January 2006 – Page 5

Scripture Commentary Recommendation

A reader writes:

I listen to Catholic Answers Live as much as possible (on the Internet).

I have a question for you….I currently use the RSV:CE Bible but would like a commentary that explains what the Scripture passages mean. I don’t want to misinterpret the Scripture like our Protestant brothers and sisters do. What do you suggest? I once heard you say not to use the "Collegeville" commentary which I promptly threw out. However, I cannot recall what you did recommended.

I guess I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

First, I’m afraid that I can’t recommend a resource that will prevent you from misinterpreting Scripture passages. The Church has not established the correct interpretation of the great majority of Scripture passages. It has taught that Scripture and the faith do not conflict, so if you know your Catholic faith well then that will help you discern what a particular passage of Scripture DOESN’T mean, but it normally will not help you identify precisely what it DOES mean.

Consequently, there is always risk of error in Scripture interpretation. We can’t eliminate that risk.

What we can do is seek to minimize it, and to that end we can recognize the limits and stay humble and flexible about our interpretations of Scripture. Although I feel more confident of certain interpretations than others, in my own study of Scripture I try not to get overly wedded to particular interpretations and to be aware of what else a passage MIGHT mean, in addition to what I think it MOST LIKELY means.

If you listen to when people call in on the radio and ask me what a particular passage means, you’ll note that I often point out a range of possibilities regarding what a passage may mean. I may not even express a personal opinion, or I may say which option I think most is the most likely interpretation in my personal view, but I seldom tell people that a passage definitely DOES mean something, because I don’t like to go beyond what the Church teaches and make people think that my personal opinion is the only one there is.

Another part of minimizing the risk of error is reading what others think about the passage. Others may have had things occur to them that would not occur to us when we read the passage, and they may have good arguments for or against particular interpretations. Reading what the Church Fathers said on a passage is particularly important. Commentaries also can be helpful, and the more voluminous the commentary the better. I like big, multi-volume commentaries because they can cover so much more, giving so many more possible interpretations and the arguments for and against them.

It’s also good to read multiple commentaries by different people with different interpretations–and not just by Catholics. Non-Catholics have brains, too, and sometimes they have really good insights. In fact, my favorite commentary on Genesis isn’t a Christian commentary: It’s Jewish.

I therefore don’t write off a commentary just because the author isn’t Catholic. Instead, I use critical thinking to try to correct non-Catholic elements in the commentary as I read it.

One volume commentaries that try to cover the whole Bible in a single volume are of some use, but they can’t go into a great deal of detail because there is so much in the Bible to cover. They are of some use, though, particularly when you’re just getting your feet wet with biblical interpretation. A key in using them, though, is to remember that because of the highly compressed way they have to treat Scripture, they won’t be able to lay out a range of options and the arguments for them in any detail. So don’t get wedded to what a one volume commentary says.

Having said all that, the one volume commentary that I most recommend is the 1950s edition of A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture by Bernard Orchard. Unfortunately, it’s out of print

BUT YOU CAN OFTEN GET COPIES OF IT HERE.

OR HERE.

Searching For Jonah

A reader writes:

Jimmy

Can you tell me how offten the book of Jonah is use in the Liturgy, I only see it being used once in cycle "B" third Sunday of Ordinary Time. Thanks for your help in this matter.

You’re in luck! I probably am one of the few people who could tell you this (easily, at any rate), since there doesn’t seem to be a published correlation table for the the Scripture readings sorted by book.

Fortunately, I am in possession of such a list, because I made one last year. A friend of mine who is a Chaldean priest was in need of one so that he could correlate Latin Rite homily helps with the Chaldean liturgical calendar and, since no such table seemed available, I spent a few hours reverse-engineering one for him on the computer.

