Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Life, Truth, Beauty, Unity – and Beer

Chesterton2Hey, Tim Jones, here.
I can’t hope to give an adequate description of my experiences at the
2008 Chesterton Conference (my first) without writing some kind of
book, I can only – by way of apology – say with Inigo Montoya "Let me
‘splain… No, there is too much… Let me sum up…".

I’ll try to sum up by giving some sense of what it was like on the
last night of the conference, after all the speakers had spoken, the
presenters had presented, the toasters toasted.

The weather was iffy in Minnesota last Saturday night, so the ending
celebration – the after-party – was moved indoors. Now, "indoors" in
this case means into a college cafeteria… not exactly the kind of
place that oozes atmosphere or encourages warm conviviality. We had
enjoyed earlier some nearly perfect evenings drinking and visiting
under the stars late into the night, but we would have to cap the
conference milling around folding tables under fluorescent light
fixtures and acoustic tile. Blecch, right?

A weird thing happened though. People began to talk, and beer and
wine and cheese were brought forth, and very quickly it began to be so
noisy that we all had to shout to be heard.

I wandered around a bit, drifting into and out of the orbits of
ongoing conversations… comparing notes with a futurist (David
Zach)… trying to get a grip on the importance of beauty (Dale
Ahlquist)… watching a very spirited discussion between an
ebullient Englishman (Joseph Pearce) who seemed to be actually
defending the legendary obtuseness of Americans to an American (Scott
Richert) who had apparently grown impatient with it. The thing is,
these last two were arguing like brothers argue. They could be perfectly honest and passionate in their argument without fear of offending the other, because (really) they loved one another. Their differences were real, but what they had in common was much more real, and made the differences safe to argue with passion, and they knew this. It was a joy to watch.

One could be tempted in such a circumstance to think "These must be
important people", but that’s not the case. It wasn’t a matter of
"important people talking about things", it was just "people talking about important
things"… the only things that ultimately matter; Life, Truth, Beauty,
Goodness, Joy – things such as that – and all of us deeply grateful for
the opportunity. It was a truly liberating thing to know that most
everyone you met – even if they were very different from you – shared
the same common root, that grounding in the love of Truth which is the
love of God. This made our differences come alive, in a way. As Dale
Ahlquist had said earlier, "We don’t strive for diversity… we just
achieve it.".

In the various talks given throughout the weekend, there had been in
the audience always a joy bubbling just under the surface, the
readiness to laugh out loud or to interrupt (like one might interrupt a
family member without rudeness or worry) with a joke or comment. These
Chestertonians were (by worldly standards) just confoundingly happy and
indefensibly content. No one has the right to be that well adjusted.

You could hardly hear yourself think for all the laughter in the cafeteria that last night.

Imagine; You are standing with a cup of home brewed beer (or wine)
in one hand, a hunk of good cheese in the other, talking with new
friends about things that really matter, surrounded by laughter. There
are children ducking in and out and under the tables, squealing and
playing hide and seek. There is a group of teens and young people (a
surprising number, to me, given that we’re spending all weekend
ostensibly talking about a dead Englishman) off in a corner where they
have cleared a sufficient space, wheeling in some kind of wild,
improvised dance, like pairs of figure skaters who wandered in from an
Olympic ice rink (a little later, the teens are flipping the younger
children upside down, or swinging them around in great, breathless
arcs).

Then a man (Mark Pilon?) produces, seemingly out of thin air, a
hammered dulcimer and sets it up in a corner and begins playing; The Rights of Man, Star of the County Down… and he’s really good. Spontaneous hoots of applause and gratitude erupt from the crowd after every tune.

It’s a delightful, almost raucous scene… good drink, friendship, music, dancing, and none of it planned (well, the drinks were
certainly planned, but you can’t leave everything to chance). This
jovial spirit just seemed to rise up out of the floor like a mist and
coalesce into little pockets and eddies of good feeling.

It reminded me for all the world of Tolkien’s descriptions of the revelry of elves. It was like being in the House of Elrond, "The Last Homely House
east of the Sea… A perfect house, whether you like food or sleep or
storytelling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant
mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and
sadness.".

