JACK FROM ARDMORE ASKS IF GOD HATES SINNERS AS WELL AS SINS.

“Hey Jimmy, this is Jack from Ardmore, Oklahoma, and I have a question about sin. I’ve always been told that God hates sin, but he loves the sinner. While I recently heard a preacher preach that God hates sin and he also hates sinners. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but what would the Catholic Church teach about that? I would imagine that they would say God hates sin but loves the sinner but could you help me out with that Jimmy, thanks a lot?”

Saying that God loves the sinner but hates the sin, or different variations on that saying, has been around for quite some time. Different people have expressed it differently but it’s a common insight. The historical root of it is often attributed to St. Augustine.

Undoubtedly, he’s not the first person to express it, and even he didn’t express it in quite those words. But he’s the one you commonly here attributed it to. He certainly popularized it. The place he discusses it is in one of his letters, 211:11, written around A.D. 423.

It was sent to a monastery that his sister had been the prioress of. But after she was no longer prioress, a successor and some trouble, not everybody liked her successor; he wrote to them addressing a number of issues, giving them some general rules for how to run things in the monastery.

One of the issues that he addresses is the subject of, to put it charitably, flirting with men, or to put it a little more bluntly, which is really what he had in mind, nuns acting in a seductive way, with regards to men,

You might wonder why would these nuns even be around men? Well, apparently this wasn’t a totally cloistered monastery. At various times the nuns had contact with men and he notes, for example, when you are in church you might notice that one of your number is gazing forwardly at a man. Meaning she’s gazing fixedly and seductively, making eyes at the guy.

He talks about how to deal with that kind of situation, he says warn her, correct her and obviously, if she doesn’t do it again it’s fine. But what if she’s a repeat offender, just keeps gazing seductively at men? He recommends various things that need to be done, including different forms of discipline, including up to expulsion from the order.

He says in conclusion that “…what I have now said in regard to abstaining from wanton looks should be carefully observed, with due love for the persons and hatred of the sin…” Right there he makes that distinction between loving the persons who have committed a sin and hating the sin itself.

That historically has been expressed in a number of different ways and today we tend to say things like ‘love the sinner and hate the sin’ or similar formulations. That’s the way Augustine put it.

The fact that Augustine said it and it’s become so popular, gives you an indication of where the Catholic Church is going to come down on this subject. But, I want to give people who take the opposite view their due. Because there are passages, in the Bible, which talk about God not just hating sin, but also hating the people who commit the sin. An example of that would be in Psalm 5:5–6

⁵The boastful may not stand before thy eyes; thou hatest all evildoers. ⁶Thou destroyest those who speak lies; the Lord abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men.

It says right here, the Lord ‘abhors bloodthirsty and deceitful men and he hates all evildoers.’ If you take a sufficiently straightforward approach to these passages, you take the literally and don’t balance them against other things that scripture says, and other things we know about God, then it could suggest to you that God experiences hatred towards individuals who commit sin.

There are other passages as well. But then there are passages that seem to suggest the opposite. An example of that would be in the book of wisdom. This is one of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament. In Wisdom of Solomon 11:23–26, we find another address to God and this time the author is saying:

²³But thou art merciful to all, for thou canst do all things, and thou dost overlook men’s sins, that they may repent. ²⁴For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it. ²⁵How would anything have endured if thou hadst not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by thee have been preserved? ²⁶Thou sparest all things, for they are thine, O Lord who lovest the living.

The version I’m ready from is the Revised Standard Version  and it’s a little archaic in its English but its meaning is pretty clear. God doesn’t hate anything that He’s created. Other more recent translations, at least, less poetic translations, bring that out more directly.

That’s something even if someone’s coming from a non0Catholic perspective and doesn’t recognize this book as Scripture, that’s a thought that definitely comes across in the New Testament.

A good example of that is in Romans 5:6-11 , where you have St. Paul writing. He talks about redemption history and how God sent his son to die for us, and he says:

⁶While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Why, one will hardly die for a righteous man—though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die.

It’s unlikely that you’d be willing to die for someone else; even they’re a righteous person. Although if they’re really righteous, maybe you would be willing to die for them.

⁸But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. ⁹Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. ¹⁰For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. ¹¹Not only so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received our reconciliation.

Even though for ordinary people, it would be very improbable that you’d find someone willing to die for someone else although if they are really righteous, maybe you would be willing to do that.

God was willing to die for us even though we were unrighteous, even though we were sinners. Before our reconciliation with him, before the conversion He granted us, He was willing to die for us, to make all that possible. And that shows his love for us Paul says.

