Month: February 2006

St. Valentine’s Day

Today is St. Valentine’s day–a celebration that is among the top five holidays which have had their Christian meaning forgotten in contemporary culture (along with Easter, Christmas, Fat Tuesday [Mardi Gras], and Halloween).

But it’s still popular, and certainly if you have a special someone, you need to do your part and get or do something nice for them.

In some ways, St. Valentine’s day is the hardest one of the Forgotten Five to articulate is Christian meaning. I mean, Easter is about the Resurrection, and Christmas is about the Nativity. Fat Tuesday is about the last chance to enjoy things we will give up for Lent, and Halloween is the preparation for the day celebrating all of the saints in heaven.

But what is St. Valentine’s day about? Obviously, about St. Valentine–but he lived so long ago that we don’t really know very much about him (other than that there was one and he was a martyr). The facts of his life have become enmeshed with Christian legend, and it’s hard to know much about him for sure.

Many of those legends connect him with helping out lovers in various ways, which explains why all the married men (among others) have got to get flowers and candy on the way home from work today (don’t forget!).

Still, it would help us better appreciate the day if we knew what there is to know about St. Valentine, which is why you should also

GET THE STORY.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day, y’all!

Evangelizing A Non-Catholic Minister

A reader writes:

I have some advice to ask. I have a niece who my wife and I nearly raised after her sister went through some hard times.  During college she met a wonderful young man who was going to study for the ministry and after graduating from College went on to Baptist Seminary where he graduated. He took a church and for a year he struggled as a young pastor to keep the congregation from splitting over a number of old seated issues.

After about a year of attempting to heal a broken church they decided that it was time to return home where they could be closer to family. After moving home, they are having trouble finding a congregation; our nephew has taken a counseling job where he can use his theological and pasturing skills while also providing for the family.

My question is that I have been feeling an intense sense that I should share the stories of many of the protestant ministers who have returned home to Rome but I am concerned that this might not be received in the right spirit. My wife and I are both converts, I converted in High School along with my entire family, she converted prior to our marriage.

Do you have any advice as to how I could start the conversation with my nephew? My sprit feels that there might be an openness on his part. 

I don’t know the young man as well as you, or what your relationship with him is, so my ability to offer advice is limited, but I’ll give you what thoughts I can.

It seems to me that I’d be as simple and direct and non-threatening as possible. I’d say something like:

You know, John, my wife and I weren’t always Catholic. We became Catholic, and it has really meant a lot to us. I know that you have a great desire to follow God, and I think God would want you to investigate whether he wants you to follow him as a Catholic.

It may not be something that you have ever seriously considered before–in fact, you may have been taught a number of things about Catholicism that would have kept you from considering it before. But many people have looked into Catholicism and become Catholic in recent years, including many Protestant ministers.

Maybe the fact that you are now searching for a church shows you that this is a good time to look into it yourself.

If you’re open to it, I’d like to give you this book/tape to read/listen to. If you have questions or want to investigate further, I’d be happy to help point you to resources. You may find that many of the things you have been taught about Catholicism aren’t true or at least that Catholics have a better basis for them than you thought. That’s what many of these ministers found.

I wanted to share this with you because of how much I and my wife care for you and our neice. We’ve found that being Catholic has really meant a lot to us, and I know it would really mean a lot to you and our neice, too.

Then I’d give him Surprised By Truth volume 1 (the purple one) since it is a book of short, theologically-oriented conversion stories, many of them by Protestant ministers who became Catholic. Or, if he wouldn’t be up for a book, I’d give him the tape Protestant Minister Becomes Catholic by Scott Hahn.

If he’s receptive, you may also talk to him about what being Catholic has meant to you and how much you value it.

If he’s an admirer of John Paul II or Benedict XVI (as many Protestants are), you might cite them also as men of great wisdom who have found value in the Catholic faith. You might also consider giving him a copy of Pope Benedict’s new encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, as something that he might find valuable to read.

(Incidentally, if you google "God is love" then Deus Caritas Est is the first thing that pops up. If only B16 were Internet-savvy enough to fully appreciate how cool that is. CHT to SDG for pointing this out to me.)