I’ve meant to convert it to HTML and put it on the web so that it can be of service to others. (Thanks for the reminder!) But in the meantime, here’s the info on where Jonah shows up. As you can see, it AIN’T the whole book–just selected passages:

Jonah 1:1–2:1, 11	YEAR I	Week 27 – Mon
Jonah 2:2, 3, 4, 5, 8	YEAR I	Week 27 – Mon
Jonah 3:1-10	YEAR I OR II	First Week of Lent — Wed
Jonah 3:1-10	YEAR I	Week 27 – Tues
Jonah 3:1-5, 10	YEAR B	3rd Sunday of Year B
Jonah 4:1-11	YEAR I	Week 27 – Wed

Note that Jonah shows up TWICE on the Monday of the 27th week of Ordinary Time in Year I. This is because the second reading (from Jonah 2) is used as a responsorial psalm, after the first reading from Jonah 1.

Hope this helps!

Continue reading “Searching For Jonah”

The Dog Whisperer

Everyone whispers these days. On TV, there’s The Ghost Whisperer (love that show!); in the bookstore, there’s The Baby Whisperer (for getting your infant to sleep) and even The House Whisperer (for organizing your home). Now enter "The Dog Whisperer":

"Meet Princess Cujo, an cute Maltese owned by high-ranking Los Angeles Lakers executive Jeanie Buss and given to fits of ankle-biting, eye-rolling fury.

"Exasperated, Buss — the daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss — has turned to ‘dog whisperer’ Cesar Millan, who offers cryptic wisdom as the cameras roll for his TV show.

"’A dog is a window to see the person from the inside out,’ says Millan, who has become canine psychologist to the stars and a celebrity himself. The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan began its second season on the National Geographic Network this month.

"Millan, who grew up surrounded by animals on a farm in Mexico, tells his human clients it’s essential to project a calm and assertive energy while setting rules and boundaries for their wayward dogs. As he puts it: ‘I rehabilitate dogs; I train people.’"

GET THE STORY.

Just the other night I happened to be talking with a couple of dog-owner friends who have heard some of Millan’s advice and think that he may have some worthwhile wisdom to share for handling dogs. So, if you have a problem pooch, it might be worth checking out his show. But frankly I’ll be glad when the fad of titling experts as Whisperers fades.

Scripture Vs. Bible

A reader writes:

What is the difference between Scripture and the Bible?

Let’s start with the earliest term: "The Scriptures." This term literally means "the writings" and it’s used of a specific set of writings–the divinely inspired ones that you find between the covers of a Bible today. Originally, they weren’t all in a single volume. They were a collection of scrolls, so they were viewed as different writings. Hence: "The writings." The is the way that the term "the scriptures" is used in the Bible.

You’ll also find a similar term in the Bible: "scripture." It doesn’t have "the" in front of it (or, at least, it doesn’t ALWAYS have "the" in front of it). The key, though, is that it’s SINGULAR rather than PLURAL.

This term means something different.

When you encounter "scripture" in the singular in the Bible, it tends to refer to some PARTICULAR writing, not the collection of sacred writings as a whole.

For example, when John 19:12 says:

So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it, to decide whose it shall be"; this was to fulfill the Scripture: "THEY DIVIDED MY OUTER GARMENTS AMONG THEM, AND FOR MY CLOTHING THEY CAST LOTS."

John has in mind one particular writing–one particular scripture: the book of Psalms, and specifically Psalm 22:18, which is where the quotation is from.

But when John 5:39 says

"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me"

what is meant is the body of sacred writings as a whole: "the Scriptures."

Over the course of Church history, "the Scriptures" got bound in a single volume, which led folks to think of them more as a single unit rather than a collection of writings, and so the word "scripture" (in the singular) came to be used as a collective noun referring to all of them.

You’ll notice this usage particularly in Protestant circles. Protestants will often talk about "Scripture" where Catholics would say "the Scriptures" (though Catholics may also sometimes use "Scripture" collectively).

Now for "Bible": It’s a synonym for "the Scriptures."

