Month: March 2011

Lent Fight Update!

Ash_wednesday In the years I have been maintaining this blog, I have uploaded something over 4700 posts (according to current statistics). This makes it a bit hard to remember everything I've put up.

Fortunately, I have the memories of readers to remind me, and one reader in particular has reminded me that there are some posts that I had forgotten to include in the Annual Lent Fight that I uploaded yesterday. 

These posts concern, in particular, the Church's laws concerning Ash Wednesday and its laws regarding fasting.

As a result, I've done some link updating.

Since Ash Wednesday is a day of both fast and abstinence, I have chosen to repeat here the relevant links, along with this introductory note citing the main differences.

I hope this helps, and I wish all a tranquil and spiritually productive season of Lent.

GENERAL

DURATION

PENANCE IN GENERAL

FASTING

ABSTINENCE

ASH WEDNESDAY

HOLY THURSDAY

GOOD FRIDAY

FRIDAY PENANCE OUTSIDE OF LENT

What do you think?

 

Annual Lent Fight! (2014 Ed.)

Ash_Wednesday

For some years here on the blog, I have hosted a collection of posts on the subject of Lent and what the Church’s law requires during it. Together, these posts are known as the Annual Lent Fight–because many of these questions have been disputed (at times harshly).

This is because there are a lot of popular ideas (read: legends) out there about Lent, often based on attempts to summarize the Church’s law in a popular manner that ends up slightly misstating it.

If you want a careful reading of what the Church’s documents actually saw, check out the material in the Annual Lent Fight.

Is Lent really 40 days long–or is that a traditional and biblically resonant number that is attached to the days of Lent, though current documents indicate a different literal period of time?

How much food can be eaten on days of abstinence? Do you have to measure the size of the “two smaller meals” you often hear about to make sure they don’t add up to a full meal? And how would you measure that anyway? Calories? Volume? Mass? Something else?

Do caloric beverages count toward this total?

What can be eaten on days of abstinence? Do you have to avoid animal fat? Why don’t eggs and fish count as meat? Is it true that the pope was trying to protect the Italian fishing industry by allowing fish? What about eating mammals like capybaras?

Do you have to give something up for Lent? And if you do, can you have it on Sundays?

Of course, keeping the spirit of Lent means going beyond what the letter of the law mandates. A minimalistic observation of Lent focused on the least one can get away with is contrary to the orientation toward spiritual growth that the season is meant to provide.

But that’s no excuse for getting the law wrong–or for failing to grapple with the questions people have about it.

And so, let the Annual Lent Fight begin!

To prepare yourself for the Annual Lent Fight, please check out the following links:

GENERAL

DURATION

PENANCE IN GENERAL

FASTING

ABSTINENCE

ASH WEDNESDAY

HOLY THURSDAY

GOOD FRIDAY

FRIDAY PENANCE OUTSIDE OF LENT

What do you think?

Pope Benedict’s “SHOCKING” Statement on the Jews!

Jesusofnazareth2

The long-awaited second volume of Pope Benedict’s work Jesus of Nazareth is about to come out. (You can pre-order it here!).

This was the book he had started before his election to the papacy and which, in spite of the burdens of his office, he determined to press on with.

Because he’s now pope, the book is attracting vastly more attention than if he had become a private theologian at the end of John Paul II’s reign, and as with everything pope—the press is determined to make the most of it, even when they don’t have the facts quite right.

The book isn’t even out yet, but based on excerpts that have already been released, the press is already having a field day.

For once, however, they at least seem to be using their powers of exaggeration and sensationalism on the side of good.

The message they’re getting out is that in the book Pope Benedict says that the Jewish people cannot be blamed for the death of Christ.

In other words, they are not to be charged with the blood libel of being “Christ-killers”—as they have so often and unfairly labeled by anti-Semites.

So that’s good that the press is getting the word out about that! Like I said: Press using its powers for good (for once) in a religion story. Huzzah! Or, as they say in Hebrew, Mazal Tov!

But it being, y’know, the press, they’re not likely to dot all their i’s and cross all their t’s.