A copy of the Catechism or the Compendium that will be out at the end of March also could be good.

Don’t load him up with too much stuff all at once, though.

Other readers may have other suggestions, but I hope these help!

Reader Apologetics Invitation

A reader writes:

One thing I come across in the blogosphere are occasionaly bloopers about the faith.  Ironically when discussing the current brouhaha about the Muhammed cartoons and jihad DJ Drummond of Polipundit makes the following staement (after stating he is a Protestant):

"Take the Reformation of Christianity. I’m not saying, at all, that Christianity is morally the same as Islam, yet I am all to well aware that the catholic Church in Europe was guilty of some very nasty excesses, what with prohibition against lay people reading the Bible on their own, and against personal ownership of Bibles. I recall reading of arrests and trials and tortures of innocent people, for the purpose of advancing the fortunes of favored individuals and punishing their enemies. I recall the histories of indulgences granted by the Church, manipulation of governments and heavy tax burdens levied on the people with no choice but to endure it. These injustices lasted for centuries with very few dissenters, and small wonder – the Church hired men to devise means of torture, to literally wrack confessions from malcontents and so suppress any thought of revolt. Few men indeed had the courage to speak up during those years."

I could probably debunk this but don’t have the time (I’m Mr. Mom this week as my wife is visiting her sister) or the writing skills that you have.  Could you craft a little rebuttal here?  Please!  For crying out loud, he is going after Islamist and he let his anti-Catholic skirts show.

There’s a lot in the quotation that you offer, and I’m afraid that I don’t have time to write a rebuttal at the moment.

BUT I have a lot of really smart readers, and I’m sure that they’re up to the task of addressing and correcting this.

Feel free to add your suggestions for how to respond in the combox or

GO OVER TO THE POST IN QUESTION AND ADD YOUR COMMENTS IN THE COMBOX THERE.

Be sure to observe the to cardinal rules of combox apologetics, though:

  1. Be polite. Be very polite. (Unfailingly, excruciatingly polite.)
  2. Be brief. Be very brief. (Unfailingly, excruciatingly brief–which is part of being polite.)

Naming Guardians For Children

A reader writes:

My husband and I are young, both practicing, orthodox Catholics, with two children and one on the way.  We have been writing up our wills — no immediate reason other than preparedness, we are both healthy — and we now need to decide whom we should name as our children’s legal guardians in the event that both of us die or become incapacitated.  There are two obvious choices.

Option 1:  Mr. and Mrs. X. are our good friends, the same age as us and with three children .  Our families spend many hours per week together, and our children regard each others’ family as an extended family.  Our kids love them.  They share many of our values and our parenting style, plan a large family, and are even NFP users.  They, like us, are homeschoolers.  They are Christians.  They are, in short, perfect.  *But* — they are not Catholics.

Option 2:  My husband’s parents.  They love the kids and the kids love them.  They are practicing Catholics and in fact they are my older son’s godparents.  But they are also 60 years old — will be nearly eighty by the time our youngest turns 18 — and live hundreds of miles away.  We are concerned that if we should die suddenly, sending them to live with Grandma and Grandpa would be more stressful on them than for them to stay with their longtime friends, and also that the grandparents’ health will eventually fail.

Are we morally required to choose my husband’s parents over Mr. and Mrs. X for the sole reason that they are Catholic?  Assume that Mr. and Mrs. X would respect our wishes that our children at least receive education in the Faith and won’t stand in the way of their receiving the sacraments — but I’m pretty sure it would be unreasonable to expect them to take the children to Mass every Sunday, or to bar them from taking the children to their own church.

What expectations should we set, if we do choose them?  Is it sufficient for us to place enough resources at Mr. and Mrs. X’s disposal that the burden on them to raise children in two different faiths would be not so large?  I feel torn — my Catholicism tells me that to be certain they are raised securely in the faith is the most important thing, yet my motherhood feels they will be happier, healthier, and safer in our friends’ home.  Of course, it’s all theoretical — hopefully we won’t die suddenly — but if we do then this will turn out to have been the most important decision we ever make.

This is a tough situation. I’ll offer you what help I can, though.

The purpose of parenting is to prepare children for life–and not just this life, but for the next one as well. This is why parents have a responsibility to see to the religious education of their offspring.