"Bible" is adapted from the Latin word biblia, which was adapted from the Greek ta biblia, which means "the books." Way back when, books were the same things as scrolls, which is again related to the idea of the Bible as a collection of writings (books, scrolls). That’s the way the sacred writings/books were experienced in the Old Testament: as a collection of scrolls.

It was only with the introduction of Christianity that the modern form of book–the codex (which has a spine)–became popular. This was what made it possible (in the fullness of time) for all of the sacred scrolls to be bound together in one book.

Nobody would want a scroll with all of them, because you’d have to laboriously roll through a couple thousand pages of material, and the scroll would tear and get poorly wound and things like that. But with a codex (a book with a spine) you could flip to whatever passage you want quickly.

Codices are thus random access where scrolls are linear access: Kind of the same difference between computer disks and computer tapes or between DVDs and VHS. You can get just where you want to go much more quickly in the former than the latter.

And so codices replaced scrolls the way DVD is replacing VHS.

This replacement led to the creation of collective terms for the sacred writings: "Scripture" instead of "the Scriptures" and "Bible" instead of ta biblia.

The rest is history.

Encyclical Update

I’m getting reports from various places that suggest that B16’s first encyclical–Deus Caritas Est (Latin,"God Is Love")–will be released this week. One of them is

THIS STORY FROM CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY.

According to the story,

The text-46 pages- shorter though than the average encyclical of Pope John Paul II- is divided into two parts. The first one is dedicated to “the unity of love, the creation and the history of salvation”, and the second one to the notion of “Caritas,” as the “exercise of love from the Church.”

According to a Vatican source, cited by the Italian daily La Repubblica, in the last chapter Pope Benedict XVI insists on the concept of “Love-Caritas,” and its relation to Catholic Charity organizations, he remarks that the this binomial will always be necessary, as well in more just societies.

The Pope notes too that Charitable work in the Church has to be totally separated from parties and ideologies, because Charity, being more than a way to change the worlds, is the achievement here and now of the love man always needs.”

GET THE STORY.

They just better have it translated into English and posted on the Vatican’s web site when it’s released is all I have to say.

I’m just sayin’, is all.

Bremer Article Highlights Progress, Mistakes

Tim J here.

One-time head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, gives some interesting comment on the reconstruction in Iraq in THIS N.Y. TIMES ARTICLE. (there was no registration requirement when I was there).

He touches on just a few of the many complex difficulties in trying to rebuild, from the ground up, the economic, political and physical infrastructure of an entire country… one that had been ravaged by a ruthless dictator, grinding (yet tragically ineffectual) U.N. sanctions, and decades of war (with both Iran and the U.S.-led coalitions).

In all this, there is a balance to be struck between those who will admit no flaw in the U.S. effort there, and those who see it all as one ghastly mistake, or worse.

I see it as a job that needed doing sooner or later, and that no one else was going to do. I therefore disagree with the Buchananites who would have us withdraw into a fortified bunker within our borders and wait until we are invaded. I think the present world situation is far more like a game of chess than it is like a wrestling match. The reality of Islamo-fascism makes the old pattern of clashes between nation-states too simplistic a model. I don’t know (perhaps can’t know) whether this is ultimately a just war, but it can legitimately be argued either way.

That said, I think it is obvious that blunders were made in the aftermath of the initial military campaign. This happened because our enemy employed an old, but unexpected tactic, called "running away", for which we were not prepared. The Bush administration was geared up for a longer military conflict and had only a vague occupation plan. When they found themselves in downtown Baghdad a few weeks later, they were like a dog that has been chasing a car that suddenly stops… what do I do with it now?

Bremer’s article argues that real progress is being made, in spite of the obvious setbacks.

Pray for our troops. Pray for the people of Iraq.

GET THE STORY.

Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage, Controversy, Canon Law

Ed Peters has a new piece on his blog regarding a dustup that has apparently occurred in some quarters regarding remarks made by Cardinal Mario Pompedda.