This was a group drawn together not so much by ideas, but by an idea… The
Idea that was in the mind of God in the beginning. We were all just
feeling around the edges of it together, and even that was – I believe
– better than any of us thought we deserved. We had had the great privilege, for three days, of learning more about this Idea, the foundational idea of creation, from  G.K. Chesterton, a
clear-eyed observer and merry servant of the Idea… the Word, the
Logos. He, I believe, had a somewhat less obstructed view of the Idea
than most. I think it’s clear he was a saint. In fact, I’m now
following the example of one of the speakers (Geir Hasnes, a towering
Norwegian) by asking Mr. Chesterton to pray for me.

I’ll try to give my impressions on some of the featured speakers in
subsequent posts. I never was much for note taking, but I hope I soaked
in enough of their brilliance to give at least a rough sketch of the
conference highlights.

Aesthetic Escalator

Hey, Tim Jones, here. The following is a post I just put up at my blog, but I thought Jimmy’s readers might find of interest;

St_joseph_rb_lg
I’m going to hurriedly try to respond to some recent art posts over at
The Aesthetic Elevator, even though I can’t give them the time and
thought they deserve, right now.

First, on the art of Guy Kemper
(pictured); Here’s the long and short, for me; this represents
precisely the problem with a lot of contemporary Catholic liturgical
art, and more broadly with non-representational art… the question is
this; where couldn’t this art function just as well as it does
here (the Catholic Memorial at Ground Zero)? It would be as much at
home in the entryway to a shopping mall, or a high school, or in one of
our new, featureless contemporary church buildings. It is art devoid of
communication. It’s called "Rise". It could be called anything.

It does do one thing admirably well; it breaks up the enervating
monotony of rectangles that make up the space. It beats looking out on
the parking lot. Let’s be honest, modern architecture doesn’t make use
of repeated rectangles because the rectangle is a shape the meaning of
which we just never get tired of exploring. Rectangles are cheap and
plentiful, and curves cost money. Look at the granite slab tub at the
left. A baptismal font, or a water feature with coi fish? Generic
acoustic ceiling tiles (how daring!) and floor tiles just like I have
in my bathroom. Look, I know the architect is dealing with a limited
budget, as well as building codes, so a lot of this is simply
fore-ordained and out of his/her control. Our culture just makes dull
buildings, that’s all. In this context, the artwork is a
welcome relief from the assembly-line blankness of the space. It is
aesthetically pleasing (competently composed and harmonious) and gives
the eye something to do for a few seconds. In that sense, it performs a
function. That’s setting the bar awfully low, but there you go. Kemper
doesn’t need me to like his art… he is successful and there are
plenty of people who love this sort of thing. It functions as a
placeholder for the idea of a piece of art, and it offends (could
offend) no one.

This is the kind of art that I hope the Vatican’s Council for
Catholic Culture studiously avoids in it’s search for new talent, which
TAE notes here.

Moving on…

TAE has some thoughts
on the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue having some thoughts about the
art of some college student, who further has some novel thoughts
regarding the proper use of rosaries and other devotional items…

"Whoa, lad! That crucifix doesn’t go there!" (think Robert Mapplethorpe).

TAE makes one good point; nine times out of ten, pounding the table
about stuff like this only draws attention to it. In that sense, I
would rather that "Shoutin’ Bill" would just let things be. His heart
is in the right place, but I look forward to seeing him on the news
probably about as much as thoughtful evangelicals look forward to
seeing Jerry Falwell.

That said, how anyone could mistake the art for anything but plain,
bigoted hate speech is beyond me. The paintings are calculated to
disgust and offend, and yet TAE manages only;

"I can’t help but think he could have approached his canvases in a more deft manner."

Deft manner? Does anyone really hold out the possibility that the
artist has some genuine, thoughtful critique of the Catholic Church,
but (poor boy) chose an unfortunate way to express it? Is anyone naive
enough to suppose that the artist seethes with loathing for Catholics,
but generally thinks highly of other Christians? Do you figure that he
quite approves of Pentecostals, for instance? Yeah, and rosaries might
fly out my butt.