Given the fact that what happens to us in the next life is infinitely more important than what happens to us in this one (given the fact that the next life is infinitely long and will either be really good or really bad), the proper religious education of offspring seems to have a transcendental value.

Since God mandates that all adhere to the Catholic faith for their salvation, it must be understood that–even though God allows others to be saved on certain conditions–that adherence to the Catholic faith must at least maximize one’s chances of salvation. (If it were easier to be saved as a non-Catholic than as a Catholic then God would have perversely commanded people to enter a suboptimal situation; one would then maximize one’s chances of salvation be entering a state that is out of conformity with God’s known will, which is crazy.)

In view of these considerations, it seems that parents have a responsibility of transcendental value to do what they can to encourage their children’s adherence to the Catholic faith.

This does not mean making them say Rosaries every waking minute of the day. That actually would harm their religious development. (More is not always better. We are expected to live in a human mode in this life, not a superhuman one.) But it does mean ensuring that they will be raised to believe in the Catholic faith and to participate in its rites according to their age and capacity.

This means, among other things, regularly attending Mass. Once they have hit age 7 (CIC, can. 11) they will be obliged to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation unless they have an excusing cause. Of course, if your guardians refuse to take you to Mass then that is an excusing cause, but the point is that the Church feels that it is very important to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation or it wouldn’t have gravely bound the faithful to do so.

It is scarcely consistent with the proper religious education of children to have them attend Mass only infrequently (this is not the way to raise them to be regular Mass-attenders as adults), and so it would seem that the parents’ responsibility to best prepare their children for the next life would strongly argue against putting children in a situation where their religious practice will be so neglected–at least as long as there is an alternative.

Since there is an alternative in this case, it seems to me that the thing to do would be to put in grandma and grandpa–at least as placeholders until such time as your friends become Catholic (it sounds like they’re already pretty Catholic friendly) or until you make other Catholic friends who would be willing to take them.

This arrangement may mean placing a higher good over a lower good (their eternal good over their temporal good), but it seems to best reflect the fundamental ordering of values in Christian morality.

Hope this helps!

Offering Your Communion For Someone

A reader writes:

I recall reading once that one could offer the reception of Holy Communion for the benefit of someone else.

Can you clarify this? I have been offering the reception as of late for a priest who was badly injured in a car wreck. (He was in a coma, but now he is out of the coma and continues to recover.)

Is it acceptable to offer the reception of the Lord for the intentions of someone else? I would hate to think I was doing something sacreligious.

This is not something that is provided for in the Church’s official documents, but it seems to be something that is part of folk Catholicism, at least here in America (perhaps elsewhere as well).

Understood in one sense, this would be problematic, but understood in another sense, it is not.

If someone had the idea that they were transferring some or all of the graces that they would otherwise receive to someone else–i.e., serving as that person’s proxy–then this would be a false understanding and the reception of Communion would be done in a superstitious manner that misunderstands what happens in Communion.

God’s grace is not something that we can control and manipulate in this manner. If he gives us grace via a sacrament then we receive that grace. We can’t direct it to somebody else.

What we can do, and this is what leads to the second and non-problematic understanding, is ask God to bless somebody else. In fact, we do that all the time through intercessory prayer.

The question would be why we would want to do so at Communion time. Well, for a start, it is the most intimate way that we encounter God liturgically. By asking God to bless someone else at this particular moment is to underscore how important the request is to us. It’s one thing to ask God for a favor when you’re laying at home in bed. It’s another thing to ask God for a favor when you are in church and are receiving him in holy Communion.

We also please God when we receive Communion worthily, and this also gives us a basis for asking God for a favor. We can say to him, "Lord, if I have pleased you by receiving you in Communion, please bless my friend."

Further, this is a place in which God is giving us his grace, and we can ask–if we choose–that he share with someone else part of the blessings that he is bestowing. But we can’t ask that he give them all to someone else, because that would contravene God’s known will, which is that we receive is grace when we receive Communion worthily.

If offering Communion for the sake of someone else is understood in these latter senses then it is not theologically problematic.

