they have much more leeway to introduce their own opinions.

This is what I refer to as the Church's underground or "unofficial" teaching, its ex voce teaching, which is a means of subtly introducing modernist interpretations into the deposit of faith. I'm sorry this post is so sloppy; this concept needs to be thought out more. Maybe some of you can give some insight.

"I wait for thy salvation Lord" (Gen. 49:18).

A model bishop

I have been critical of bishops on here before when they either fail to stand up for the faith or else (in some lamentable cases) actively work to undermine it. I think it is right to call bishops on these problems, if it is done in a spirit of charity. Too often bishops get a pass on the stupidest things and are let off with lame excuses ("Well, the episcopacy is a complex matter; we can't possibly understand the strain they must be under" - see here).

But because pointing out the obvious shortcomings of the episcopal college can lead to depression if unchecked, it is important to balance critiques with praises when we come across bishops who are truly excellent. We are blessed to have such a bishop in our diocese, and I want to use this forum to honor and praise him for his wonderful management of the Diocese of Lansing and his fidelity to tradition.

I am speaking, of course, of the Most Reverend Earl Boyea. Bishop Boyea has only been pastor of our Diocese for two years, but he has done some wonderful things in that time. Among his accomplishments:

• Dismissed certain problematic members of the diocesan staff who had been there for years and were responsible for a lot of the nonsense that came out of Lansing.
  
  
• Publicly celebrated the Extraordinary Form of the Mass both before and after his elevation to the episcopate.
  
  
• Asked that the EF of the Mass be made available in every major city in the diocese. It was this request that has led to the monthly celebration of the EF in my own parish, with more frequent celebrations planned in the near future.
  
  
• At the recent convocation, Bishop Boyea, ordered his priests to stop changing the words of the Mass prayers and instructed them to make wider use of chant.
  
  
• Provided education and instruction to his priests on the upcoming Missal translation, thus making the transition to the new Missal smoother and showing himself a supporter of the superior language of the upcoming translation. A diocesan wide plan for January is also in the works to prepare people for the change.
  
  
• Promoted a return to a truly sacred music within the diocese.
  
  
• Personally visited every parish and scrutinized their financial records, commending those parishes who are living within their means and chastising those whose reckless spending has thrown them into a spiral of debt.
  
  
• Promoted a faithful priest who is supportive of homeschooling to be Superintendent of Catholic Schools.

I'm sure there is more than just this - this is the things I can come up with off the top of my head. It is very important to commend these excellent bishops as model pastors, just as St. Charles Borromeo was commended in his day as a model bishop and was subsequently imitated by bishops the world over, to the glory of God and the reformation of the Church.

Here is your chance to share something positive about your bishops - what exemplars of episcopal fidelity do you know of out there who deserve praise? Leave their names in the combox and the reason why they deserve commendation. They do not need to be your own bishop.

Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy in Protestantism & Catholicism

Catholic Tradition has always stressed a fundamental connection between holiness of life (or at least a sincere striving after holiness) and theological insight. The greatest theologians of the Church were also the greatest saints. This personal holiness is, I think, responsible for the amazing clarity and relevance of much of the writings of the saints. The writings of Augustine, Aquinas, Bernard, Gregory the Great, Ignatius Loyola and Newman, besides being treasuries of wisdom, also possess a certain style and clarity that recommends them to the reader. I have noticed that many theologians of greater learning but less sanctity cannot write so well as the saints; the writings of the saints never have that drab, academic feel that sometimes comes when reading the writings of those who were advanced in learning but nowhere near as eminently holy.

In my opinion, this clarity of expression comes not from any stylistic considerations but from the degree of insight with which the saints peer into the mysteries of the faith. In other words, the intelligence and clarity of the saints in speaking and writing about the content of Revelation is directly related to their fidelity to the life of grace. Holiness of life envelops the saint, knowingly or unknowingly, in the sensus fidelium, which enables them to intuitely understand the Faith unerringly and see the truth simply and clearly; recall the marvelously simple but profound answers given by St. Joan of Arc at her trial. In Catholicism, there is a very vital link between personal holiness and theological insight.

However, it is the former which gives rise to the latter, not vice-versa. As we know from many examples, not least of which those spoken by our Lord with reference to the Pharisees, one can know Scripture and understand theology and still be a jerk. Yet we might also reply that those who learn Scripture and theology in a Pharisaical manner have not really learned it. They have perhaps wrapped their mind around a shell of it, but somehow managed to miss the essence of the Gospel entirely. He who truly knows theology knows that theological truths are transformative, as Pope Benedict pointed out in Spes Salvi. He who learns theology but fails to let the Holy Spirit transform him has not really understood what it is he is studying - he who knows theology but hardens his heart against the truths of theology does not really know theology. Thus, in Catholicism at least, there is no real tension between the theologian and the saint. The saint is the most insightful theologian and the theologian who takes his theology seriously will become saintly.