Let’s imagine a college art exhibit critical of gay marriage that
made it’s point by pornographically lampooning Matthew Shepard and
Harvey Milk. How many hours would it be be open before someone was
fired? Yet, this art is no different. Some adolescent wanted attention,
and his fawning professors (with the help of the Catholic League) have
obliged.

Finally, in his post on Donahue, TAE says;

Referring back to Donahue’s criticisms, perhaps he believes his own
denomination to be Divine and infallible as an institution. I’ve known
of Catholics with this attitude, although I don’t sense it’s a
prevailing conviction. If I may be so bold, this would in fact be a
naive belief, and I don’t understand how anyone could presently think
so highly of the Catholic Church in light of the recent scandals that —
unfortunately — plagued this enduring institution. No part of the Body
of Christ can say with a straight face that they or their particular
congregation has not made certain gross missteps along the way…"

This
will require another post to address, but in brief, it (unsurprisingly)
reflects what seems to be an incomplete and overly simplistic view of
what the Catholic Church believes on the subject(s)…  very similar to
what I thought Catholics believed… before I became one!

New CDF Document! New CDF Document!

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is not normally tasked with adding provisions to canon law, but under the direction of the pope, it can do whatever he wants it to.

And it has.

A new CDF document provides a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication for those who attempt to ordain women and for those women who receive such attempted ordinations.

TEXT:

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

General Decree

On the delict of attempted sacred ordination of a woman

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in virtue of the special faculty granted to it by the Supreme Authority of the Church (cf. Can. 30, Code of Canon Law), in order to safeguard the nature and validity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, decreed, in the Ordinary Session of December 19, 2007:

In accordance with what is disposed by Can. 1378 of the Code of Canon Law, he who shall have attempted to confer holy orders on a woman, as well as the woman who may have attempted to receive Holy Orders, incurs in a latae sententiae excommunication, reserved to the Apostolic See.

If he who shall have attempted to confer Holy Orders on a woman or if the woman who shall have attempted to received Holy Orders is a faithful bound to the Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches, he is to be punished with the major excommunication, whose remission remains reserved to the Apostolic See, in accordance with can. 1443 of the same Code (cf. can. 1423, Code of Canons of the Oriental Churches).

The present decree enters in force immediately after its publication in L’Osservatore Romano.

William Cardinal Levada
Prefect
Angelo Amato, s.d.b.
Titular Archbishop of Sila
Secretary

First, HERE’S CANON 1378 IN THE CIC.

And HERE’S CANON 1443 OF THE CCEO.

Now, SOME COMMENTARY BY ED PETERS.

Finally, a few thoughts of my own:

It’s interesting, as Ed points out, that the Holy See has gone in the direction of creating a new latae sententiae penalty rather than continuing the trend of abolishing them.

On the part of bishops there may be something of a preference for latae sententiae penalties in that they do not require the bishop to himself take the action of imposing a canonical penalty on one of his subjects–an action that is bound to be portrayed in terms of the harsh disciplinarian stereotype in the popular press. It is much easier for a bishop to say "So-and-so has excommunicated himself/herself by these actions" than "I hereby excommunicate so-and-so for these actions."

I think that in this case, though, there may be an additional and perhaps more fundamental reason for the penalty (at least in the Latin rite) being a latae sententiae one: These ordinations frequently occur in secret.

That’s how they got started, after all: If the claims of the original group of female ordinands are to be believed, they found a Catholic bishop somewhere who was willing to perform the initial ordinations. That man’s identity has not been revealed.

And subsequent to that event, some of these women have simulated ordination in secret or at least without their identities initially being known to their bishops.

The use of a latae sententiae penalty in this case sends a signal that simply keeping the identities of the parties a secret will not keep them from suffering excommunication. You can’t tell yourself, if you are a bishop or a prospective ordinand, "I’m free of canonical penalties as long as nobody knows I did this so that no penalties can be imposed on me."

Instead, the latae sententiae penalty in this case says, "The Church takes this crime so seriously that it provides for excommunication even when the parties, or even the fact, of the crime are unknown."