Indeed, we can point to the custom of saying Mass for particular intentions as a parallel (e.g., "This Mass will be said for the intentions of the Jones family"). The fixed prayers of the Mass are not changed to include that intention, but the priest is asking God to fulfill a particular intention or set of intentions in association with the Mass. The kind of considerations outlined above would also undergird the concept of Mass intentions: We’re asking God to bless someone else, without the idea that those assisting at the Mass will be deprived of grace.

It is ultimately the priest, though, who controls what intention a Mass is said for. We layfolks don’t. What we do is worship and receive Communion, and the custom of offering our Communion for certain intentions parallels the priest’s offering of the whole Mass for certain intentions.

Note that you don’t have to run through all this theology in your head or run through detailed verbal requests when you do this. Having understood all this, you can simply say to God, "Lord, I want to offer my Communion for this intention." You don’t even have to use words when you do that, for God knows what your intentions are even when they aren’t expressed in words.

Hope this helps!

Ultrasound

A correspondent writes:

Have you ever heard that the Church teaches that ultra-sounds are immoral? My wife had one to determine the age of our new child and she was exorted by one of the gals at our parish that my wife should not be doing ultra-sounds and if she does one that would constitute active sin and lending herself to the "abortion culture in general."  In fact her and her husband were so upset by it that they called us yesterday and told us that if my wife chose to have the ultrasound that they would not longer be able to remain friends with us.

Unfortunately after the ultra-sound that my wife had we found out yesterday that she lost the baby. He or she was 8 weeks old.

First, let me say how sorry I am that the baby passed on. It is a human tragedy, and the Church knows the pain that you are feeling. To try to help those who have experienced miscarriage, the Church has a special blessing for those who have had a miscarriage. It’s in the Book of Blessings (every parish has one of those), and you and your wife may wish to have this blessing done. You can ask about having it done at your parish.

As regards to ultrasound, your friends are misinformed.

The Church most definitely does not teach that ultrasound is immoral or that it fosters the culture of death. To the contrary, the Church recognizes the moral legitimacy of pre-natal testing methods, even (in some cases) where there is no therapy available for a condition that the testing may reveal (see below).

The Church does have a problem with is prenatal testing that poses a disproportionate risk to the health of the mother or child, but ultrasound is a routine medical procedure that has been used for decades, and we would know it if it were fundamentally unsafe.

The Church also has a problem with using prenatal testing as a means of determining whether a child should be aborted, but that obviously is not what you and your wife were doing in this case.

Let me give you a couple of quotations from magisterial documents.

The first comes from a document that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued when Cardinal Ratzinger was its head. The document, Donum Vitae ("The Gift of Life"), states:

Is prenatal diagnosis morally licit? If prenatal diagnosis
respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and
is directed toward its safeguarding or healing as an individual, then
the answer is affirmative [sec. I, no. 2].

John Paul II also addressed the subject in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life"). Regarding prenatal diagnostic techniques, he wrote:

When they do not involve disproportionate risks for the child and the mother, and are meant to make possible early therapy or even to favor a serene and informed acceptance of the child not yet born, these techniques are morally licit (63).

You’ll note that he says they can be legitimate even just to "favor a
serene and informed acceptance of the child not yet born.” That means that you don’t even have to have a therapeutic goal for the procedure. As long as the procedure doesn’t pose disproportinoate risks to the child and as long as you aren’t going to abort, it can be used even if there is no therapeutic goal in view.

Notice something else, here: The parents’ ability to emotionally adjust to the child and his situation can be a valid motive for prenatal diagnostic techniques. John Paul II applied this to the case of parents facing the possibility of a child with an untreatable birth defect, so that they don’t have the emotional shock of learning about it only at birth but have some time to adjust emotionally.

It seems to me, however, that the principle can be applied in other situations. For example, many parents who see their child in 3D or 4D ultrasound have their emotional attachment to the child fostered. As long as the procedure is safe for the baby (and we have no reason to think this one isn’t after who knows how many tens or hundreds of millions of ultrasounds have been performed in the last thirty years) and the parents aren’t going to abort then it seems to me that the procedure is legitimate for those purposes.

Determining the age of the child is also a valid reason, since this can enable one to better plan the prenatal care of the child and to better plan for the birth.