Those who have been around Protestants for any amount of time, especially evangelicals, know that this tension between theological learning and personal piety does in fact exist in Protestantism. Traditional Protestantism has always harbored a suspicious of too much theological learning, viewing an erudite and systematic theology as somehow detrimental to the life of faith. Anyone who has spoken at length with evangelical Protestants, or those of the Pentecostal persuasion, have no doubt heard of the dichotomy between real, saving faith and mere "religion", which is associated with institutional churches and theological study. It is somewhat axiomatic in many forms of Protestantism that too much theological study leads to the believer getting lost amidst a web of  "cold Christs and tangled Trinities", all the while missing the simple, saving faith that is alone capable of imparting salvation. Many times, when speaking with Protestants, if the discussion gets to theological, they will back away and say something like, "Yeah, but what is really important is that I have Jesus in my heart. It doesn't matter how sophisticated your theology is if you don't have Jesus in your heart."

Why does Protestantism seem to harbor an inherent distrust towards too much theological learning? I think it has to do with the origin of Protestantism itself, in a twofold sense: first, because of Protestantism's birth in the context of a revolt against Catholic theology in general and Scholastic theology in particular - recall Luther's bombastic assaults against Scholastic theology and patristics at the Diet of Worms when debating Johann Eck and later St. Cajetan - and secondly, the adoption by most Protestants of a soteriology based on the dogma of sola fide.

The first point is well established: Protestant theology was fueled by a rejection of Thomist theology and, in a broader sense, a reaction against the application of reason to theology.  The second point, regarding sola fide, needs a bit more fleshing out. For Luther and the early Protestants, salvation is procured according to the doctrine of sola fide, by which a person is justified by nothing other than faith alone in the saving work of Jesus Christ. This act of faith is exemplified by a very radical and individual commitment to Jesus Christ, which is very often a matter more emotional than intellectual. Later evangelical Protestantism stressed the fundamental emotional nature of the Christian's act of faith, which necessarily put it at odds with any perceived intellectualism. Reason, theology, intellectualism - these are things that stand in the way of faith rather than aid it. True conversion will always be discernible by the believer's emotional dedication to God, sometimes in spite of any theological knowledge. In this sort of Protestantism, it is theology that is a handmaid to the emotions. This, I think, is a result of Protestantism placing the crux of its soteriology on the believer's sola fide act of faith in Christ without any reference to anything else (sacraments, Church, doctrine, discipline, etc).

The interesting question is if such a schism between piety and theology is developing in Catholicism as well. It has happened before, in the form of 17th century Pietism. Yet I think it might be returning now in a different, less elitist form. Beginning in the aftermath of Vatican II, many Catholic leaders advocated a "Protestantizing" of the Catholic Mass, in the hopes that fostering a little more emotionalism would make the Mass more "relevant" to the faithful. This, I believe, is a subtle form of Modernism, due to its emphasis on the subjective experience of the believer as paramount in their spiritual life. It is undeniable that there exists today a very large subgroup within the Church that values the believer's emotional state much more than doctrinal or disciplinary considerations, essentially severing the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxy. I'm not going to engage in the fruitless task of trying to point out who is doing this, exactly, but I'm thinking, for example, of those who encourage anybody and everybody to go up to Communion all the time, even if in a state of unconfessed mortal sin. One time, as I was refraining from going up to Communion, a certain woman came up to me and encouraged me to go forward anyway. I said I had not been to Confession and had committed a serious sin; she said, "Oh, that doesn't matter. Jesus would want you to come to Him." This is exactly the sort of thing I am talking about - doctrine and theology is thrown out as obstacles to loving God.

Of course, one who takes such an approach of discarding theology for the sake of loving God will neither love God nor understand any theology. I do fear, however, that many lay Catholics, and even many bishops, have begun to take this approach to the Faith. When we often say that our faith is being "Protestantized", too often we are making references to only the extrinsic elements of our faith - music, decorum, etc. The true Protestantization of Catholicism is something happening in our hearts, in what we consider important and how we approach the deposit of faith. Is it a regula fidei that keeps our feet firmly on the narrow path leading to salvation, the faith which, as it says in the Athanasiuan Creed, "except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly"? Or, do we find in the Church's doctrines something that we feel restrains us and interferes with our worship of God? This is where we need to look when examining the question of the Protestantization of our Faith. Like everything else, it starts with our fundamental philosophy about the nature of revealed Truth.

Methuselah and the Flood

The extraordinarily long lives of the ante-diluvian patriarchs have always elicited debate among scholars of Sacred Scripture, especially that of Methuselah, who was just shy of a millennium when he died. We read in the fifth chapter of Genesis of Methuselah, the oldest human being who ever lived; according to the Scriptures, he lived to be 969 years old (Gen. 5:27). Methuselah was the son of Enoch, the first human to be assumed into Paradise, and was also the grandfather of Noah. Here is the genealogy of Methuselah as presented in Genesis 5:25-32:

When Methuselah was one hundred and eighty-seven years old, he became the father of Lamech.Methuselah lived seven hundred and eighty-two years after the birth of Lamech, and he had other sons and daughters.The whole lifetime of Methuselah was nine hundred and sixty-nine years; then he died.When Lamech was one hundred and eighty-two years old, he begot a son and named him Noah, saying, "Out of the very ground that the LORD has put under a curse, this one shall bring us relief from our work and the toil of our hands." The whole lifetime of Lamech was seven hundred and seventy-seven years; then he died. When Noah was five hundred years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Lamech lived five hundred and ninety-five years after the birth of Noah, and he had other sons and daughters.

