April 2004 – Page 3

Fulfilling the Sunday Obligation on Saturday

A correspondent writes:

My mother just called me with a question (I’m the family theologian, I guess!). Her pastor insisted that the Easter Vigil Mass does not count as the Easter Sunday Mass "obligation." My wife and I usually go to the Easter Vigil Mass and Easter morning Mass, so it has never been a question in our minds, but I was always under the assumption that the vigil Mass would work the same way as a Mass of anticipation. As I thought about it, though, I realized that the readings are different, and that the special rites of the Vigil Mass may make a difference. Can you help to clarify this issue for us?

Your mother’s pastor probably had the same thought that you did–that the readings, etc., for Easter Vigil are different than those of Easter Sunday and that, as a consequence, Easter Vigil might not (or, in his opinion, does not) fulfill the Sunday obligation.

The idea that the readings of a Mass must be the same as those of the Sunday or holy day following in order to fulfill the obligation is a common idea, but it is in error. There is no doubt about this in the law.

Here is what the law says:

A person who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass [CIC Can. 1248 §1].

Note that there is nothing in the law about there needing to be any particular readings or set of ceremonies needed to fulfill the obligation. Any Mass in any rite on the evening of the preceding day satisfied the obligation.

The fact that no readings or ceremonies are required in the law is itself proof of the fact that they are not required, but the matter is doubly proven by the fact that the law provides that a Mass "anywhere in a Catholic rite" is sufficient. The reason is that the different rites have different readings and ceremonies in their Masses. If I were to go across the street to the local Maronite parish, or a few miles one way to the local Chaldean parish, or a few miles the other direction to the local Ruthenian parish, I would hear completely different readings and observe different ceremonies. Yet their Masses would fulfill my Sunday obligation, as the above canon indicates.

So despite the popular misconception, no particular rites or ceremonies are needed, and any Mass on Saturday evening–Easter Vigil Mass included–will satisfy the obligation for Sunday.

When Holidays Collide!

A reader writes:

is it possible for Good Friday to fall on the Feast of the Annunciation?

Let’s see. The date of Easter varies every year between March 22 and April 25, and since Good Friday is two days earlier than Easter, that would put he range of Good Friday dates at March 20 to April 23. Since the Feast of the Annunciation is a fixed feast nine months before Christmas, it has a date of March 25, within the range of possible Good Friday dates.

However!

The General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar contains a holiday anti-collision system for just such events. As you can see from the Table of Liturgical Days, Good Friday as part of Triduum is a liturgical day of rank I:1, which is the highest there is, so it takes precedence over the solemnity of the Annunciation, which is a rank I:3 liturgical day.

Under the old calendar, "If this feast falls within Holy Week or Easter Week, its office [was] transferred to the Monday after the octave of Easter" (Catholic Encyclopedia). From what I can tell, if there were a conflict between the solemnity of the Annunciation and Good Friday (or the other days of Holy Week, which are rank I:2 days), the same would likely be the result today.

The Alamo

My review of the new movie The Alamo is up at DecentFilms.Com. I expected the movie to be too hokey to be enjoyable, but it actually was pretty good. It was more psychologically complex than one would expect, and the audience I saw the film with actually applauded at the end.

Why Is It Called Good Friday?

You may have heard that today is called Good Friday because it was on this day that Christ accomplished our redemption and, as Martha Stewart might say, "That’s a Good Thing."

Actually, as intuitive as this answer is, the answer is more complex than that. You will find some dictionaries (like this one) that list the origin of the "Good" in Good Friday as the ordinary adjective good, being taken in the sense of "holy." You will find others (like this one) that disagree.

The Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Good Friday lists its designation in several languages, and although it is called "Holy Friday" in the Romance languages, English isn’t a Romance language but a Germanic one. The article concludes that the origin isn’t clear, but notes that "Some say it is from ‘God’s Friday’ (Gottes Freitag)."

This actually sells this explanation a little short. As far as I can determine, the "God’s Friday" explanation is the standard one, particularly among older etymologists. It’s also reasonable since we know of a similar very common "God" > "good" transformation in English, namely "goodbye," which is a contraction of "God be with you."