So here we have St. Paul saying God loves sinners and even ones who haven’t’ been reconciled with him. A similar sentiment is found in one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. Possibly the single most famous verse John 3:16:

¹⁶For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ¹⁷For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

We see the same thought, that this is how much God loves us; this is how He shows that He loves us, that He was willing to send His own Son in order to be an offering to save us from our sins.

We find that worked out elsewhere in the New Testament, for example in 1 John 4:7–10

⁷Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸He who does not love does not know God; for God is love.

This is a profound theological truth that Scripture gives us and you’ll notice it’s never balanced anywhere else by something like God is hate. God is not hate, God is love, and John continues to say:

⁹In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. ¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins.

Once again, you have a playing out of the same theme. Even apart from God, even in a state of unreconciled sin, God loved us first. He loved us SO much that He sent His Son to be the expiation for our sins so that we could be saved from them. Right there you’ve got several passages that clearly emphasis God’s love for the sinner, not His hatred for the sinner.

How do we explain this? As is so often the case in Scripture, you have to be sensitive to the way it uses language. There’s a tendency on our part, coming from the kind of intellectual tradition that we do, in the Modern world, to try to take individual statements of Scripture and absolute ties to them. Read them as if you didn’t need any other background in order to understand them.

That’s because of the way that our culture works. Our culture tends very literal, it’s less poetic than the culture that gave birth to scripture. It is more technical and more precise and mathematical. It’s used to having statements that are more direct formulations of independent truths that don’t need to be understood in harmony with other truths.

It can be kind of difficult in approaching the world of Scripture to understand the way a that it works. Often times the way it works is you have to recognize that there’s a truth being expressed in one passage and there’s a truth being expressed by another passage that sounds different. That could even be taken as seemingly contradicting the first passage.

But in reality there’re truths being expressed by both passages and what we need to do is contemplate that to allow those to be held intention instead of just absolutely one and not the other. We need to ask ourselves, what are the truth’s that are being expressed here and how should we understand that.

This is something Christians have devoted a lot of thought to over the course of the centuries, I mean in particular they have devoted quite a bit of thought to the subject of how does God feel about sin. Augustine made one very famous pass at that question where he distinguished between the love for people who commit sins that we need have but also the disproval of the sin itself that we need to have.

Something like that forms our understanding of God’s attitude as well. Obviously from these passages, including the ones in the New Testament, God doesn’t not approve of the sin. If He did approve of the sin, He wouldn’t have needed to send His Son to be the expiation for our sins.

It’s clear He doesn’t love the sin but that He does LOVE people who commit sins. He loves them enough to send His Son. We see an aspect of that here, but we also have to recognize that God is not a human being. God is a divine being, infinite and He works differently than we do in some respects.

One of the things that is different about God that theologians and philosophers have discussed through the course of the centuries is the fact that God is impassible. What that means is He doesn’t have passion, He doesn’t suffer, He’s not capable of suffering, and he doesn’t experience the kind of suffering when, for example, we feel angry. Angry is a painful emotion, it’s not fun.

People can take a certain delight in being angry and some people seem to take excessive delight in that. But even for those people, even in those cases, anger involves a form of pain. God, by His nature, does not experience pain, He doesn’t experience suffering, and He exists in perfect infinite beatitude.

This has led Christians to recognize that when Scripture talks about things as if God is suffering that it is not meant to be taken literally. That we have a truth being expressed, but it is not to be understood as if God were experiencing these things the way we do. As if He experienced anger, sadness, sorrow, frustration, impatience, or other negative emotions that occasionally ascribed to God in the language of the Bible in particularly of the Old Testament.

These are expressions of truths but they’re accommodated to our human understanding of things. To use a fancy term, they’re anthropomorphic expressions. They make God sound as if He were human, when in fact He’s not.

Similarly, when we read about God’s arm is not shortened so He’s not able to do all things. He doesn’t literally have an arm but this is an example of anthropomorphic speech. It’s making a point about God’s power, not having limits but it depicts that power in the form of an arm. Which apart from the incarnation, God wouldn’t have because He’s not a physical being.

In terms of understanding the passages that talk about anger, one of the thinkers who has addressed and kind of given us the classic expressions of it is St. Thomas Aquinas. He talks about it in different places.