Aside from the question of whether these long lifespans are literal or not (and I see no reason why they can't be), there is a very interesting correlation here between the life of Methuselah and the coming of the great Flood. We know that Methuselah lives to be 969 years old. We also know that the Flood comes in Noah's 600th year, according to Genesis 7:11. If we work backwards from the Flood to the birth of Noah, we have 600 years. Now, from the birth of Noah back to the birth of Noah's father Lamech, Genesis tells us was 182 years. From the birth of Lamech back to the birth of his father, Methuselah, we are told that 187 years elapsed.

So, from the birth of Methuselah to the great Flood we have three periods, 187 years, 182 years and 600 years. If we add these three periods together, we come up with 969 years, the exact same span of time that Methuselah was on the earth.

What does this mean? It indicates that the Flood happened in the same year Methuselah died, which can be interpreted in two ways: (1) God (depending on how one interprets Gen. 6:3), seems to warn that man has only one hundred and twenty years left until they are judged. Since the Flood happened in the same year Methuselah died, we could not unreasonably conjecture that God was postponing the Flood until the death of Methuselah, not wanting to destroy the righteous along with the wicked. (2) Or, perhaps, as one of the students in my Sacred Scripture class flippantly suggested, Methuselah was one of the wicked who was washed away in the Flood. Since Methuselah was the son of righteous Enoch, who was assumed into Paradise, I am disinclined to think this is likely.

God was, therefore, probably waiting for Methuselah to die before He sent the Flood.  This is corroborated by ancient Jewish tradition; according to the Targums, Aramaic commentaries on the Old Testament, the Flood began after the seven days of mourning for the death of Methuselah were ended (source). By the way, if you do the math, Lamech, father of Noah, predeceased Methuselah by five years. 

I don't know why or if this is very important, but it is interesting to point out and reminds us that these lifespans given to the antediluvian patriarchs are not arbitrary.

Anselm also did an interesting post on the issue of chronology sometime ago, if you are interested (here).

Pius XII, Teilhard and Ratzinger

Teilhard de Chardin's theory of the evolution of the cosmos towards the Omega Point. To what degree does this cosmology, which the Holy Office said 'offends Catholic doctrine',  influence our current pontiff's thought on the question of evolution?

In the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, "On Human Origins," Pope Pius XII allows us, by way of concession, to believe in the possibility that the human body could have evolved from preexisting biological material, so long as we adhere to the immediate creation of the soul by God in our first parents.

I have never ben entirely comfortable with this concession and have always opted for a more traditional, creationist view of things (though that doesn't mean I am necessarily a "Young Earther"). As I was explaining Pius' concession to a Sacred Scripture class I teach for high schooler's this week, I noted, too, that many of them were uncomfortable with it because they felt it introduced too much duality into man's nature. 

I recalled that Cardinal Ratzinger had once expressed a similar reserve in a book he wrote back in 1973 entitled Dogma und Verkundigung. If you are wondering how I came across this essay, it is because Ignatius Press somewhat disingenuously reproduced it, along with a series of other essays, in a book called Credo for Today: What Christians Believe. I say it is disingenuous because the book, which is a collection of Ratzinger's essays dating from the 70's and 80's, is marketed as if it were the writings of Pope Benedict. The cover shows a picture of Benedict as pope (not as a professor at Regensburg) and says "Pope Benedict XVI" on the cover. Those who didn't know better would think the book's contents were the pope's current thought and writings; one has to go all the way to the appendix before you find out that these are actually essays written over twenty years ago, for the most part. Furthermore, despite the subtitle of the book saying "What Christians Believe," the book contains some of Ratzinger's most speculative theology, stuff that can hardly be said to be what most Christians believe.

Anyhow, back to evolution. I cite this book because both Ratzinger and I have difficulties with Pius XII's concession in Humani Generis, but whereas I go one way to get around the difficulty, Ratzinger goes another.

Ratzinger begins his essay on creation with the very important point that theologians cannot simply ignore the question of the origins of life and issues surrounding evolution - they have to be dealt with. As an example of how modern theology can ignore the question of the origin of man, he cites those who say that how man was created is superfluous anyway; those who, when confronted with alleged contradictions between Genesis and Darwin, will shrug and paraphrase Augustine: "The Bible is meant to tell us who made the heavens, not how the heavens were made." It is certainly true that the Scriptures are meant to lead us to salvation, but that does not in any way mean that everything else it says is superfluous, or that things like the creation narrative are not also ordered to our salvation in various ways.

Ratzinger says this position of "it doesn't really matter how we take Genesis 1" is especially disingenuous since only a little more than a century ago there were a good many theologians, and even regional synods, insisting that the fixity of species and a literal reading of Genesis 1 were de fide. Ratzinger condemns those who "make a dishonest compromise and for tactical reasons declare the terrain that has become untenable as superfluous anyway, after having so short a time before insisted loudly on situating it as an indispensable part of the faith" (pg. 34). Therefore, the issue of creation and evolution must be dealt with somehow.