Once the true origin of a word or phrase is forgotten, people have a tendency to analyze it in terms of the words it sounds like, and so people today tend to analyze "goodbye" in terms of wishing good for someone, though this isn’t at all where the word comes from. I suspect the same thing is going on with "Good Friday." People are reanalyzing the word "Good" based on the familiar adjective today, and this conjecture has crept into some dictionaries. The older, messier "God’s Friday" explanation strikes me as more likely the correct one.

Why Is It Called Good Friday?

You may have heard that today is called Good Friday because it was on this day that Christ accomplished our redemption and, as Martha Stewart might say, "That’s a Good Thing."

John Paul II Speaks On Nutrition and Hydration

You may have read press accounts a few weeks ago of a recent address given by the pope on the subject on the necessity of administering nutrition and hydration (i.e., food and water) to individuals in persistent vegetative states. I read these accounts, too, and since then I’ve been trying to locate a copy of the full text of the address. (The press accounts are too sketchy for serious analysis.)

Well, I finally located it! Unfortunately, as usual, the Holy See has given it a absurdly long title that nobody will ever refer to it by (Address of John Paul II to the Participants in the International Congress on "Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State: Scientific Advances and Ethical Dilemmas"–Man! What is it with Italians and the titles they feel compelled to give ecclesiastical documents?). To get around this unweildy tongue-twister, people have to make up their own names for it, so I’m going to call it the Address on the Vegetative State (AVS).

You can read the whole thing at the address above, but here is some analysis:

The address is encouraging for the pro-life movement. It contains three particular points of encouragement. The first is a section in which the pope takes on the term "vegetative state" and notes its dehumanizing sound. He forcefully states:

I feel the duty to reaffirm strongly that the intrinsic value and personal dignity of every human being do not change, no matter what the concrete circumstances of his or her life. A man, even if seriously ill or disabled in the exercise of his highest functions, is and always will be a man, and he will never become a "vegetable" or an "animal".

Even our brothers and sisters who find themselves in the clinical condition of a "vegetative state" retain their human dignity in all its fullness. The loving gaze of God the Father continues to fall upon them, acknowledging them as his sons and daughters, especially in need of help `(§3, emphasis in original).

The second is the section that attracted the most notice from the press, in which the holy father stated:

I should like particularly to underline how the administration of water and food, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act. Its use, furthermore, should be considered, in principle, ordinary and proportionate, and as such morally obligatory, insofar as and until it is seen to have attained its proper finality, which in the present case consists in providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation of his suffering. . . .

The evaluation of probabilities, founded on waning hopes for recovery when the vegetative state is prolonged beyond a year, cannot ethically justify the cessation or interruption of minimal care for the patient, including nutrition and hydration. Death by starvation or dehydration is, in fact, the only possible outcome as a result of their withdrawal. In this sense it ends up becoming, if done knowingly and willingly, true and proper euthanasia by omission (§4, emphasis in original).

The same section also provides papal endorsement of a point that pro-lifers have sought to apply in other areas:

[T]he moral principle is well known, according to which even the simple doubt of being in the presence of a living person already imposes the obligation of full respect and of abstaining from any act that aims at anticipating the person’s death.

All of this is great, and I hope that the pro-life movement, Catholic physicians, and Cathoic medical-ethicists fully assimilate what the holy father has said. At the same time, there are some limitations to the document that need bearing in mind.

The first is that as an address, as an address, does not have that high an intrinsic level of authority in the spectrum of papal pronouncements. The points named above would have much more weight if they were included in an encyclical, and it would have been great if they were included in Evangelium Vitae. Perhaps soon they will be worked into an encyclical, depriving opponents of a point that they might try to argue.

The second limitation is that the address does not answer all the questions that can be posed in this area. For example:

What about situations in which a person’s body has lost its ability to assimilate food and water, so that they do not "providing nourishment to the patient and alleviation of his suffering" but are actually harmful?
What about situations in which a person is not in a persistent vegetative status but finds the administration of food and water burdensome?
What about situations in which a person refuses the administration of food and water? What obligations do his caretakers have?