One place he discusses it is in a book, or work, called the Suma St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles; this was an apologetic work that he wrote for defending the Christian faith against alternatives. In Book 1, Chapter 89, Aquinas has a number of arguments for why God does not experience hatred. He concludes those arguments by saying this agrees with the saying of Wisdom 11:25.

Thou lovest all the things that are and hatest none of the things which Thou hast made.

There he’s picking Wisdom v2, then he amplifies that, and he says “And yet God is said metaphorically to hate certain things…” When we read about God hating certain things, Aquinas says that meant metaphorically. Then he says

…and this in two ways. First, from the fact that God in loving things, and willing their good to be, wills the contrary evil not to be. Wherefore He is said to hate evils, since we are said to hate that which we will not to be; according to Zach. 8:17, Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his friend; and love not a false oath, for all these are the things that I hate, saith the Lord. But such things are not His effects as subsistent things, to which hatred or love are directed properly speaking.

So Aquinas is saying that God is said to hate evil because it’s contrary to the things, the goods that He wills but we shouldn’t think of the evil as if it’s a concrete or as Aquinas put it a ‘subsistent’ thing that then is hated. That would be an improper form of speech.

The other way is due to God willing some greater good that cannot be without the privation of a lesser good. And thus He is said to hate, since to do more than this were to love. For, in this way, for as much as He wills the good of justice or of the order of the universe, which good is impossible without the punishment or destruction of some, He is said to hate those whose punishment or destruction He wills; according to Mal. 1:3: I have hated Esau, and the words of the psalm: Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity, thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie: the bloody and the deceitful man the Lord will abhor.^[1]

That’s exactly one of the passages we were talking about earlier. Again, he’s understanding God’s hatred in a metaphorical sense. It’s not that God hates those people in the way that we do, but he prefers, wills, and intends some good that is incompatible with letting those people getting away with everything that they’re doing.

It’s not that he hates those individuals, but he prefers to maintain the good of justice or of the order of the universe and that ultimately means that evil will have to be checked and punished. That’s expressed metaphorically in Aquinas’ term by saying that God hates these people even though, more fundamentally he LOVES them enough to send His Son to die for them.

That’s the fundamental thing we need to keep in mind in analyzing all of these passages. We to recognize that when Scripture talks about God hating things, it’s expressing a profound truth about the reality of sin and the fact that we need to avoid it.

It’s not expressing the idea that God ‘has it out for sinners’ and that He’s just looking to punish them. On the contrary, He’s looking to save them. He’s so willing to save them that He gave His own Son for all of us while we were yet sinners.

 

TONY FROM CANADA ASKS ABOUT IMPRIMATURS AND THE INTERNET

Tony from Moncton, Canada, writes and he asks:

“I have a question regarding canon law and Internet publications. I used to have a blog on catholic liturgy and now have a Facebook page on the topic. I would like to know what canon law has to say on the publication of faith-related writings.

There is a section in the 1983 Code of Canon Law that deals with the question of books and specifically asks the faithful to seek permission from a bishop before publishing a book on matters related to faith and morals. It also states that ”any writings whatsoever which are destined for public distribution” should be dealt with the same way as the books are dealt with.

On the other hand, I know many good Catholic websites who do not seem to bear an official Church recognition. I’m a simple man with some formation on the topic of liturgy and no official deputation from the Church. I just like to help people get attuned to the mystery of the liturgy.

My questions would simply be: Do I need to do anything to be in accord with Church law? And if so, what would it be?”

The question is obviously a live one because there are a lot of Catholic sites and pages out there on Facebook, on the Internet and in different forms that deal with theological questions. So it’s something that reflects a situation that many people are in and it’s understandable to have questions about.

What I like to do is look at the specific canons in the Code of Canon Law. I think the answers will at least become clearer. There is still a good bit of gray zone around the whole question of how these rules are to be applied to the Internet.

The Internet is a new phenomenon it was not commercially available when the 1993 Code of Canon Law was promulgated and it, as well as electronic publishing, was not really envisioned by the legislator. So there are legitimate questions about how all of this is meant to apply and I think the Holy See has not yet worked all that out.

Now there are different ways they could work that out, they could publish a set of norms, the Pope could even amend the Code of Canon Law to make the situation clearer. But for now, we have the section that deals with the publication of books and we have the statement about writings that are meant for public distribution that aren’t books per se.

Let’s take a look at the section of the code and see what it says. If you look in Canon 824 §2, it has the passage that Tony mentioned talking about things that aren’t books.