Where I diverge from Ratzinger is in his automatic assumption that the traditional view is "untenable." I wish he would not have brushed it aside so easily. But in any case, he goes on to the compromise permitted by Pius XII in Humani Generis, that the body could be the product of evolution but the soul could not. I personally have always been uncomfortable with Pius's compromise; I know the pope allows Catholics to maintain this position, but it is only by way of concession, as if saying that accommodating evolution to creation is an exception, not the norm. I also thought that this idea introduced too much duality into the human person - to say that the physical part of man was the process of evolution but the soul infused by God at a later time, whenever the human anatomy had reached a sufficient stage of evolutionary growth. In this view, God basically took one of the advanced primates already in existence and ennobled it by the infusion of a soul, not unlike what God did when He granted Balaam's ass the powers of speech and reason momentarily.

Ratzinger, too, finds a problem with the Humani Generis compromise. He says;

"Now some have tried to get around the problem by saying that the human body may be a product of evolution, but the soul is not by any means: God himself created it, since spirit cannot emerge from matter. This answer seems to have in its favor the fact that spirit cannot be examined by the same scientific method with which one studies the history of organisms, but only at first glance is this a satisfactory answer. We have to continue the line of questioning: Can we divide man up in this way between theologians and scientists--the soul for the former, the body for the latter? Is that not intolerable for both? The natural scientist believes that he can see man as a whole gradually taking shape; he also finds an area of psychological transition in which human behavior slowly arises out of animal activity, without being able to draw a clear boundary...Conversely, the theologian is convinced that the soul gives form to the body as well, characterizing it through and through as a human body, so that a human being is spirit only as body and is body only as and in the spirit, then this division of man loses all meaning for him, too" (p. 38).

The compromise that Pius XII allowed by way of concession holds little value for Ratzinger, even though many eminent modern theologians hold precisely this opinion. But Ratzinger is an honest theologian and will not admit of a concept so dualistic and problematic as the theory of the evolutionary creation of the body from preexisting matter. At this point, however, instead of reverting to a more (in my opinion) traditional understanding of the immediate and special creation of man, Ratzinger instead opts to go in a direction even further in the line of evolutionary thought than the concession allowed in Humani Generis.

To Ratzinger it seems that it must be one or the other - spirit must evolve along with matter, or spirit and matter both must be created apart from evolution. Since Ratzinger has already found the non-evolutionary arguments to be "untenable," he now turns to none other than the condemned Jesuit modernist Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, he whose works the Holy Office declared "abound in such ambiguities and indeed even serious errors, as to offend Catholic doctrine" (source). From Teilhard Ratzinger takes the idea that the universe represents the "self-actuation" of the Logos in time and space - that "the world as a whole, as the Bible says, comes from the Logos, that is, from the creative mind and represents the temporal form of its self-actuation...the world of becoming as the self-actuation of creative thought" (p. 44). From this Teilhardian idea, Ratzinger will build up his conclusion that spirit can, in a sense, involve from matter, since the developments we witness in the unfolding of the cosmos should not be seen as unguided evolution but as the self-actuation in time of a timeless Logos.

Don't think I'm connecting dots between Ratzinger and Teilhard that aren't there; Ratzinger cites Teilhard by name a little further on in this passage, saying that Teilhard's idea of spirit as the "goal" of an evolutionary "process" is "ingenious" and "quite accurate" (pp. 44-45). He is very clearly, unapologetically and enthusiastically in debt to Teilhard for some of these ideas. I know that just because Teilhard's writings have been condemned does not mean he may not have some valuable things to say; we still quote Origen and Tertullian despite some of their issues. But, really, could not the man who would become the Prefect of the CDF find a  more weighty authority to cite other than Teilhard de Chardin? Ratzinger borrows more from Teilhard later in the book, adopting Teilhard's terminology of the end of history as an "omega point" in his essay on the Second Coming (p. 113)

Anyhow, back to matter and spirit. So, if the world is in a process of "self-actualization" in relation to the Logos, then the emergence of spirit into the world of matter can be seen as an inevitable part of this development. This leads Ratzinger to posit "matter as the prehistory of the spirit" and he formulates his idea of spirit emerging out of matter in Hegelian terms of matter as a "moment" in the development of spirit:

"It is clear that spirit is not a random product of material developments, but rather that matter signifies a moment in the history of spirit. This, however, is just another way of saying that spirit is created and is not the mere product of development, even though it comes to light by way of development" (p. 45).

So the spirit is not simply infused into the ready biological material, as Pius XII allowed for, but neither is the human body created uniquely and infused with a soul. Rather, as the whole cosmos is tending towards a universal development towards spirit, the emergence of spirit into matter is something that is latent within the cosmos from the beginning, even if initially we see no traces of spirit. Spirit does not evolve out of matter, but is truly, in a sense, in potency with relation to matter, so that when matter has reached the proper developmental stage in its self-actuation, spirit is enabled to "emerge." Just as an acorn does not evolve into a tree, but rather, the tree is latent within the acorn; the emergence of the tree is the self-actualization of the acorn, not its evolution. He says:

"The appearance of spirit, according to the previous discussion, means rather that an advancing movement arrives at the goal that has been set for it" (p. 46).

It is this advancement that Ratzinger calls the "rise of the spirit." Thus, through this Teilhardian logic, we are able to at once affirm that spirit is not the product of evolution while maintaining that spirit can indeed emerge out of matter "by way of development" , as Ratzinger says. This is, says Ratzinger, how "the special creation of man can coexist with an evolutionary world view, or what form it must assume within an evolutionary world view" (p. 45).