The answer to the first question is the best worked out. If a person cannot assimilate food and water and is being harmed by them (e.g., the fluids he is fed intravenously go out and collect in his tissues, causing them to swell and eventually burst open and weep) then it is licit to discontinue them. However, it would be very helpful to have guidance from the pope regarding the conditions that must be met for this to be legitimate, particularly regarding the nature and degree of harm that a person must experience.

The answer to the second question is less worked out, but the address helps. If the burden is of a physical nature then the conditions pertaining to the first question would seem to apply. If the burden is non-physical (i.e., psychological) then the person would seem called to offer up the suffering and accept nutrition and hydration. If the burden is a combination of the two then the solution would seem to be to factor it into its physical and psychological components and apply the above results.

The answer to the third question is something that the address does not deal with. While it would seem that a person is obliged to accept nutrition and hydration as long as the conditions pertaining to the first question are not met, the address does not tell us whether caretakers have a right or an obligation to force nutrition and hydration on a person who has expressly refused it.

While one can’t hope to have all possible questions answered at once, further guidance from the holy father on these questions would be very helpful. As long as they are not expressly addressed, anti-life forces will continue to use them as loopholes though which to pursue their agenda.

The Gravity of Penance: Follow-Up II

Another reader writes:

So that we, the readers and commentators on this topic, "Meat On Lenten Fridays: A Mortal Sin?" all are all ‘on the same channel,’ would you please define ‘mortal sin’?

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

Mortal sin destroys charity in the heart of man by a grave violation of God’s law; it turns man away from God, who is his ultimate end and his beatitude, by preferring an inferior good to him. Venial sin allows charity to subsist, even though it offends and wounds it.

For a sin to be mortal, three conditions must together be met: "Mortal sin is sin whose object is grave matter and which is also committed with full knowledge and deliberate consent" [CCC 1855, 1857].

According to Paenitemini, the substantial observance of the Church’s days of penance is grave matter. This means that if one fails in this regard with adequate knowledge and consent, a mortal sin is committed.

The reader continues:

Once, at a CCD teacher’s meeting, I flew through the ceiling when one of the Catholic teacher-participants said she thought the Eucharist was only ‘symbolic’. My explosion amounted to a hill of beans. Her calm retort was, "Why does everything have to be so technical?"

Somewhat in sympathy with her I must ask, where does all this legalistic niggling regarding rules go?

According to John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Sacrae Disciplinae Leges :

[T]he writings of the New Testament enable us to understand even better the importance of discipline and make us see better how it is more closely connected with the saving character of the evangelical message itself.

This being so, it appears sufficiently clear that the Code is in no way intended as a substitute for faith, grace, charisms, and especially charity in the life of the Church and of the faithful. On the contrary, its purpose is rather to create such an order in the ecclesial society that, while assigning the primacy to love, grace and charisms, it at the same time renders their organic development easier in the life of both the ecclesial society and the individual persons who belong to it [here, but you’ll need to scroll down].

What the pontiff says regarding the Code is true of the Church’s laws in general. They are not a replacement for faith, grace, and the charisms of the Spirit, but are intended to create an order in the society of the Church that facilitates the development of these.

If you don’t like the way the law is presently written, that is your prerogative. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have a problem myself if the Church decided to change the grave matter of the law in question. But I’m simply trying to represent the Church’s law accurately.

The reader continues:

I drew the line at symbolism vs. Real Presence. (My mistake was to think this lady had actually thought things though. She hadn’t and she is forgiven.) Are you ‘drawing the line’ at a sausage topping or animal fat in the four-cheese pizza dough?

No. Please read the blog relevant entries on this subject. Cheese and animal fat are do not violate the law of abstinence. Whether the amount of meat on a sausage pizza would violate the substance of the observance might be a debatable matter. (However, there are limits. A "meat-lover’s pizza" certainly would.)

The reader continues:

Are you asserting that ‘deliberately violating the law of abstinence is…’ on a par with the grave matter of the denial of God, blasphemy, adultery, fornication abortion, murder, rape, child sex abuse, calumny, drunkenness, devil worship, infanticde, suicide etc.?