As Ed points out, it isn’t altogether clear precisely what the Cardinal said.

Unfortunately, it looks like some may be spinning what the Cardinal said to support unrestricted access to Communion for divorced and remarried couples.

HERE’S A STORY GIVING SOME SENSE OF THAT.

Based on what I’ve seen Cardinal Pompedda reported as saying, he didn’t say anything like that.

What he is reported as saying is that civil divorce is not automatically sinful (it’s not) and Catholics who have been civilly divorced and civilly remarried are not excommunicated (they’re not)–so he’s right on both counts.

But these facts alone do not mean that one is qualified to receive Communion. There’s a difference between being excommunicated (a canonical censure applied by the Church for a handful of grave offenses against faith and morals) and being unqualified to receive Communion (which any ol’ mortal sin causes). The mere fact that one is not excommunicated thus does not mean that one has a right to receive Communion.

Civilly divorcing may or may not be mortally sinful (it depends on the individual case) but for Catholics to remarry in an invalid civil ceremony and then having conjugal relations is a gravely sinful act that will disqualify one from being able to receive Communion, even if it does not trigger the canonical censure of excommunication.

Shadow Pope

According to Italian press reports, Pope Benedict has been raising eyebrows in the Eternal City by making night visits to the residence he kept when known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger:

"At about 9pm a plain, dark car carrying 78-year-old Pope Benedict and his private secretary, Don Georg Gaenswein, swirls out of a side door of Vatican city. It then doubles round in the back streets before arriving at 1 Piazza Citta Leonina, a hall of residence for senior Church figures and the Pope’s home as a cardinal for almost 24 years.

"A Vatican security guard is always waiting in front of the apartments in a pedestrian zone tucked behind St Peter’s Square. The Pope gets out of the car disguised in the plain black priest’s robes he wore when he was the Catholic Church’s senior theologian.

"Wearing a black hat and with his head down, he opens the wooden door himself, as he did for all those years, and tiptoes inside followed by Don Georg.

"’Its is not a question of just dashing in for a few minutes to grab a bag or a book,’ La Stampa said. ‘He spends at least a couple of hours there.’"

GET THE STORY.

Although the Italian press is notorious for its unreliability, which means that the report probably should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt, I find myself charmed by the idea of the Holy Father slipping away from the Vatican dressed as a simple priest. It reminds me of his namesake and birthday patron St. Benedict Joseph Labre, who was known as the Beggar of Rome and who used to wander the streets of the Eternal City in a sort of perpetual pilgrimage.

Amabo Te

Down yonder some folks were asking about a Latin equivalent for "please" and someone wrote:

Doesn’t Latin have "amabo te"? That’s what I learned, anyhow…

Another person then wrote:

This subject was discussed before on JA.O, and I also asked about "amabo te." I think Jimmy said it wasn’t really used that much.

I don’t recall saying that "amabo te" isn’t used much, though that’s certainly true in prayers. One reason why may be that–I am given to understand–"amabo te" is considered distinctive of women’s speech, but most prayers in Church historically have been lead by and composed for men.

The fundamental thing, though, is that "amabo te" is not a particle, the way "please" is. "Amabo te" is an idiomatic phrase used to express entreaty, but not a particle of entreaty. Literally, "amabo te" means "I will love you."

Every language has ways of expressing entreaty, but in some languages (like English) we have a particle we do it with and in other languages (like Latin) they have a phrase (or other devices) they do it with.

Also, I don’t know that it’s a very Christian sentiment to use "amabo te" in prayers.

I for one would feel *even less polite* saying to God "I will love you if you do this for me" or "Do this for me and I will love you."

I want to love God whether he does it for me or not.

To a native Latin speaker "amabo te" might possibly have lost its literal resonance (the way "roll out the red carpet" has lost its literal resonance for most native English speakers), but I’m not a native Latin speaker, and putting "amabo te" in prayers I say in Latin would totally call attention to its literal meaning in my mind.