So, how does this emergence of the spirit occur with reference to the human person, who would undoubtedly be the locus for the spirit's emergence? Having already discarded out of hand the traditional idea that God formed man immediately from dirt and infused him with life, as well as casting doubt on Pius XII's concession that God allowed man's body to evolve from preexisting matter, Ratzinger goes on to explain the emergence of spirit within man in the following terms:

"The clay became man at that moment in which a being for the first time was capable of forming, however dimly, the thought "God." The first "thou" that -- however stammeringly -- was said by human lips to god marks the moment in which spirit arose in the world. Here the Rubicon of anthropogenesis was crossed" (p. 46-47).

So, man becomes man as soon as man is capable of formulating the idea of God, "however stammeringly." Here we have Ratzinger's theory of the emergence of spirit out of matter and how non-human life forms crossed the ontological Rubicon from non-human into human existence.

On the one hand, Ratzinger is a much more intelligent person than I am, and so I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, keeping in mind as well that this essay was written in 1973 and obviously carries no papal authority nor even any magisterial authority. But on the other hand, I know when something smells fishy, espcially when Teilhard is invoked.

My first problem with Ratzinger's thesis is that, if we deny that spirit can develop from matter but admit that it arises out of matter by way of development, the fact is that it still evolves from matter. It is irrelevant whether the cause for the emergence of the spirit is extrinsic (somekind of random modification in biological matter that allows for the emergence of spirit), or intrinsic (an inherent principle of "elasticity" within matter that allows it to give way to spirit at a certain point, just as an acorn becomes a tree), the fact is we still have matter evolving into spirit. It doesn't matter (pun intended) whether the we say spirit evolved from matter or whether we say matter is a "moment" in the history of spirit. However you slice it, you still have spirit "emerging' out of matter, whether or not you say the change is blind evolution or a movement towards a goal. To me, this is still quite troubling.

Second, and more problematic, is the contrast between Ratzinger's conception of the first concept of God and Catholic theology on the state of our first parents before the Fall. Ratzinger states that spirit first enters the world at the moment that the first being, "however dimly" and "however stammeringly" uttered the word "God." This would coincide with the moment in the Genesis account when God breathes the breath of life into the nostrils of Adam and makes him a "living being."

However, is there not a problem here? According to the doctrine of Original Sin, man originally existed in a state of perfect justice and preternatural glory. Humani Generis reminds us that we must believe in the existence of two literal first parents who were created in grace but fell into sin. Thus, our first parents would have been brought forth in a state of natural perfection with their minds enlightened by grace and an infused knowledge of God; not simply of His existence, but of His perfections and of the fact that man is created to be in relation with Him. In short, our first parents had a very clear and unmistakable notion of God (otherwise how could have been guilty of sinning against Him?) - created fresh from His hands, enlightened in their intellect by grace and unmarred from sin, their understanding of Him in their perfected natural state was greater and clearer than most of us will ever experience. Can this vision of God which our first parents enjoyed prior to Original Sin be reconciled with Ratzinger's comments that the first conception of God emerged in the human species "dimly" and "stammeringly"? It seems to me that the first conception mankind ever had of God was a glorious vision, full of clarity and infused knowledge, that is unrivaled except by some of the holiest saints.

Well, Ratzinger wrote this stuff back in 73' and I haven't heard much on this by way of him since; for all I know, he may repudiate all this Teilhardian stuff. So don't accuse me of bashing "the Pope" or being a dissenter or anything; I can certainly voice my apprehensions about an essay written by Ratzinger twenty-five years before he ascended to the Chair of Peter. It bothers me that, when faced with dilemmas about reconciling evolution and creation, the tendency seems to be to grant more and more ground to evolutionary biology and relegate the creation story more and more to the realm of allegory, until it is, as Tolkien said, "tucked into a lumber-room of their mind as not very fashionable furniture, a bit ashamed to have it about the house, don't you know, when the bright clever young people called" (see here). If we are finding out, as Ratzinger did, that the concessions allowed by Pius XII in Humani Generis are too dualistic for Catholics to be comfortable with, then why not just go back to something more traditional instead of going further ahead into modernist evolutionary-theological hypotheses about "emergent spirit" "omega points" and the "Rubicon of anthropogenesis"? I don't know...I'm sure some will just say that I'm not a theologian and that I shouldn't try to apply my mind to these things. I don't deny that I am not a theologian. But like I said, I know when something stinks, and if I want to have a conversation about Creation and someone starts talking Teilhard, I definitely start to smell something.

Extraordinary Form at my parish!

Deo gratias! Three years now in the making, after numerous discussions, endless battles with various elements within the parish about things traditional, countless hours of training and much other sacrifice and labor, our parish priest was finally able to offer Mass in the Extraordinary Form this past Tuesday night. I was not able to attend this Mass, unfortunately (mainly because I didn't know about it), but the turnout was great (50 people) and I am certain that there will be more such Masses offered in the future; I understand that our pastor wants to make it a weekly thing, which would be great.

This is a true story of victory - six years ago, before our pastor came, we had a drum-set in the choir loft, the CCW offered incense to the four winds, the priest said Mass in tye-dye, there was liturgical dancing with streamers and our parish was hundreds of thousands of dollars in the red. In six short years we have an orthodox, reverent pastor, a music director who gives us a regular does of chant, communion rails are back up, Mass is ad orientem at a neo-Gothic high altar, the Extraordinary Form is back and parishioners are very happy with the state of things - in fact, our parish is out of debt and growing monthly, so much so that some Masses are standing room only.