Depends on what you mean by "on a par." If you mean "Is it also grave matter?" then yes, that is what the Church’s law provides. If you mean "Is it as grave as the other matters you name?" then no, clearly that is not the case.

The reader continues:

For example, are the Catholic attendees at our Benedictine run Catholic high school who blithely chow down on the pork chop sandwiches proffered by the booster club on Friday night football games really consigning themselves to hell?

Are not these the same sheep that are being led by the shepherds, i.e., the priests who head their parishes?

I’m afraid that I don’t understand your remark regarding sheep, so I can’t respond to it. I can only tell you what the law says.

If someone knowingly and deliberately fails to observe the substance of the Church’s penitential requirements by violating the law of abstinence then, since the law itself states that this is grave matter, the person will commit a mortal sin.

However, if people are "blithely" chowing down on pork chop sandwiches on Fridays during Lent (which is when the law of abstinence binds in the United States) then their blithe-ness may be evidence that they may not be aware of the law or its gravity and so may lack the necessary knowledge to commit a mortal sin in this matter.

If your Benedictine-run Catholic high school has such poorly catechized Catholic attendees at the sports games it sponsors that they don’t know the law in question, that would seem to be the fault of the shepherds who head their parishes.

If people don’t know what the law says, don’t blame the messenger who finally tells you. Blame the ones who should have told you in the first place and didn’t.

Hope this helps!

The Gravity of Penance: Follow-Up I

A couple of follow-ups on the recent entry on the gravity of Friday penance. First, a reader writes:

Doesn’t the 1983 Code of Canon Law operate to repeal and replace the previous norms set forth by Pope Paul VI? Shouldn’t you be looking only at what the Code of Canon Law says? (And it doesn’t mention the gravity of the obligation.)

Good question! The answer is no, the Code does not repeal and replace all prior norms.

First, there are some norms that, although part of universal law, simply are not part of the Code. The largest body of norms that are not found in the Code are the Church’s liturgical laws, a fact of which the Code itself takes note:

For the most part the Code does not define the rites which must be observed in celebrating liturgical actions. Therefore, liturgical laws in force until now retain their force unless one of them is contrary to the canons of the Code (Can. 2).

There are also other parts of universal law that are not contained within the Code, for example most of the norms that are to be observed in electing a new pope are not found in the Code but are contained in another document. The one presently in force in John Paul II’s apostolic constitution Universi Dominici Gregis. There are thus certain documents that contain norms complimentary to those in the Code. One of these is Paenitemini. In fact, it is one of the oldest such documents currently in force.

Second, the Code makes the point that it does not repeal all other norms. For example:

The canons of the Code neither abrogate nor derogate from the agreements entered into by the Apostolic See with nations or other political societies. These agreements therefore continue in force exactly as at present, notwithstanding contrary prescripts of this Code [Can. 3].

What the Code does say lapse are the following:

When this Code takes force, the following are abrogated:

1° the Code of Canon Law promulgated in 1917;

2° other universal or particular laws contrary to the prescripts of this Code unless other provision is expressly made for particular laws;

3° any universal or particular penal laws whatsoever issued by the Apostolic See unless they are contained in this Code;

4° other universal disciplinary laws regarding matter which this Code completely reorders [Can. 6 §1].

By this standard, the norms of Paenitemini are not abrogated. These are not part of the 1917 Code (1°), they are not en toto contrary to the prescriptions of the 1983 Code (2°), they are not penal laws (3°), and–although they are universal disciplinary laws–they do not regard matters which the 1983 Code completely reorders (4°). Therefore, Paenitemini stands except where specifically modified in the new Code.

In fact, the Code has so little to say about penance that one cannot determine what the Church’s law is without consulting Paenitemini. For example, the Code does not provide any explanation of what the law of fast entails. It states who is subject to it (Can. 1251), but it does explain what the law itself is. To find that out, you have to consult Paenitemini (Norm III §2).

"You're no friend of mine!"

There’s a line in Ecclesiastes that says:

with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief (Eccl. 1:18).

I don’t know how much I wisdom I’ve accumulated in my short span of years, but I have accumulated knowledge of certain subjects, and it can indeed cause grief. This frequently comes home to me when I am at Mass and listening to the way the standard American liturgical translation butchers what is said in the Scriptures. A few years ago, this really drove me nuts, and every time I would go to Mass (which was basically daily), I would tense up at the readings, waiting to see what would be translated wrong this time.