²Those things established regarding books in the canons of this title must be applied to any writings whatsoever which are destined for public distribution, unless it is otherwise evident.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t go on to give examples of what would otherwise be evident. We’re left with a question on that point. If you turn to a commentary there may be some additional guidance that would at least reflect the opinion of competent canonists.

I have a copy of the New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law, which was put out by the Canon Law Society of America. In its commentary, on this Canon, it says:

“The canon states that books means any writings whatsoever which are destined for public distribution’. The criteria are ‘writings intended for general availability whether by sale or free gift, the size of the publication does not matter, nor does the mode of print production, (i.e. linotype, maltalilth, photocopy, facsimile, etc.)

Books include pamphlets, tracks, and booklets as well as books. “Electronic publication” was not envisioned by the Canon for example; email, servers, websites, CD ROMs, other internet or World Wide Web communications. They do not require submission for approval. Journals, magazines, periodicals, and newspapers are not required to have an imprimatur for the most part they are not among the categories of publication that need prior approval or the frequency of their issuance prevents effective prior review.

Publications which are private with a restricted circulation are not considered destined for public distribution, for example a professors’ class notes, internal documents, reports or drafts circulated within companies, organizations or professional societies.

Other media, sound or visual, are also not included in this category of ‘books’. Hence recordings, audio or video cassettes, disks or records, are not subject to prior censorship.”

What the authors of the new commentary on the Code of Canon Law have to say, they seem to be coming down very clearly on the idea that the electronic publication including on the internet, don’t require prior submission for approval.

Hmmm….well, that may be. I could see that opinion being sustained. I could also see that opinion overturned. I’m going to get into some examples but I could easily see the Holy See saying; no if you’re dealing with one of those things that by its nature requires an imprimatur before it can be legitimately printed, then it doesn’t matter if you’re printing in online for the first time.

You’re still going to need to get that imprimatur. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they say that in the future. I think that this question is a little more questionable than the way it’s presented here. But let’s proceed a little further and see how the situation might apply to Tony’s blog or his Facebook page.

He says it has to deal with the Liturgy and there are several kinds of things that the Liturgy deals with. One of them is Scripture, because obviously Scripture readings are part of the Liturgy. The subject of Scriptures and what kind of approval they require is dealt with in the very next Canon. In Canon 825.1 it says:

^§1Books of the sacred scriptures cannot be published unless the Apostolic See or the conference of bishops has approved them. For the publication of their translations into the vernacular, it is also required that they be approved by the same authority and provided with necessary and sufficient annotations.

So if and this is a very unlikely case, but if Tony wanted to come out with a new translation of the Scriptures, we’re not talking about reprinting an existing one that already has approval but a new one, and then he would need to get the permission of the Apostolic See or the Conference of Bishops.

If, publication on the internet counts towards the previous Canon 824.2, that says whatever applies to writings destined for public distribution has to be understood as applying here as well. I could easily see the Holy See saying hey, somebody’s just printed a new translation of the Scriptures on the internet, it’s full of errors, and what we’re going to do is apply Canon 825.1 to it. And by doing so saying hey, you can’t do that; you need to get prior approval before you can come out with a new edition of the Scriptures.

The mere fact that you’re doing it on the internet rather than in print form is not a sufficient reason to exempt yourself from this requirement. In fact, given the economics verses print publication, it could actually deceive and mislead a lot more people if the effort is not well funded.

If it’s printed on the internet rather that in print publication because on the internet you can make it available for almost no cost, whereas if you’re going to put it into print, there’s going to be a substantial cost involved.

You could have broader distribution of an erroneous Scripture translation in an electronic form than you could with a print edition of the same erroneous translation. The danger could actually be greater from internet publication in this case.

I can easily see them taking that Canon and applying it. Tony is unlikely to be coming a new translation of Scriptures, what else is there that Canon Law has to say that might engage his blog or his Facebook page. In Canon 826 talks about his area of expertise more particularly-Liturgy. In Canon 826.1, it says

^§1The prescripts of Can. 838 are to be observed concerning liturgical books.

Now when it says liturgical books, it doesn’t mean books that are about the liturgy, for example mean copies of my own book Mass Revision that’s not a liturgical book; it’s a book about the liturgy. A liturgical book is one of the Church’s official liturgical texts. Things like the Missale Romanum, the Roman missal or the Lectionary or the different rites that are used in the Celebration of the Sacraments or the liturgy of the hours.

Those are the Church’s liturgical books. If you were to fast forward to Canon 838, you’d find that there are special provisions regarding how those are to be done. It’s for the Holy See to produce them and to approve translations of them and it’s for the local Conference of Bishops to produce the translations that the Holy See then approves.