Click here to read a little write-up on our TLM from the Detroit Latin Mass Community. Kudos to the Most Reverend Earl Boyea, our Bishop, who not only is friendly to the Extraordinary Form, but has offered it himself many times and actually requested that our pastor do so, a request that was directly responsible for what happened at our parish last Tuesday.

Te Deum!

More Quran burning stupidity

I had originally decided to keep my mouth shut on the Quran burning controversy until I came across an articel by Msgr. Charles Pope of the Archdiocese of Washington entitled "Burning the Quran is a Bad Idea and a Sin", which you can read here.

I can certainly understand arguments to the effect that burning Qurans publicly might be a bad idea in the sense that it could lead to violent backlashes against Americans abroad. I don't necessarily agree with this argument, but I can at least understand it. My thinking is that if a huge group of people is going to be riled up to commit murder and terrorism because their holy book was burned, then this only demonstrates the degree to which they have a problem. It is the same stupid argument from Regensburg: the Pope says Islam is violent and Muslims react violently against the accusation - and it is the Pope who has a problem with intolerance!

But to say that burning the Quran is a sin? A sin, really? On what grounds does Msgr. Pope suggest that burning the Quran may be "sinful'? On the grounds that, to quote his article, "Intentionally giving offense is wrong – I do not deny that there are problems in the Islamic world. But I also know that it is wrong to intentionally and grievously give offense to the religious traditions of others." So it is wrong to intentionally give offense to the religious traditions of others, according to Msgr. Pope.

This is troublesome to me because it seems that the entire religious tradition of Christianity is one that offends and gives scandal to those of other faiths; St. Peter calls Christ a "rock of offense" and a "stone of stumbling" (1 Pet. 2:8). How can we avoid giving offense to other religious traditions if we preach the Gospel message that Christ is the only way to salvation, that "there is no under name under heaven given whereby men might be saved? (Acts 4:12). How can Muslims, Buddhists and all the other pagans not be offended if we really believe and teach the words of Christ, Who said, "Amen, amen, I say to you: He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold but climbeth up another way, the same is a thief and a robber" (John 1:10); yes, this means that Christians believe that you Muslims and Hindus, if you are trying to attain salvation in any other manner other than through Christ and His Church, you are a "thief and a robber" and your holy men are nothing other than false prophets. 

In short, Christianity, by its exclusivity and its demand of universal allegiance, puts itself into a state of permanent antagonism with the world and with the false religions of the world, notwithstanding whatever John XXIII might have personally thought on the matter. We have it from the words of Sacred Scripture and of our Divine Saviour: 

Wonder not, brethren, if the world hates you. (1 John 3:13)

If the world hate you, know ye that it hath hated me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. (John 15:18-19)

Know you not that the friendship of this world is the enemy of God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of this world becometh an enemy of God. (James 4:4)

The Church is in a state of emnity with the world, and the world with it. Therefore, it is inescapable that the Truth will be offensive to the world. Now, I know that saying that the message of the Gospel will give offense if different from the offense giving from a Quran burning. Granted. But the question we are looking at it whether or not it is a sin to give offense, regardless of what the offense is over. Clearly, since Christianity's very existence presumes that offense will be given to the religions of non-believers, we cannot maintain that it is always a sin to offend people. We also must acknowledge that the default relation between the Church and the world is one of antagonism and enmity; in fact, it is a life or death struggle. It is not one of harmonious relation and mutual enrichment; when the world creeps in, the Church weakens and vice versa. 

So it is not wrong to give offense, especially if the offense has to do with the Truth of the Gospel. But what about Msgr. Pope's assertiont hat giving offense to the religious traditions of others in particular is wrong? I guess someone better tell that to Gideon when he smashed the altar of Baal, to the offense and consternation of his neighbors (see here); somebody had better chastize King Jehu for slaying the worshipers of Baal and turning their temple into a latrine; I guess Elijah the prophet was wrong to intentionally mock and tease the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, insulting their false god for being unable to answer their prayers. What of St. Boniface's intolerant destruction of the sacred tree of the Germans? What of St. Benedict, who destroyed a pagan temple to Apollo that was still being frequented by worshipers of the heathen god? Shall we say the founder of western monasticism was committing a sin to so offend the followers of Apollo by destroying their shrine? Or shall we accuse Pope St. Gregory the Great of intolerance and sin when he commands Augustine to destroy the idols of the pagan Angli, though allowing him to retain the structure (here)? What of the greatest of all the missionary saints, holy Patrick of Ireland, who smashed the great idol of Crom Dubh with a hammer and destroyed the shrine of the demon, to the anger of the Irish pagans? Surely Patrick would not have acted so hastily if he would have had the benefit of reading some of our post-Conciliar literature! Well, you get the point; throughout Church history there are so many examples of saints and holy persons destroying the temples and idols of the heathens, even to their great offense, that we could say that the consensus of tradition outweighs the words of Msgr. Pope, unless the Monsignor will assert that Gideon, Elijah, Jehu, Boniface, Gregory, Patrick Benedict and all the saints acted sinfully and errantly in "intentionally giving offense to the religious traditions" of the pagans by destroying their shrines and idols.

