I’m going to be largely offline this week as I’m putting my computer back into the shop. (They didn’t fix the problem last time, unfortunately).
In anticipation of the new repair effort, I do, however, have material scheduled to go up each day until the computer should be repaired, so the blog won’t be inactive in the interim.
My co-bloggers are, of course, welcome to toss in anything they may have on their minds to make up the difference.
Thanks, folks, and have a great rest of the week!
A reader writes:
A Baptist friend told me it is wrong for a Christian to actively seek a wife. He says the Bible teaches this when Jesus says, "Seek first His Kingdom, and all these things will be added unto you as well," and in the verse where Paul says that if a man is single, he shouldn’t desire to get married…"
Jimmy, is it true that the Bible teaches this? My friend said we should only be concerned about the Kingdom, not getting a wife, and God might give one to us. I feel it is my vocation to marry. Would it be wrong to join an internet dating service? Or place myself in situations where I can easily meet a woman (like a line-dancing club?)
First let’s deal with what St. Paul said.
He indicated that he felt it would be better for people not to marry because "those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that" (1 Cor. 7:28b). The fact that he was living in an age when Christians would be persecuted may play a role in that judgment.
Nevertheless, it is not an absolute judgment, for he had just said, "if you marry, you do not sin, and if a girl marries she does not sin" (1 Cor. 7:28a). He also said: "I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion" (1 Cor. 7:7-9).
It therefore is not wrong for a person to want to get married or to take steps toward finding a spouse.
Now regarding what Jesus said, let’s look at the "seek first the kingdom" passage with a bit more context:
[D]o not be anxious, saying, `What shall we eat?’ or `What shall we drink?’ or `What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well [Matt. 6:31-33].
By telling people to seek the kingdom first (having it as your highest priority) instead of being anxious about what we will eat or drink or wear, does Jesus mean that we should not take active steps to get food and drink and clothes for ourselves?
No, of course not.
Jesus is not saying that we should refuse to work or make money or buy, grow, or raise food and drink and clothes.
So he’s not saying that we shouldn’t take active steps toward procuring such things, he’s simply saying that we shouldn’t stress over them to the point that it takes our focus off of God.
The same thing thus applies to getting a wife: There is nothing wrong with desiring one or taking steps to find one as long as one is not led away from God and into sin in the process.
At their meeting last week, the U.S. bishops approved the new draft translation of the Order of the Mass (that’s the prayers you hear every week, not the ones that change based on what liturgical day it is).
The translation now goes to Rome to receive Rome’s approval.
Apparently there were a few changes that the bishops asked to make, but these are characterized as minor (e.g., optional alternative prayers that we already have in the U.S. that are being proposed for inclusion in the new Order of Mass, e.g., using certain memorial acclamations at the Mystery of Faith that are in the U.S. Sacramentary but aren’t in the Latin original).
A reader writes:
I am a recent revert back to the Catholic Church. My wife and I (both born, baptized, confimed Catholic) were married in a Protestant church. Now that I have recently come "Home", its obviously important to me to have the Church validate our marriage. Until then, I know, I am unable to receive the Eucharist. The problem is, my wife, unfortuanetly, does not share the same passion about the Catholic faith and continues to attend a protestant church. How does the church handle my situation where 2 Catholics, who were married outside the church, wish to have the church recognize my marriage where only one desires to come back in full communion with the Church. Its obviously important for me to be in full communion again and receive the Eucharist but can not untill 1) Confession and 2) this marriage issue. I recently spoke with my parish priest and he stated he would have to look into it. Jimmy, can you provide me with an answer.
There actually is a little ambiguity in the law regarding how such situations are to be handled–at least now that the Holy See has tightened up its understanding of what constitutes formal defection from the Church, and different dioceses might wish to handle the mechanics of the situation in slightly different ways, so it is prudent of your priest to check. However, the core of the solution to your situation is clear (as is the fact that it is resolvable).
The standard way of handling a situation like this would be for you and your wife to have a convalidation ceremony where you both renew your consent to the marriage. That’s the main thing that needs to happen.
Hopefully, your wife will not object to renewing her consent in this ceremony, though if she were to then there is another potential way to handle the situation. There is no need to go into detail on that, though, as long as the normal way of handling the situation can be pursued.
Once you have heard back from the priest, I would talk to your wife and explain that this is one of your religious obligations as a Catholic and that it means a lot to you to be able to do this. You might also point out–if you think it appropriate–that many couples treat renewals of their wedding vows as an occasion to celebrate their continued love and commitment to each other. The convalidation service can be that for both of you, though for you it also has an additional dimension of fulfilling a religious obligation. If it were me, I’d try as much as possible to put this in a positive light: I need to do this, but I also want to do this, because it will allow me to publicly reaffirm my love and commitment to you before God and my Church. It is a way I can say, "You are the one I love, you are the one I am committed to" before my Church.
There will be some additional canonical details that will also have to be handled as part of the process, but a convalidation is the normal way that such things are handled, and the fact that your wife does not presently consider herself Catholic will not pose an insuperable barrier. Your parish priest can help you work through the details of the process (once he’s checked on exactly how your diocese wants to handle this).
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James White has written two more posts in the continuing discussion.
YOU CAN READ THE FIRST ONE HERE.
My response is in the below-the-fold section for those who are interested.
(Frankly, I’m sick of this myself, though I feel a fiduciary responsibility to have one more post on this aspect of the discussion.)
(Also, in view of my lengthy response below, this was the only post I had the chance to write last night.)
Sorry, folks, but I need a blog day off.