Again, it’s unlikely that Tony is going to be coming up with a new liturgical book or a new edition of one, or a new translation and so forth on his sites. That really doesn’t apply to him. Something that might is the next section of Canon Law, section 2 of 826.

^§2To reprint liturgical books, their translations into the vernacular, or their parts, an attestation of the ordinary of the place where they are published must establish their agreement with the approved edition.

This could apply to what Tony’s doing if he wanted to reprint in its entirety a liturgical book of the church or a translation of it into the vernacular or a part of it. By part it doesn’t mean a quotation; it means something that you would actually use as a basis for celebrating the liturgy. We’re not talking about having a brief quotation from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, you don’t have to get your bishops approval in order to just quote a couple of paragraphs.

If you had, for example, a series of excerpts that were meant to be used liturgically like a book of the Propers of the Mass, the parts that change from one day to the next. Let’s say you wanted to skim out all of the Propers from the Roman Missals and make a Book of Propers, (that a celebrant or someone involved in the Celebration of the Liturgy could use) that’s the kind of excerpt you would need to get an attestation from the local Ordinary, meaning the local bishop in most cases, that they agree with the original so they don’t have a bunch of errors that have been introduced.

That’s not particularly likely that Tony would have to worry about. Section 3 of Canon 826 says

^§3Books of prayers for the public or private use of the faithful are not to be published without the permission of the local ordinary.

This again deals with something that’s not strictly liturgical, typically prayer books not per se part of the liturgy and it’s unlikely that Tony’s blog or Facebook page is a collection of such prayers or that’s what it consists of, no one’s going to think of it as a prayer book. He might occasionally quote a prayer or even write his own little ad-libbed prayer, lets suppose there’s some sort of disaster somewhere in the world and he writes ‘oh heavenly father, please help all of the people affected by this disaster’. That kind of impromptu prayer is not what’s being talked about here.

It’s unlikely that Tony’s going to fall afoul of this unless he starts turning his site into the online equivalent of a prayer book. Even then, it might not apply depending upon whether or not internet publication is even covered buy these things.

But you’d at least be getting into an area where a bishop, could hypothetically look at a site and say you know, this site is looking like a prayer book and it’s got enough in that direction that I want to review this. That’s a possibility but not to likely.

Canon 827 deals with several matters, some of which have more bearing on the kind of website that Tony and others have. The first section says

^§1To be published, catechisms and other writings pertaining to catechetical instruction or their translations require the approval of the local ordinary, without prejudice to the prescript of Can. 775 §2.

We won’t go into that but the thing to notice here is “…catechisms and other writings pertaining to catechetical instruction…” are things that require translation. For example, if I wanted to write a brand new catechism and publish it online, then I would strongly feel that I need to go ahead and get an imprimatur on that.

The mere fact that I’m publishing online isn’t going to excuse me from this, that’s my own sense. Obviously, the commentators here for the new commentary on the Code of Canon Law feel differently. My own sense is that even I could get away with that temporarily; this is exactly the kind of things that’s going to be required in the future.

As people consume more and more electronic literature, whether it’s online or in the form of eBooks, the principles contained in here are going to apply either with modification, clarification, or just directly to those publications. I wouldn’t expect in the future to be able to say ok, I’ve written a catechism but because I put it online I don’t’ have to subject priory review that catechisms destined for print do. And you can easily see how that kind of transition would happen as people read more electronic material.

We’re quite likely to get into a situation in the future where catechism may be primarily read in electronic form rather than in print. It would be absurd at that point not to require the same approval of a catechism that is required for a print version.

Section 2 of Canon 827 is the other part of the puzzle that Tony referred to in his initial question. He wasn’t asking about catechisms, he was asking about things that touch on faith and morals. Here’s what that section says

^§2Books which regard questions pertaining to sacred scripture, theology, canon law, ecclesiastical history, and religious or moral disciplines cannot be used as texts on which instruction is based in elementary, middle, or higher schools unless they have been published with the approval of competent ecclesiastical authority or have been approved by it subsequently.

Actually, I have to say I was mistaken, it’s the next section, but this is setting us up for that. Section 2 basically says even if they’re not catechetical, if they deal with these different subjects of a religious nature, you can’t use them as text books in Catholic schools unless they’ve been previously approved by competent authority or by it subsequently.

Section 3 is the one that Tony engages directly and it says

^§3It is recommended that books dealing with the matters mentioned in §2, although not used as texts in instruction, as well as writings which especially concern religion or good morals are submitted to the judgment of the local ordinary.