For example, you probably won’t get from many stories the fact that this book is not an act of the pope’s magisterium. It’s not an official Church document. In fact, in the introduction to volume 1 of the series, Pope Benedict expressly made this point and even went so far as to say explicitly that:

“This work is not an absolute act of magisterial teaching, but merely an expression of my personal research into the face of the Lord. Therefore, everyone is free to contradict me.”

This is why I love, love, love Pope Benedict. He is a man of enormous humility and, despite the fact that he is the one person on earth able to speak with divine infallibility on his own (as opposed to in concert with other bishops), he wants to make absolutely clear to the public what is his own opinion versus what is Church teaching, and to expressly give permission to people to contradict him on the former.

Wow!

Gotta love this man! That is intellectual humility.

The fact that most press stories won’t cover this is a minor matter, though. Another relatively minor matter, though perhaps a somewhat weightier one, is that most press stories also won’t make it clear that this isn’t exactly news.

Certainly, it is news-worthy, and I’m glad they’re covering it. But there is a danger that some stories might leave people with the impression that this is a new development. It’s not. For example, back in 1965 the Second Vatican Council stated that:

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.

Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone [Nostra Aetate 4].

Unlike Pope Benedict’s statement in his book, this is a declaration by an ecumenical council, it is a statement on the part of the Church’s magisterium, and one with great weight.

In fact, in the excerpts released thus far Pope Benedict doesn’t quite say what the press is making him out as saying, though he certainly agrees with the idea. (He certainly agrees with the statement from Nostra Aetate, and the idea it expresses lurks behind what he does say, which I’ll get into in my next post.)

Still, given the real existence of anti-Semitism in the world and its historical linkage to Christianity—and given some of the tensions that have occurred with the Jewish community during Pope Benedict’s reign—it is always good to have an occasion in the press to remind people of the fact that the Jewish people cannot be slimed as Christ-killers the way they have been in the past—and that the Church fundamentally rejects this characterization.

So for now we can rejoice that a positive message is being sent for once, even if some i’s are dotless and t’s are crossless.

To borrow a line from Chesterton, anything worth doing is worth doing badly.

Sending the message that the Jewish people cannot be slimed as Christ-killers is a message worth sending!

What do you think?

Oh, and GET THE BOOK!

Marriage, Sex, New Heaven, New Earth

Heaven A reader writes:

If the new earth is a restoration of the original Creation plan by God and God affirmed marriage or the role of a spouse in Gen 2:18, how do you deal with the Mark 12:25 passage of people will neither marry nor be given in marriage? Is marriage and procreation a result of sin to be burned away in the refinement of passing over? Was it intended to be a temporary blessing only viable for the first stage of existence not long term?

These are very good questions. I think the key to understanding them involves Our Lord's statement in the gospels that we will be like the angels of heaven, neither marrying nor giving in marriage, and St. Paul's statement in Romans 7 that death ends marriage, so that spouses who remarry after being widowed are not committing adultery. These statements directly address the situation of death and the next age, and so they provide the framework within which to understand the Genesis mandate to procreate.

Undergirding both Genesis, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the whole rest of the Bible is a moral vision that understands sex and procreation–for humans–to be something that must occur within marriage. The affirmation that we will not be married in the next world thus implies the absence of sex and procreation, making us like "the angels of heaven" in that regard.

If that is our reference point then it sheds light on the original Genesis mandate, as well as on God's intent in the renewal of the world–the appearance of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

If life in the next age is as Jesus describes it then it would seem that the renewal of the world is not meant to be simply a restoration of his original plan for creation. It is similar in many ways to a restoration of the original plan (e.g., an environment in which man lives in harmony with God, in which there is no sin; Revelation even depicts the New Jerusalem as being planted with the tree of life from the Garden of Eden).

But it appears to go beyond a simple restoration. If it were the latter then it might well involve an ongoing place for human marriage, sex, and procreation.

Or maybe not. It also could be that the original plan was to have these play a role only for a time–until a certain number of humans were in existence–and then they would pass away.