Translating it literally into English prayers would be even worse.

Cy, The Cyclops Kitten–UPDATE

Wow. I wasn’t expecting that!

A few days ago I did a post about Cy, the cyclops kitten. The post generated a few comments, but then a couple of days later–for reasons best known to Bill Gates–the search feature at MSN.com decided to list my post as the top thing in the search results for anyone who searched for "cyclops kitten."

The result was that I got SIXTY THOUSAND hits in one day. That’s like twenty times what I normally get. The next day–a slow-traffic Saturday–I got more than thirty thousand hits.

WOW. (I’m glad that TypePad isn’t charging me extra for my bandwidth overages, which are already substantial.)

In the process of getting that many hits, over a hundred comments got posted on the thread in a single day (which is probably a single-day record, but not a most-comments-ever record).

Reading the comments is fascinating, particularly because they are made by a much broader cross-section of Internet users than the folks who normally read my blog. Some individuals commenting used handles that revealed them to be Gigantic Idiots, and they got their posts swiftly unpublished. Others used rude language, but not so rude that they got unpublished.

Many of the comments were about how awsome Cy is. SAMPLES:

DUDE!!! This cat is freakin awsome…real or not. If this is a true coincidence, rock on Cy!

i think it’s kind of cool in an odd way. he’d be great in a movie.

Strange, but beautiful. I really wish he could’ve lived. Would’ve definitely been a cool cat to have.

OMG! I love him! I SOOOOOOOOO wish he would have lived… poo[r] thing though… no nose? Well anyways I think he is adorable.

i think this is the absolute cutest thing i have ever seen!! i dont
normally like cats but this one took my heart as soon as i saw it…it
really upsets me tht he died..well thts all i have to say except its
the cutest thing ive ever seen

I think Cy was adorable in his own right.. I would’ve loved him. *kisses* to Cy.. RIP

*R.I.P Cy* i feel so bad for him and hes soo cute. Kinda looks more
of a cute little monkey than a cat. Too bad he only lived one day. I
would have wanted to take him in. Hes so adorable, but maybe its good
that he went because he would be in all of pain and misery if he lived,
because people would gape and his obnormality. I feel so bad.
If u think hes ugly, u are seriously disturbed.

Many people seemed to invest a mystical significance in Cy, speculating that God may have sent him into the world to teach us a valuable lesson and redeem us from the cynicism and lack of wonder in our society today:

Reading people’s reactions to something that strays from the "norm" just reinforces my cynisism towards the world and reminds me of the emptiness and cruelty of people. Like Chrissy says, God loves us all and all living things have a purpose. Cy’s purpose seems to have been to bring out the warmth and loving instincts in some but sadly expose the coldheartedness of most others.

for some strange reason god wanted us to see him for a reason. Everything comes in all different shapes and sizes with some deformation but this little precious was here for us to see anything is possible.

One person wondered if Cy could see his own future. (I may be reading into this comment, but I assume this was a jest based on the archetype of the blind prophet, since Cy was apparently blind.)

Even an atheist was prompted to consider whether Cy might be a product of divine intervention:

Whilst i am a strict aithiest, i have only sincere hopes that lil’ cy has gone to a better place than the earth that doomed him.

I can really appreciate what his presence has done for everyone, it
kind of broadens the perspective of life as we know it…was this
divine intervention or simply an accident? Either way, its all
positive, positive, positive. Makes you think dosent it?

Many also speculated about Cy’s eternal reward in heaven and getting to meet him there:

It really is a shame you didn’t get to amaze people once more when you
grew up, but I’m sure you’re waiting in Limbo for the Holy day when all
the worthy will be accepted into the Lord’s Kingdom. Then again, who
the heck am I to make this statement.

God bless this little baby!
He’s in heaven now having a hay day chasing all the mice he can and sleeping with angels.

my first thought was, "o my" and probably a lot of peoples first
thought was the same. god bless that little tyke and we’ll see you on
the other cy.