Have fun with the recent posts and archives!
Jay Leno recently commented on the fact that the pope has an iPod–and apparently uses it.
As part of the segment, he played a (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) "commercial" from Apple based on this fact.
GET THE VIDEO.
(cht to the readers who e-mailed!)
(BTW, you will need to excuse an offensive acronym if your eyes wander off the screen.)
Back in the 1980s there was a TV show based on the character Max Headroom.
It was called (unsurprisingly) "Max Headroom."
Or sometimes, "Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into The Future."
Whatever.
Anyway, the pilot episode of this show (which also has a British version that is somewhat different) tells the origin story of Max Headroom.
It seems that 20 minutes into the future, ace news reporter Edison Carter is being shoved off of a story by his employers (Network 23) because he’s getting Too Close To The Truth.
The Truth is that the station’s major sponsor–the sinister ZikZak Corporation–has begun using a new advertising technique called "Blipverts," which are very, very short ads (just a few seconds) that have unpleasant side effects . . . like causing some of the viewers who see them to explode.
Eventually, sinister forces decide to bump off Edison Carter. They fail, but in the process a virtual quirky sorta-clone of Carter is created, and thus is born Max Headroom.
Why am I telling you this?
Because some advertisers are now considering using a new advertisting technique, which would be . . . you guessed it . . .
Edison Carter, call your office!
BTW, my favorite line from the Max Headroom show was the following explanation that one character gave to a couple of girls who had grown up in the TV-saturated, cyberpunk culture of the show: "It’s a book. It’s a non-volatile storage medium. It’s very rare. You should ‘ave one."
I don’t know if you’ve ever gone online and listened to some of the ringtones that are available for cell phones these days, but some of them are really annoying.
Like that Crazy Frog thing.
The most obnoxious ringtones seem to be aimed at young people, and I imagine there are a good number of oldsters who would like such tones to simply disappear.
I can’t promise that, but I can announce the creation of a ringtone that most adults can’t hear!
Y’see: As we age, our ears tend to lose sensitivity to high-frequency sounds, and there is now a ringtone, known as "The Mosquito" that is so high that adults generally can’t hear it, while kids can.
So what are the kids doing with it?
Using it to receive cell phone calls and text messages in class without the teacher noticing.
What did you expect?
A reader writes:
My wife and I have been debating the hypothetical situation of a space ship of Catholic colonists crashed and stranded on a far-distant planet, with no possibility of return to Earth or communication with Earth. And all the bishops and priests and deacons aboard have been killed in the crash.
Can they acclaim a new bishop and continue the Apostolic Succession, and have sacraments? She says no way. I suspect they could. (My reasoning: 1. The whole Church is Apostolic. 2. Early Christian communities acclaimed their own bishops (Remember Augustine avoiding towns that lacked a bishop, so he wouldn’t be nabbed!) 3. My impression, from reading you and others on subjects like the Chinese bishops, that the process is not purely mechanical or binary. 4. God would surely provide in such a circumstance.
CCC doesn’t seem to give us an answer. Any thoughts?
Your wife is right on this one. The sacrament of holy orders can be conferred only by a validly ordained bishop. Thus if there are no bishops alive to do the conferring on this planet, the laity cannot create one.
Thus the Catechism teaches:
CCC 1600 It is bishops who confer the sacrament of Holy Orders in the three degrees.
The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is even more explicit:
332. Who can confer this sacrament [holy orders]?
Only validly ordained bishops, as successors of the apostles, can confer the sacrament of Holy Orders.
And this has been Church teaching down through the ages. In some times and places the laity may have been given a voice in who would become bishop, but the episcopal consecrations were always carried out by other (usually neighboring) bishops. The laity themselves could not do it.
While we might hope that God would provide such that a situation like the one you mention would not happen (or we might hope that the space ship builders would make sure that the bishop was adequately protected), the laity could not produce their own bishop if he didn’t.
And, indeed, there have been situations here on earth where significant numbers of Catholics were deprived of the benefit of clergy for a significant period of time. Underground Catholics in Japan between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, for example, could only celebrate the sacraments of baptism and matrimony (the two that laity can perform) due to lack of clergy caused by state persecution of the Church.
Despite this, an underground community of Catholics survived without priests for two centuries, and there were 50,000 of them when the persecution was finally lifted and priests were allowed back in to Japan. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes:
In the new church at Nagasaki on 17 March, 1865, occurred an ever-memorable event, when fifteen Christians made themselves known to Père Petitjean, assuring him that there were a great many others, about 50,000 in all being known. It is easy to imagine the joy which greeted this discovery after more than two centuries of waiting and patience. There were three marks by which these descendants of martyrs recognized these new missionaries as the successors of their ancient fathers: the authority of the Pope of Rome, the veneration of the Blessed Virgin, and the celibacy of the clergy [SOURCE].
The reader also writes:
PS: a related question. If bishops did travel to this impossible distant world, they could not be in communion with the Holy Father!
Actually, this wouldn’t be a problem. Ecclesiastical communion is a spiritual thing that does not require communication and is not affected by distance.
If you get washed up on a desert island and can’t communicate with the pope, you’re still in ecclesiastical communion with him.
In fact, if you die and thus aren’t physically in the universe at all, you’re still in ecclesiastical communion. That’s why the Church Militant (here on earth) is still in communion with the Church Suffering (in purgatory) and the Church Triumphant (in heaven). They are all part of the mystical body of Christ, his Church. Distance, communication, and even death itself are no barrier to ecclesiastical communion.
Hope this helps!