One strand in the history of theology is the idea that God created our first parents in a probationary state. They were subject to a moral test ("Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil"), and had they passed this test then they would have been confirmed in holiness rather than losing it.

One could hypothesize that, had the human race stayed faithful to God, it one day would have been granted the kind of glorified state that does away with the need for marriage and procreation.

Presumably there would have been some limit to the number of humans needed. Unless God were to radically restructure the world, the earth–or even the whole physical universe–could not contain an infinite supply of them.

What would that maximum number be? We don't know. We are in a realm of pure speculation. However, one speculation that has found a place in the history of theology is that the total number of humans God wished to create is equal to a third of the number of angels.

Why? Because in Revelation 12 the dragon (the devil) is depicted sweeping away a third of the stars in the sky. This has been commonly interpreted (though it is not certain) as a reference to the fall of angels, and if a third of the angels fell then it could make sense for God to create that many humans as new, rational beings to take their place.

Only humans are not the same as angels. We may both be rational beings,but humans incorporate matter in a way angels don't, and angels appear much more powerful than us (as well as being different in other ways–like that non-procreation business, for example).

If humans are meant (and again, this is pure speculation) as a repair effort for God's original plan for the angels then it would seem God often repairs things in a way that go beyond the original plan–just like the New Heaven and New Earth seem to go beyond God's original plan for the present world.

It thus may be that marriage and procreation may have been intended–even in the original plan for this world–to be of finite duration and later to be superceded. Or it may be that God's restoration plan involves an upgrade to the human condition that is different than what the original plan called for.

Either way, it appears from Our Lord's statement that God has deemed there will be enough humans in the next world that there won't be a need for more (at least by marriage and sexual procreation).

Though we can't be sure of all the details, this seems linked to the fact that we will be immortal (meaning incapable of being killed or dying, in this sense of the term) in the next life. Thus there will not be an ongoing need to replace humans who have died.

An additional way that the next world appears to be different than what the original plan involves the role of Christ. Had man never fallen then it is possible Christ would never have become incarnate as a human, never died on the Cross, and never incorporated us as Christians into his mystical body, the Church.

One strand of theology has proposed that he might have become incarnate anyway, but this is speculative. At least it would not seem that there was a need for him to do so if mankind were not in need of redemption.

Because the incarnation and death of Christ seem to be motivated by our need of redemption, and because our being incorporated into his mystical body is based on us becoming partakers in the redemption he supplied, it seems that God has become more intimately involved in the universe, and we more intimately involved in him, than might have been the case had we never fallen.

The fall thus may have opened up a door to a new and more glorious situation between the Creator, the created world, as us as his creatures. For this reason St. Augustine, and later a line in the liturgy for Easter Vigil, refers to the fall of man–paradoxically and ironically–as a felix culpa or "blessed fault." On this view it was a fault that brought about a more blessed state of affairs than what would have been the case otherwise.

Or so we may speculate.

To pick up one last thread from the initial question, it by no means appears that marriage, sex, and procreation were a product of sin. Marriage is created, and procreation is implied, all the way back in Genesis 1, which does not envision the fall at all. The fall does not come along until Genesis 3, and sex is at no point implied to be a moral violation. In Genesis 2, God may make a rule against eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he does not make a rule against Adam and Eve having sex and procreating children. Indeed, he seems to expect them to.

This still leaves us with questions, of course, about what the end of marriage and procreation will mean for us.

The reader continues:

I have a hard time believing that the procreation will stop in the New Earth or that God does not delight in the fulfillment of Gen 1:28 of his children. Or that when Jesus comes again it marks the immediate end of the relationships with my wife. I know in my head that heaven and new Earth the Church becomes the bride and Jesus the bridegroom fulfilling the original plan, but did not Adam have a special relationship with Eve as much as they both had with God?

It does indeed please God that his children be fruitful and multiply–per Genesis 1:28–but presumably only to a point. Unless the does some really interesting things (which actually would be awesome cool) then the physical world will only hold a finite number of humans, and so procreation would not seem to go on indefinitely. The question is when, and Jesus seems to indicate it will not continue in the next world.