In this Canon we basically we have three things being said. First it says that catechisms and other catechetical writings need prior approve and for books that are of a religious nature being used as textbooks in Catholic schools they either need prior approval or they need subsequent approval.

Then we have a recommendation that books dealing with those same matters, not catechism, or catechetical materials but have things that are more broadly dealing with sacred scripture, theology, canon law, ecclesiastical history, and religious or moral disciplines. There is a recommendation that those be submitted to the judgment of the local ordinary particularly if they concern religion or good morals.

Since liturgy falls into that class, it concerns religion, there’s a recommendation in here that it be submitted to the judgment of the local ordinary. What’s the nature of this recommendation? It’s obviously not a requirement because if it were, it would simply say to do this and it doesn’t.

That recommendation is subject to a number of practicalities. One is size of the Catholic publishing industry. Another is the resources that local ordinaries have available to them. Typically a local ordinary will have a censor of books or a few censors of books with different expertise, but they don’t work at this job full-time.

They typically have other duties and some of them may only be approached on a contractor basis. It is not practical for most dioceses to review all of the writings that fall into these categories. This recommendation is something that, for practical reasons, is often not going to be possible to act upon.

Publishers, in order to produce things in a timely, and to get out the products they need  in order to survive as businesses, they need to be able to meet a certain schedule and the local ordinary likely not to have the resources to deal with all of that, especially in the larger markets.

You can just imagine given the size the publishing industry for example, in New York City, how it could completely overtax the diocese of New York to try to run through for an imprimatur, everything that gets published having to do with sacred scripture, theology, canon law, ecclesiastical history, and religious or moral disciplines.

it simply wouldn’t be practical. If that’s the case, when it comes to print publications, you could image even more, how it would be impractical to do that on the internet. Because the internet includes huge numbers of pages being written by bloggers, reporters, and all kinds of people all over the place on a ‘publish immediately’ basis, you can’t write something about some topical controversy that’s going on somewhere and then wait weeks or months for it to get through a censorship pipeline at a diocese.

If people were to try to restrain themselves from that kind of engagement on the internet, then it would effectively to concede the field to those who oppose or otherwise misunderstand the Catholic Church. If you look at statements from the Holy See, including statements that Pope Benedict made regarding the use of the internet and electronic media, it’s clear that the pastors of the Church recognize that the Catholic faithful need to be out there on the internet. This is where a lot of societal interaction is taking place these days.

The Catholic faithful need to permeate that with the spirit of Christ, the same way they do other forms of social interaction. The Church actually wants faithful Catholics out there engaging, producing material on a scale that makes it impossible to give prior review.

It’s not practical so to that extent, I think that the commentators for the new commentary on the Code of Canon Law are quite correct that that kind of interaction is not envisioned by this Canon, this Canon is not meant to cover that kind of stuff.

If you have a blog, or a Facebook page where you’re not doing Catecheses and you’re not offering a formal course that’s based on a catechetical text you’ve written, you’re not reprinting your own new translation of Scripture or your new translation of the Roman Missal, you’re not pirating an existing translation; if you’re just trying to encourage people to get more into the Liturgy, even though in some abstract ideal situation, it might be great to be able to run that by the Bishop to make sure it’s ok first, the practical reality is it’s likely not to be. You’re not bound to.

Frankly, the Church would rather have you out there helping permeate the internet with the Christian spirit. I would say for a large number of people who are producing websites, Facebook pages, and things like that, they don’t need to have a concern at this point.

They need to be out there trying to spread the Christian message and it’s understood that they’re not expected to gain prior approval that are necessary for certain kinds of publication, particularly in print.

Suppose there’s a problem; a website that is producing material that is contrary to the Catholic faith even by people who are trying to serve the Church, they may be Catholics themselves but they’re saying stuff that doesn’t adequately represent the Church, are there things a Bishop could do?

Certainly, there are ways a Bishop could take action. But those kinds of sites, ones that have errors that are serious enough and that a reach broad enough to make them something the local ordinary would be advised to ‘go after’, those are going to be uncommon.

One shouldn’t presume one is in that class. If you’re a Catholic and you’re trying to articulate the Catholic faith and encourage people to grow in closeness to Jesus and his Church, then unless you’re doing one of the kinds of things we talked about, it’s unlikely that you would fall afoul of the Code of Canon Law. It’s better that you’re out there making the good faith effort.

 

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