The same can be said of all the other latae sententiae penalties, such as the excommunication provided for abortion.

One might still question whether we should have latae sententiae penalties in the Latin rite, but I think that the reason for this one is more than just a desire to get bishops "off the hook" for having to impose a penalty. It’s a sign of the Church’s particularly strong desire to alert those who attempt these ordinations to the gravity of their actions.

Since the current decree is not retroactive, it will not touch those who have previously attempted these ordinations (including the original bishop, assuming that there was one), but it does send the signal going forward to all who would participate in them.

Sacramental Marriage

When is a marriage sacramental?

This is a question that is subject to significant confusion. For a start, some individuals use the word "sacramental" when they mean "valid." In other words, they are under the impression that any marriage that is not sacramental is invalid.

This is not the case. Many people have marriages that are valid in the eyes of God, yet these marriages are not sacramental.

Why?

Because marriage as a sacrament can exist only between two baptized persons. Therefore, if either or both persons are not baptized then their marriage is not a sacrament. That doesn’t mean that it’s invalid. It’s just not a sacrament.

But what about marriages between the baptized? What makes their marriages sacramental? Is it the act of getting married itself that results in the sacrament or, as I’ve heard more than one person suggest recently, is it the act of consummation that makes a marriage between the baptized sacramental?

The answer is found in the Code of Canon Law.

Canon 1055 states:

Can.  1055 §1. The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life and which is ordered by its nature to the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring, has been raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a sacrament between the baptized.

§2. For this reason, a valid matrimonial contract cannot exist between the baptized without it being by that fact a sacrament.

This means that as soon as the matrimonial contract comes into existence between two baptized persons, they have a sacramental marriage. The moment of sacramentality does not wait upon consummation or anything else.

We can show this, for example, by reading a few additional canons:

Can.  1061 §1. A valid marriage between the baptized is called ratum tantum [established only] if it has not been consummated; it is called ratum et consummatum [established and consummated] if the spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh.

So there are two kinds of valid–and thus sacramental–marriages between the baptized: those that are established but unconsummated (ratum tantum) and those that are established and consummated (ratum et consummatum). Hence consummation is not necessary for validity or, between the baptized, for sacramentality.

If that’s the case, what does happen at consummation?

Can.  1141 A marriage that is ratum et consummatum can be dissolved by no human power and by no cause, except death.

Can.  1142 For a just cause, the Roman Pontiff can dissolve a non-consummated marriage between baptized persons or between a baptized party and a non-baptized party at the request of both parties or of one of them, even if the other party is unwilling.

It is consummation that makes valid sacramental marriages indissoluble. Prior to that point, even valid sacramental marriages can be dissolved, as can marriages in which a baptized person is validly but non-sacramentally married to an unbaptized person.

These cases are referred to colloquially as "Petrine privilege" cases, since they involve the action of the Roman Pontiff. (So-called "Pauline privilege" cases involve two unbaptized persons are do not require the intervention of the pope.)

So, to sum up, here are the types of valid marriages that can exist:

  • Non-sacramental marriages between unbaptized persons
  • Non-sacramental marriages between a baptized person and an unbaptized person
  • Sacramental marriages (i.e., between two baptized persons) that are unconsummated
  • Sacramental marriages (i.e., between two baptized persons) that are consummated

The last of these categories is intrinsically indissoluble. The first three categories are at least potentially dissoluble.

Hope this clarifies matters.

This Can’t Be Right…

Grailwitch… everyone knows that only Christians burn witches.
The story brings up another interesting element that is often ignored
in looking at better known witch hunts through history… that the
accusers often had a personal beef with the accused. It was not always
a case of hysterical superstition run wild, sometimes it was more
likely just a case of vendetta. Like in the post-war years, if you
wanted to ruin someone, you just started a rumor that they were a
communist sympathizer. No evidence necessary.

(Visit Tim Jones’ blog, Old World Swine)

A Little Cylon Speculation

Ellen_tigh_1I’ve been thinking for a while about doing a post on who I think the final cylon is. I’ve even started the post at least once, but I haven’t finished it.