But I got over it.

I realized with time that God doesn’t want us to give away our peace to others, including incompetent translators. Getting mad has a purpose if there is something one can do about it, but if one can’t do anything to bring about positive change then it only hurts oneself. God doesn’t want that. So I chilled out, and these days it takes a bit more to rattle me. But it does happen from time to time.

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, it did.

You may recall how a few years ago a new lectionary for Sunday Mass and there was a big hullabaloo about the use of gender-revisionist language in it. The Holy See appointed a commission of three American cardinals to go over the text and strip out the revisionist language. This they did–almost. They left in some allegedly "minor" instances of "horizontal" revisionist language, such as representing St. Paul as having said "brothers and sisters," where in fact he said "brothers."

I’ve never been happy with this. Any tampering with Scripture to suit a social-political agenda is sacrilege, as far as I’m concerned. The text should be translated as faithfully as possible, given the capacities of the receptor language, and any needed side explanations (like the fact that Paul includes female Christians when he says "brothers") should be made as needed in the homily. It is, after all the function of the homily to explain the readings (not to share jokes and anecdotes and bland exhortations to niceness).

Well, yesterday at Mass I ran into another–particularly inept–manifestation of gender-revisionism in the readings at Mass. Here’s the relevant passage:

They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it, and Peter sat down with them. When a maid saw him seated in the light, she looked intently at him and said, "This man too was with him."

But he denied it saying, "Woman, I do not know him."

A short while later someone else saw him and said, "You too are one of them"; but Peter answered, "My friend, I am not."

About an hour later, still another insisted, "Assuredly, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean."

But Peter said, "My friend, I do not know what you are talking about." Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed [Luke 22:55-60].

When I heard those "my friend"s in the text, I said to myself, "There’s no way that that’s what’s in the Greek," and indeed, it’s not. What Peter says is anthrōpe (pronounced AN-throw-peh), which is a form of direct address translating as "O man" or just "man." There is no way it means "friend," much less "my friend." That’s simply not what Peter said (and if he had, the guys might have turned to him and said, "You’re no friend of mine!"–not wanting to be associated with a follower of Jesus).

What makes this instance of revisionist language particularly inept is that the text has not been consistently gender-sanitized. Notice that Peter is left saying "Woman" to the maiden, which is what he does say in Greek (gunai, pronounced GOO-nai). This suggests that the gender revisionists who were at work on this text had a specific agenda. They weren’t trying to bring about gender "neutrality" in the texts, but to eliminate references to men.

The final twist in this is that there is another gender bungle in the text. You will notice that Peter is twice identified as "this man." Yet the word "man" is not in the Greek. The word is the pronoun houtos (HOO-toss), which just means "this." It’s true that this is the masculine form of the word, so you’d use it for a man (or a boy, or a thing referred to by a noun of the masculine grammatical gender), but the word "man" isn’t there. I’d want my Greek students to translate it as "this one" and save the word "man" for when the word anthrōpos or anēr is in the original.

What a mess. Too bad the cardinals didn’t get it completely cleaned up.

"You’re no friend of mine!"

There’s a line in Ecclesiastes that says:

with much wisdom comes much sorrow;
the more knowledge, the more grief (Eccl. 1:18).

But I got over it.

Yesterday, Palm Sunday, it did.

Well, yesterday at Mass I ran into another–particularly inept–manifestation of gender-revisionism in the readings at Mass. Here’s the relevant passage:

They lit a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat around it, and Peter sat down with them. When a maid saw him seated in the light, she looked intently at him and said, "This man too was with him."

But he denied it saying, "Woman, I do not know him."

A short while later someone else saw him and said, "You too are one of them"; but Peter answered, "My friend, I am not."

About an hour later, still another insisted, "Assuredly, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean."

But Peter said, "My friend, I do not know what you are talking about." Just as he was saying this, the cock crowed [Luke 22:55-60].

What a mess. Too bad the cardinals didn’t get it completely cleaned up.