In terms of our own personal experience, St. Paul builds on what Jesus says by indicating our marriages are brought to an end with death. Otherwise it would be adultery for widows and widowers to remarry, which St. Paul indicates it is not.

This leaves us with an existential question regarding our own spouses. How could it be that we could cease to have a special relationship with them? How could it be that sex simply stop? Wouldn't that interfere with the joy of heaven?

As the reader writes, Adam and Eve had a special relationship with each other as well as with God. Surely this special relationship would find a place in the next life.

The answer, I think, is that it does. We will still have special relationships with those who have been close to us in this life, including our spouses. Death will not end that. In fact, in the purified, glorified state that we will then exist in, these relationships will actually be more intimate and the ties between us more powerful than they were in this life.

In the glorified state we will be able to love each other more purely, more intensely than we ever could in this life–and without distraction or weakness or contrary temptation. We won't be our irritable, flawed, exasperating, flawed selves. We will be both more loving and more lovable.

And so we should not face the prospect of the next world as a life without love but as a life with more and more intense and more pure love than we have ever known in this world.

It is to be a life without sex, and this confuses us as in this life the sexual act seems incredibly powerful, but we must recognize that the sexual act offers only a glimmer of the love and intimacy of heaven. It is not heaven itself. Heaven is the real good toward which sex–and all earthly goods–point.

The situation was once addressed by C. S. Lewis. In one of his writings he considered the difficulty that we will not have sex in heaven and how that seems like a diminution rather than an increase of joy. He acknowledged this and compared it to the situation of a little boy and his perception of joy. The boy might think that the greatest joy is eating chocolates, and he might have a hard time understanding how a married couple having sex might have a higher joy that didn't involve eating chocolates at the same time. In this way, adults in the present life may recognize sex as a supreme form of joy and have trouble understanding how in the next life there could be an even higher joy that does not involve sex.

What we do know, again per St. Paul, is that the things we must forego (either in this life or the next) do not compare to the weight of glory that will be revealed to us. If the next life does not involve sex, that's okay. God's got something better in store. And something so much better that it will make sex seem like a pale shadow. It will be the thing that sex and all earthly goods ultimately pointed toward–and thus something that dwarfs them with the power of its reality.

Finally, the reader addresses a particular point of practical living in this life:

I am fully cognizant that I may at times place my relationship with my wife more at the forefront in my mind than my relationship to God. I can only hope that by serving or honoring her that I am serving Him at the same time.

I think this is exactly the right way to look at it. God created us with finite mental resources. This includes a finite amount of attention that we can devote to things and a correspondingly finite amount of emotional energy with can devote to them.

Because of these limitations, we are in a situation to which the science of economic applies–economics being the study of how to manage limited resources that have alterantive uses. We've only got so much intellectual and emotional wherewithal, and we can spend it on different things. So how does God want us to spend it?

We know that he must be our ultimate reference point. He is of infinite value, and anything in this universe that has value is only a reflection of him, the source from which all value–all good things–comes. This is what is meant by the command to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

But he does not expect us to devote all our intellectual and emotional resources to him directly. Otherwise there would be no room left over for the command to love our neighbor as ourself.

Or even loving ourself!

God does not even expect cloistered monks and nuns to think exclusively of him 24/7. That kind of singlemindedness is simply not possible. And anyone who tried it would not only fail but starve to death in the attempt.

We therefore see that God wants us to devote our direct attention to things other than himself, to created realities, including our own personal needs and those of the humans around us–most especially our families and friends, the ones we are closest to.

By serving them, we serve God. As long as we have in the back of our minds the fact that God is the source of all goodness and that we wish to serve him by acknowledging and caring for the created goods he has made, we approach life with a fundamental orientation toward God.

It is thus okay–and even mandated by God–for our relationship with our spouse to sometimes occupy the front place in our mind. The virtual intention (as theologians call it) to serve God by serving others suffices to bring this relationship into alignment with God.

And so we do, indeed, server God by serving others, including our loved ones, who he wishes us to care for in a special way.