This post isn’t it, by the way. (So let’s not speculate on who the final cylon is in the combox; let’s save that for next time.)

But I thought I would do a little bit of speculating about who is a cylon in this post, and I think that the woman on the left is.

Who is she?

Well, it’s Ellen Tigh, wife of Col. Saul Tigh.

Why do I think she’s a cylon? A big reason is that there was a lot of hinting in the very first episode she appeared in that she is a cylon.

Remember? She was found mysteriously on one of the ships of the ragtag fleet, unconscious, with nobody remembering how she got there. Then she wakes up and is brought to the Galactica, where she proceeds to bring out all the worst aspects of her husband, like a cylon sleeper agent might want to do to undermine fleet command.

And to settle the question of whether she is a cylon, Dr. Baltar gives her his cylon-detector test and publicly says that she’s a human but privately admits to Head Six that the test may have indicated otherwise but that he’ll "never tell" if it did.

So there’s all that.

It later became clear that, if Ellen was a cylon, she wasn’t a sleeper agent who knew what she was doing, because she was willing to risk everything to help her husband during the cylon occupation of New Caprica. Or at least she didn’t care about betraying cylons to help her husband.

But that’s not a problem since not all cylon sleeper agents know that they’re cylons. The original Sharon "Boomer" Valerii, for example, did not know she was a cylon and others, like Sharon "Athena" Valerii have sided with humans against cylons.

So things were looking pretty inconclusive regarding Ellen, until . . .

"Wait!" you say, "I haven’t seen any season 4 episodes! Don’t spoil this for me!"

Okay.

I won’t.

Stop reading now.

"Wait!" you say, "How can you say this post isn’t going to be about who the final cylon is if you’re about to say that Ellen Tigh is a cylon? Wouldn’t her being a cylon mean that she’s the final cylon?"

No, because I think she’s just a version of one of the cylons that has already been established.

Specifically: I think she’s a Six.

She’s just an older version of Six–perhaps one of the first Sixes to be made.

After all, the Sixes don’t all look the same. Even when they’re played by Tricia Helfer, they look different. Some, like the "Gina" Six (the one who was on the Pegasus and later set off the nuke) or the current "Natalie" Six (the one leading the cylon resistance to the Ones, Fours, and Fives) wear their hair notably different than the platinum blond curls of Caprica Six or Head Six (and Head Six herself has worn her hair differently, as she did in the episode where she got Baltar to get the brainscan that convinced him she wasn’t a chip in his wetware).

So Sixes don’t all have to have an identical physical appearance, and thus there might be older versions of some models that have aged in a way that simulates human aging.

But that’s not the core reason.

The core reason is that in the recent episode "Escape Velocity," Col. Tigh interrogates Caprica Six in her cell on the Galactica and, during the course of the event, starts hallucinating that Caprica Six is Ellen.

What they did was bring back the actress who plays Ellen and got her dressed up and coiffed as Caprica Six, platinum blond curls and all.

And, wow, is it convincing.

There are moments, watching the transitions between Six and Ellen, when you say "Which actress am I looking at here? They’re so close once you put the same hair on them!"

And then there’s this . . .

The characters act the same.

They’re both highly manipulative and willing to use their feminine wiles to achieve their ends.

Also, neither seems to mind the concept of extra-marital affairs as long as some kind of fundamental love/loyalty-to-one-spouse isn’t compromised.

And–perhaps most uniquely–they’re both manipulating their Significant Others to make something more of themselves in the world.

I mean, think about it: From the moment Head Six shows up, she starts manipulating Gaius Baltar to ensure that he assumes his "destiny," right?

And from the moment Ellen Tigh shows up, she starts manipulating Saul to get him to assume command of the fleet/increase his influence and power, right?

Both of them are catty, morally loose manipulators who are trying to drive their chosen men reluctantly into positions of prominence and power.

So, not only do they look the same, they act the same. They have the same basic personality and modus operandi.

Okay, that’s it.

Unless the creators of the show choose to establish otherwise on screen, as far as I’m concerned, Ellen Tigh is simply a more mature Six.