(I recognize the importance of that in a special way because of my role at Catholic Answers. I oversee our speakers’ bureau, and whenever one of the speakers or one of the speaker’s wives gets pregnant we need to accomodate that in the calendar since speaking events are planned months in advance. Since speaking events won’t be able to be accepted for a certain period before and after birth, knowing when delivery is likely to occur enables us to plan things so that the speakers can have the time they need for the joyful event and parishes don’t have conferences cancelled on them at the last minute so that speakers can care for their family needs.)

In any event, the idea that the Church considers ultrasound immoral and a fostering of the culture of death is simply false.

God bless you, and I encourage readers to pray for you and for the baby, who is now in the merciful hands of God.

20

Japheth?

A correspondent writes:

1. Noah had three sons. What order were they in birth (who was oldest, second and youngest)?

It is commonly thought that the order is Shem, Ham, and then Japheth. The main reason is that this the the order the names are given in when they are introduced in Genesis 5:32 and elsewhere. Also, Genesis 10:21 explicitly states that Shem is Japheth’s elder brother.

I have seen it argued that Ham was the oldest but lost his birthright due to the incident where Noah got drunk, but the arguments for this are not convincing.

2. Does the birth order in this case have any theological significance ?

It shows Israel being descended from the firstborn (actual or legal, depending on the birth order theory you take).

3. One of the sons was the father of the chosen people, the other the Canaanites.    What happened to the descendants of the third son ? 

They went a variety of places, many of which were overseas from Israel, which is why Genesis 10:5 describes them as being maritime peoples, since that is how the Israelites encountered them (via the sea). They also went other places, generally to the north, northeast , and northwest from Israel’s perspective.

One thing you should be aware of regarding ancient near eastern genealogies like the one in Genesis 10 is that they aren’t exclusively biological in nature. They also include legal adoptions of peoples and tribes. If two tribes formed an alliance or merged culturally then they one tribe would be adopted into the lineage of the other. This is similar to how in our modern genealogies we don’t separate out people who were adopted. Grandma is still Grandma whether your mother was physically born to Grandma or whether she was adopted by her. The ancient near easterners did the same thing, only they did it with tribes instead of just individuals, and they allowed the adoptions to take place after the original patriarch of the lineage was dead. (We can see these kind of adoptions happening elsewhere in the genealogies of Israel in the Bible, as when Caleb is reckoned both as a Kennizite and as a descendant of Judah.)

As a result, the table of nations given in Genesis 10 isn’t simply a biological record. It includes biological factors as well as cultural and political affiliations, resulting in adoptions of tribes into lineages that aren’t necessarily biologically related. This kind of genalogization is how patriarchical cultures keep track of everybody and how they relate to each other.

The upshot is that the decendants of Japheth aren’t necessarily all biological descendants of his. Some may be descendants attributed to him by adoption even after his death.

In general, the Japhethites represent speakers of Indo-European languages like Greek.

Catholic News Service Slimes Organization In Act Of Irresponsible “Hit Piece” Journalism

Suppose that a conservative Catholic newspaper–let’s say The Wanderer–approached Tony Spence, the editor-in-chief of Catholic News Service (which operates under the auspices of the USCCB) and asked him to respond to unsourced allegations that Catholic News Service is infested by theological dissidents.

Suppose that The Wanderer then ran a piece headlined "Editor denies Catholic News Service ‘infested by theological dissidents.’"

And suppose that nowhere in this piece did it cite anyone as having made this allegation. It simply seems to be something that The Wanderer wants to suggest even though there is apparently no one willing to go on record making the claim.

Would that be responsible journalism? Of course not. That’s an attack piece.

Why then has Catholic News Service just used this exact tactic in an article on the Cardinal Newman Society, an organization that points out problems in various Catholic universities?

Disclosure: I have no connection to the Cardinal Newman Society, nor have I been more than dimly aware of its existence prior to the publication of this piece. I know next to nothing about it, have no prior impression of it, and have no opinion on it one way or the other. I support fostering the Catholic identity of Catholic universities, but whether the Cardinal Newman Society does so in a constructive manner is something I do not at this point know.