Even book burning specifically has been given at least implicit sanction by the Scriptures and explicit sanction by the papacy. If we look to the book of Acts, we read the following:

And many of them that believed came, confessing and declaring their deeds. And many of them who had followed curious arts brought together their books and burnt them before all. And, counting the price of them, they found the money to be fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and was confirmed. (Acts 19:18-20).

The message here is that some "religious texts" are worthy only to be burned. Somebody might object that here, it was not Christians burning the books of another religious group but rather converts burning their own books. I don't see this makes much of a difference; would the Islamic world be any less upset if Pastor Jones had been a Christian convert from Islam?

Furthermore, if burning the books of other religious groups were always bad, how could Pope St. Pius X command that Protestant Bibles be burned? In the Catechism of St. Pius X, we see the following articles:

32 Q. What should a Christian do who has been given a Bible by a Protestant or by an agent of the Protestants?

A. A Christian to whom a Bible has been offered by a Protestant or an agent of the Protestants should reject it with disgust, because it is forbidden by the Church. If it was accepted by inadvertence, it must be burnt as soon as possible or handed in to the Parish Priest.

33 Q. Why does the Church forbid Protestant Bibles?

A. The Church forbids Protestant Bibles because, either they have been altered and contain errors, or not having her approbation and footnotes explaining the obscure meanings, they may be harmful to the Faith. It is for that same reason that the Church even forbids translations of the Holy Scriptures already approved by her which have been reprinted without the footnotes approved by her.

Note that the reason St. Pius X approves the burning of Protestant Bibles is because they contain things that may be 'harmful tot he Faith." If this applies to a Protestant edition of the Sacred Scriptures, how much more would it apply to the Quran?

Msgr. Pope goes on to say that burning the Quran is a scandal because it will lead others to sin, meaning the Muslims, who will be so aroused to anger by the Quran burning that they will commit the sin of anger. Notice, however, that like the liberal media, Msgr. Pope places all the blame for the potential Muslim backlash not on Muslims, but on Pastor Jones. He says:

"Knowing that there are violent tendencies in sectors of Islam, it is wrong to inflame those tendencies and draw others to anger and violence. In effect Pastor Jones is tempting others to sin. He may have a right to do this but it is not necessary for him to do this. This compounds the sinfulness of the planned book burning. It is also wrong to endanger the lives of others by reckless behavior. It is a strong likelihood that hundreds, possibly thousands may die if rioting occurs. It is easy for us to say, “Well they shouldn’t get so worked up about it….see the problem is theirs.”  That is a debate for another time. But this action is sure to inflame passions."

How absurd! He admits freely that "thousands may die" in Islamic rioting, but if we question whether this may perhaps be a problem not with Pastor Jones but with Islam, Msgr. Pope brushes us aside by saying "That is a debate for another time." That's right! If Muslims threaten to riot and slay thousands, it is our problem, not theirs. We need to be more sensitive.

But let's go back to this issue of scandal. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that scandal consists not simply in leading one to sin, but in "something less rightly done or said, that occasions another's spiritual downfall" (STh II-II, Q. 43 Art. 1). Burning the Quran is a way of declaring that the book is full of falsehoods and is not worthy of the prestige Muslims assign to it, which is the truth. This is what Muslims need to hear; remember, these false religions are leading souls to hell daily and we have a duty to tell them the truth, even if that truth gives offense regarding their false religion. If anything, it would be scandalous to allow Muslims to go ahead believing that their book is full of valuable spiritual insights when in reality it is a Satanic deception. I would say that to not destroy the Quran when one has the means is scandalous.

We should also remember that scandal means one if led to spiritual ruin by the sin of another. So, to say that scandal occurs when our behavior leads another to sin is only a half-truth. Properly speaking, the sin of scandal occurs only when our sin leads another to sin. St. Thomas tells us that scandal can be of two kinds: active or passive. Active scandal occurs when one's sin leads another to sin. But passive scandal occurs when one is scandalized and led into sin by something other than sin. St. Thomas says that this can even occur with regards to a good deed:

Scandal is of two kinds, passive scandal in the person scandalized, and active scandal in the person who gives scandal, and so occasions a spiritual downfall. Accordingly passive scandal is always a sin in the person scandalized; for he is not scandalized except in so far as he succumbs to a spiritual downfall, and that is a sin. Yet there can be passive scandal, without sin on the part of the person whose action has occasioned the scandal, as for instance, when a person is scandalized at another's good deed. In like manner active scandal is always a sin in the person who gives scandal, since either what he does is a sin, or if it only have the appearance of sin, it should always be left undone out of that love for our neighbor which binds each one to be solicitous for his neighbor's spiritual welfare; so that if he persist in doing it he acts against charity (STh, II-II. Q. 43. Art. 2).

St. Thomas recognizes here that though sin may certainly scandalize (active scandal), it is possible for another to be scandalized and led into sin by something that is not sinful; Thomas gives the example of a good deed. In such a case (passive scandal), Thomas says that the one who causes the scandal is not guilty of the sin of scandal since the scandalizing action was not immoral. So, when the men of Gideon's village were outraged at him for destroying the idol of Baal, so angry that they wanted to kill him, it was not Gideon who was guilty of giving scandal but the Baal worshipers who were guilty of being scandalized by the truth.