Many posters wondered whether this might not be a Photoshop trick–something that had occurred to me after I first saw the picture–and that started a debate between the Cy believers and the Cy unbelievers.

The argument between the Cy believers and the Cy unbelievers was eerily reminiscent of debates about religion.

Some expressed simple faith in his existence:

I believe Cy was alive, until someone proves otherwise, why dobut. Poor
thing to have so many people say some of the things they are saying
about it.

Some Cy unbelievers insulted the intelligence of the Cy believers, and some Cy believers pronounced shame upon the Cy unbelievers for their lack of faith.

Some Cy believers even argued that it doesn’t really matter if Cy is real or not because he touched all of our hearts so much.

Oh ye of little faith!

While I don’t have personal proof, the best evidence I have is that Cy is real.

First, HERE’S A FOLLOW-UP STORY FROM THE AP DETAILING THEIR RESEARCH INTO THE STORY.

Among other things the story mentions is the name of the medical condition that Cy apparently suffered from: holoprosencephaly (which loosely translated would be "whole forebrain-ism"). This is a real medical condition which occurs when the forebrain fails to divide into hemispheres, and it often results in facial deformities, particularly cyclopia and problems with the nose.

If you don’t believe me, HERE’S WHAT THE NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH HAS TO SAY:

The least severe of the facial anomalies is the median cleft lip (premaxillary agenesis). The most severe is cyclopia, an abnormality characterized by a single eye located in the area normally occupied by the root of the nose, and a missing nose or a proboscis (a tubular-shaped nose) located above the eye. The least common facial anomaly is ethmocephaly, in which a proboscis separates closely-set eyes. Cebocephaly, another facial anomaly, is characterized by a small, flattened nose with a single nostril situated below incomplete or underdeveloped closely-set eyes.

Some readers in the combox helpfully pointed to THE SNOPES.COM PAGE ON CY (Snopes.com is a site devoted to debunking or verifying urban legends), which considers the Cy story true.

Snopes also says:

Cyclopia (or synophthalmia) is a birth defect in which a normally two-eyed animal is born with only a single fused eye, generally disproportionately large and centered on the face above the area where the nose would usually appear. Typically in cyclopic births the nose is either absent or present as an appendage located above the single eye. (Eyelids are also generally absent in such births, which explains why the eye of the one-day-old kitten pictured above is open even though cats are usually born with their eyes shut and remain in that condition for the first week or two of their lives.)

Another reader posted a link to A PAGE ABOUT A CYCLOPS GOAT, WITH PICTURES OF IT FROM MULTIPLE ANGLES.

The follow-up AP story linked above mentions that Cy’s owner sent the chip from her digital camera to the AP and it contained additional photos of Cy, taken from different angles. It also had the Cy photos in sequence with other photos in a way that the AP felt would have been very hard to fake.

Another thing it mentions (and which was the original reason that I didn’t link it after the Photoshop question was first raised) is that the woman who was Cy’s owner has kept his body in her freezer in case scientists want to study it. (She has also said the will NOT sell it on eBay.)

When I first read that, I thought, "Ewww. Gross." But on further reflection, after all the furor about whether or not Cy is real, preserving his remains maybe wasn’t such a bad idea.

Gross or not, this is a note of credibility. A Photoshop hoaxer would have said "I put the body in a dumpster and it was carried off to a dump from which it can never be recovered," not "I have the remains in my freezer and am willing to donate them for scientific study."

It seems to me, unless proof to the contrary is provided, that Cy was most likely a real kitten who suffered from holoprosencephalopathy and cyclopia–just like many other creatures (including some humans) have.

God bless you, Cy, and Rock On!

READ HOW CY TOUCHED PEOPLE–AND SPARKED ARGUMENTS–IN THE ORIGINAL POST’S COMBOX.