Which makes her story all the more interesting.

Why Is Christian Art So Lame These Days?

That’s a question that’s worth asking.

I mean, it isn’t as if Christian art has always been lame. A visit to the Sistine Chapel or a read through Dante or a listen to Mozart will tell you that.

But for some reason, right in the here and now, an enormous amount of Christian art–whether visual, literary, or musical–is just really, really lame.

And it’s not driving the culture the way it used to.

Instead, it feels like a shallow copy of secular culture.

That’s something explored in a recent article at Salon.Com. Here’s the money quote:

For faith, the results can be dangerous. A young Christian can get the idea that her religion is a tinny, desperate thing that can’t compete with the secular culture. A Christian friend who’d grown up totally sheltered once wrote to me that the first time he heard a Top 40 station he was horrified, and not because of the racy lyrics: "Suddenly, my lifelong suspicions became crystal clear," he wrote. "Christian subculture was nothing but a commercialized rip-off of the mainstream, done with wretched quality and an apocryphal [sic] insistence on the sanitization of reality."

SOURCE [WARNING: There are a few just plain gross references in the article.]

The article largely focuses on culture schlock in Evangelical circles, but we all know the same thing is true in Catholic circles, as the insipid folk-esque musical spoutings of Oregon Catholic Press or the chunky abstract patterns that pass for stained glass windows in many parishes reveal. Those are just cheesy ripoffs of secular music and secular art (and dated ripoffs at that.)

So why isn’t contemporary Christian art better than it is?

One Compliment Too Many

I want to thank Mark Shea both for calling my attention to a set of loony criticisms being made against me and for defending me against said loony criticisms.

GET THE STORY.

Here’s a key excerpt from Mark’s blog:

One reader,
for instance, prophesies (on the basis of nothing whatsoever) Jimmy
Akin’s looming apostasy. Why? Because Gerry Matatics has apostatized
into nutty sedevacantism and, if you’ve seen one convert, you’ve seen
’em all:

I’d bet you dollars to doughnuts that if
Benedict lasts another decade or is succeeded by a like minded pope,
some of the lay apologists that are trashing Gerry now will be jumping
ship themselves.

There’s NO WAY the Jimmy Aikens are going to
sit by while Rome says things like: "pro multis means for the many",
"the Mass of Pius V was never abrogated", "Protestant Churches are not
true Churches."

Jimmy’s accuser has a far higher regard for his own mind reading powers than the actual record warrants.
But when you are engaged against an enemy of the faith as slippery as a
convert, accuracy is of secondary importance. So you can just sling
such prophesies, even when they are contradicted by known facts and
ignore requests to
document, for instance, a single place where Jimmy has ever dissented
from the Church’s teaching on our relationship with Protestant
ecclesial bodies. The main thing to remember is that converts aren’t
*really* Catholic.

Now, I’ll be the first to concede that the critic has a point that in the cases of some converts, the conversion hasn’t "stuck." In other cases, it hasn’t proceeded far enough, and the convert has retained undue elements from his prior religious affiliation. (Just as somemany cradle Catholics leave Catholicism or adopt false elements of other religious traditions. Both converts and non-converts have free will, and many are willing to use it inappropriately.)

I can’t speak for such converts. In my case I have tried to rigorously assimilate the Catholic spirit. My religious reading matter consists principally of official Church documents, the Bible, the Church Fathers, and Catholic authors who are almost wholly from pre-Vatican II days.

I really don’t read much, if any, "convert lit." While it’s a historical fact that I am a convert, I don’t walk around every day thinking "I’m a convert." That’s not what is central to my identity. I think of myself as a Catholic, and days can go by where I don’t even think about my conversion.

I certainly don’t make a point of it, except on those rare occasions when someone asks be to tell my conversion story. And I daresay that most people who hear me on the radio or read my writings don’t even know that I’m a convert until it’s pointed out to them.

I don’t wear my conversion on my sleeve, because I don’t think it’s anything to be particularly proud of. It is a miracle of God’s grace, and the credit for that goes to him, not me. On my part, I just want to be a faithful Catholic now that I am one.