If it is not objectively wrong to destroy Qurans (and based on what we have reviewed above from the Scriptures, the lives of the saints and the words of Pius X, there is no way it could be), then we must conclude that the ire aroused by the destruction of these books cannot be imputed to those Christians who burn them, but only to those Muslims who react hostilely to the burning of their false scriptures. I would go so far as to say that burning Qurans is a prudent thing to do (since the book is full of lies and blasphemies and leads souls to damnation) and that those Muslims who are angered at the burning of their book are actually guilty of sin.

We have to lose this softness of paganism and false religions: these religious systems hold people in spiritual (and sometimes political) bondage. They lead souls to hell. Mohammed is a false prophet, and to the degree that Mohammed was inspired he was inspired by a demon to mock and ape the true Faith. Am I saying we all need to go out and burn Qurans? That's up to you; if some fell into my hands I would probably destroy them, just like I do when I get a hold of a Book of Mormon or a New Kingdom version of the Bible (the Jehovah's Witnesses Bible). But let's not get all outraged with the liberal media about a Pastor who rightfully wants to make a stand against Islam, saying stupid things like Quran burning is a "sin." The Quran is an evil book and doesn't deserve respect. Period.

Please click here for Athanasius' post on the same subject.

Movie Review: Inception (2010)

I normally don't go out and see new movies that everybody is talking about; usually the fact that everybody is talking about a movie is a guarantee that the said movie is stupid, banal, etc. However, after hearing both Youth Group kids and many parents (whose opinions I respect), as well as some Catholic reviewers tell me how excellent Inception is, I decided to go out and see it.

This is advertised as a film that "makes you think" by playing with reality via dream sequences; i.e., creating a tension in which the viewer is never sure whether or not the main character is dreaming. This initially made me skeptical; the first film I can recall in my day that did this was the early 90's Schwarzeneggar flick Total Recall, which was alright but was kind of a dud. A decade later M. Night Shyamalan tried this again with The Sixth Sense, which everybody raves about to this day but which I found boring and unconvincing. Thus, when I heard that Inception had to do with dream sequences and alternate realities, I immediately thought of Sixth Sense and prepared myself for a stinker.

Boy, was I mistaken! Inception proved to be a true delight. Somewhat of an action movie, somewhat of a philosophical statement about our perceptions of reality and somewhat a love story about coping with loss, Incepetion is hard to categorize, but it is best understood as a modern take on the myth of Theseus. I'm not going to say too much more about this, but you'll understand if you see the movie.

I don't really want to give too much away about the film, save to say that it deals with the concept of individuals called "extractors" being able to get into other people's minds via their dreams in order to obtain access to hidden thoughts or (in some cases) to plant thoughts. The main plot has to do with the attempt of protagonist Tom Cobb (DiCaprio) and a team of expert "extractors" to get inside the head of the young heir to a corporate empire in order to plant a thought in his subconscious, a procedure called "inception." Why they want to do this is too complicated for me to go into here; the back story isn't too important. to get into, because all the viewer really cares about is the fascinating interplay between dream and reality as the extractors go deeper and deeper into the subconscious of the dreamer: a dream within a dream within a dream within a dream, each successive dream or "layer" getting more surreal than the last.

Despite all the talk about dreams, the film manages to deal with many interesting issues surrounding the topic without even once straying into the realms of the New Age or the paranormal, which would have been very easy to do.  Thankfully it doesn't go there; it's approach is more scientific and philosophical, not pseudo-spiritual.

It is also quite clean - there is absolutely no sexuality or sensuality at all. The name of God is blasphemed about three times. Blasphemy is always regrettable, but it is not gratuitous. What do I mean by this? Well, in some movies there is a lot of blasphemy simply because the characters are made to be blasphemers; so a character is made to blaspheme constantly in the course of normal conversation. This sort of blasphemy is especially reprehensible. But then there is a more "realistic" sort of blasphemy; for example, in this film, the main character takes the Lord's name in vain after witnessing his wife commit suicide (sorry for the spoiler). This, though still regrettable, is less offensive to me because I can readily imagine that a real person who witnessed their wife kill herself before his eyes might say God's name in this manner. It is way more realistic; I'm not condoning it at all, but I am saying that it is not gratuitous. I hope you understand what I'm getting at.

The film has one of those endings that leaves you on the edge and makes you walk away wondering. Beyond that I am not going to say much more.

This was one of the only films all year that is worth going to see in the theater. The plot was excellent, the movie was engaging, it had the right balance of action, thoughtfulness and tension; Leonardo DiCaprio did an excellent job and the film even managed to work in themes from Greek mythology. There is a very strong theme of warning about what can go wrong when one tries to pursue fleeting fantasies instead of the truth, and the protagonist Cobb, despite delving into the depths of the subconscious, remains committed to the existence of a ground of reality "up there." 

Except for the very few occasions of blasphemy, it was a great film. I give it three out of three papal tiaras (by the way, please note that tiaras are just my version of thumbs up or stars; the fact that I give a film two or three papal tiaras doesn't necessarily mean it's a Catholic film - it just means it was a good movie).