That being said. . . .

As soon as I started reading the CNS piece–titled Cardinal Newman Society head says group operates within magisterium–it was immediately obvious that the piece represented a hit piece apparently written in gross violation of journalistic ethics (either that or it’s gross journalistic incompetence). Both the reporter who wrote it (Agostino Bono) and the editor who approved it are severely at fault.

Here’s how the article begins:

WASHINGTON (CNS) — A self-described watchdog organization that claims many Catholic colleges are losing their Catholic identity is not setting up a teaching authority independent of the bishops, said the head of the group.

The Cardinal Newman Society is exercising a "concurrent magisterium" in keeping with the church’s teaching authority, said Patrick Reilly, the society’s president.

You’ll note that the article goes after the Cardinal Newman Society from the very beginning. It lobs allegations at them and does so without naming anyone who is making these allegations.

Nor does it go on to name those making these allegations in subsequent paragraphs. They are completley unattributed.

This is a hallmark of hit piece journalism. You simply cannot lob unsourced allegations at someone and claim to be doing responsible journalism.

A reporter’s job is — get this — to report the news. If some
bishop or university president has accused the Cardinal Newman Society
of setting up its own teaching authority, and a reporter gets a
statement from the Cardinal Newman Society denying said charges, that is reporting the news.

If as far as we know nobody
has accused the Cardinal Newman Society of setting up its own teaching
authority — at least, not on the record, not in any way that would
make it a news story — and a reporter up and decides out of the blue
to ask the president of the Cardinal Newman Society whether his group
is setting up its own teaching authority, then runs a story all about
how the Cardinal Newman Society denies setting up its own authority,
then that is not reporting the news, that is slime journalism.

This is a breathtaking lapse of ethics (or a breathtaking act of incompetence). Even secular journalists wanting to slime a group have the brains not to make such a blatant attempt. They at least go out and find someone willing to publicly mouth the accusation that the reporter wants to lob at the group.

The fact that the piece was a brazen attempt to slime the Cardinal Newman Society was thus immediately apparent, though I also recognized that if Patrick Reilly really said some of the things attributed to him in the article that he did himself no favors, and I began to form a negative impression of his group.

The comment about the society seeking to exercise a "concurrent magisterium," for example, was an immediate danger signal, as were other commenets attributed to him, and I began to view him and his society in a negative light.

But it turns out that Mr. Reilly disputes the attribution of these quotations. A response on the Cardinal Newman Society web site denies that Reilly said this, and it makes some of the same points I would in critiquing the phrase "concurrent magisterium."

READ THE RESPONSE.

The response on the Cardinal Newman Society web site also mentions a prior encounter with the Catholic News Service, in which the latter attempted to get the former to stop using the acronym CNS, as if there weren’t at least fifty-two other uses of that acronym.

This further calls into question the motivations of Catholic News Service in running the piece.

One can only hope that Tony Spence or his superiors will immediately take steps to correct and apologize for this outrageous breach of journalistic ethics and to discipline the reporter and any subordinate editor who approved the piece.

If Spence is himself the editor who approved it then he needs to be disciplined by his superiors.

Standard contact info:

Catholic News Service
(202) 541-3250
cns@catholicnews.com

You Heard It Here First

Down yonder, Mark Brumley of Ignatius Press writes in part:

The second edition of the RSV is an Ignatius Press exclusive. It is
the *only* English language translation of the Bible updated
specifically to correspond to Liturgiam Authenticam. Some of the
"tweaking" to which I refer above is to bring the RSV into line with
Liturgiam Authenticam.

Ignatius Press is also publishing a new English lectionary based on
the RSV, 2nd Catholic edition. This lectionary may not, at present, be
used in the Liturgy in the U.S., although it is approved for use in the
Antilles and the Holy Father was presented with a copy in December.
Whether the USCCB will permit it to be used remains to be seen, but
other episcopal conferences of English-speaking Catholics may. We’ll
see.

Sweet!

Mark told me about this project a good bit ago, but I didn’t know that it had come to fruition. Let’s pray that the Ignatius lectionary gets approved for use in the U.S. so that we (or some of us) can get some relief from the tin-eared translations found in the current lectionary.