So when I read about the critic’s linking me to Gerry Matatics, I just rolled my eyes. Not all converts to the Catholic faith are cut from cloth made of the same unstable molecules as Gerry Matatics. Such cloth may be an important asset for Mr. Fantastic and the Fantastic Four, but there are converts and then there are converts.

I was particularly struck by the critic making claims about me that are just loony and that in no way reflect my views.

I mean, I believe that "pro multis means for the many",
I believe that "the Mass of Pius V was never abrogated" (certainly if you include the Missal of 1962 as an expression of it), and I believe that "Protestant Churches are not
true churches" because they lack validly ordained bishops. The technically correct terminology for them is  "ecclesial communities," which is the language used for them in various Church documents.

So I was very pleased to see Mark rebutting these claims and citing posts on my own blog in refutation of them.

A big CHT to Mark!

But he did give me one compliment too many. In response to the critic’s claim that I had changed my view on the translation of pro multis after Cardinal Arinze wrote a letter clarifying its translation in the liturgy, Mark writes:

So: according to my reader, Jimmy Akin held a private opinion but altered it when it seemed to him that the Magisterium was against him. Wow! That *is* evil! See how converts just blend in with Real Catholics[TM] by submitting their judgment to the teachers of the Church? They’re like chameleons!

While I wish to be quite submissive to the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium, I can’t claim that I changed a private opinion in this case.

Somehow in rad trad circles I got the reputation of changing my mind on the translation of pro multis, when in reality I always supported a literal translation of it like "for many."

Why?

Because I’m a student of languages, because I prefer literal translations to dynamic ones, and because that’s what the literal translation of pro multis just is.

I’ve certainly made no secret of my disapproval of all kinds of squishy translations–even "official" ones–of Bible verses, Church documents, or liturgical texts. This one is no different. I prefer and always have preferred a literal translation of the original text.

Thus upon my first hearing of the letter from Cardinal Arinze dealing with the subject, I wrote THIS:

Hallelujah!

This is something I’ve really been hoping and praying for. I’ve even
thought about writing Cardinal Arinze and imploring him to do this,
because the release of the new translation of the Mass is the perfect
opportunity to do this, and with B16 in office, the pope would have the
sensitivity to the issue to realize how much benefit this change would
be.

I was therefore DEE-lighted when a reader e-mailed this story from Catholic World News:

Pro multis means "for many," Vatican rules

[SNIP]

The only reason that there has been any confusion regarding my view of the translation of pro multis is that some rad trads have been running around babbling that the translation of pro multis as "for all" renders the consecration of the Eucharist invalid.

It doesn’t.

And so, as an author writing on liturgical subjects, I’ve made exactly the same points that Cardinal Arinze makes in section 2 of his LETTER:

2. There is no doubt whatsoever regarding the validity of Masses celebrated with the use of a duly approved formula containing a formula equivalent to "for all", as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has already declared (cf. Sacra Congregatio pro Doctrina Fidei, Declaratio de sensu tribuendo adprobationi versionum formularum sacramentalium, 25 Ianuarii 1974, AAS 66 [1974], 661). Indeed, the formula "for all" would undoubtedly correspond to a correct interpretation of the Lord’s intention expressed in the text. It is a dogma of faith that Christ died on the Cross for all men and women (cf. John 11:52; 2 Corinthians 5,14-15; Titus 2,11; 1 John 2,2).

Yet for some reason, certain rad trads have represented me as holding a different interpretation of the matter than Cardinal Arinze and then changing it when his letter came out.

This is pure, unadulterated horse leavings.

I have always held that pro multis is best represented with a literal translation, and devoutly wished that the Church would change the approved English translation to reflect this, while also holding the points that Cardinal Arinze makes above.

So before everyone congratulates me on being willing to submit my judgment to that of the Church on this point, allow me to note that this is one compliment too many. I’ve always held the views I do on this subject and was delighted to see the Church endorse them.

I also advise critics to read my writings more carefully next time, and not to trust unreliable sources.

(P.S. Also thanks to Mark for spelling my last name right.)