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."

Imprimaturs and Private Revelations

In recent years, imprimaturs have been granted to books connected with unapproved private revelations, and this has led to some confusion.

It has been argued that imprimaturs and nihil obstats are acts of the Magisterium, and therefore the faithful are obliged to give the religious submission of mind and will that they must to any other act of the Magisterium.

This argument has been made, for example, by some supporters of the non-Catholic mystic Vassula Ryden.

Is this true? Are imprimaturs and nihil obstats acts of the Magisterium? What implications do they have for the faithful and how they are to regard private revelations?

The Code of Canon Law does not use the terms imprimatur and nihil obstat, but they are often used by Catholic publishers.

A nihil obstat (Latin, “nothing obstructs”) is a written opinion issued by a censor that nothing obstructs the publication of a book in terms of faith or morals (can. 830 §3).

In issuing this opinion, the censor is bound “to consider only the doctrine of the Church concerning faith and morals as it is proposed by the ecclesiastical Magisterium” (830 §2). This means that the censor is not to base the opinion on whether he agrees with everything claimed in the work—only whether the book contains statements that contradict Church teaching.

Censors are not typically bishops, so there is no question of whether nihil obstats are acts of the Magisterium. The Church’s Magisterium can be exercised only by bishops teaching in communion with the pope, so unless a censor is a bishop, there is no possibility that an opinion issued by a censor could be an act of the Magisterium.

An imprimatur (Latin, “Let it be published”) is an authorization given by a local ordinary (typically a bishop) to publish a work. The U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine notes:

In the Latin Catholic Church, there are two primary forms of ecclesiastical authorization for written works. These are identified in church law as “permission” (licentia) and “approval” (approbatio). Since these terms are not used consistently within the various authoritative documents, a consensus has not yet emerged among canonical experts as to whether the terms are interchangeable or whether there is, in fact, a precise and practical distinction between the two (n. 2).

However, these terms are given precise meanings in the Code of Canons for the Eastern Churches, which provides:

1. Ecclesiastical permission, expressed only with the word imprimatur, means that the work is free from errors regarding Catholic faith and morals.

2. Approval granted by competent authority shows that the text is accepted by the Church or that the work is in accordance with the authentic doctrine of the Church (can. 661).

Are imprimaturs acts of the Magisterium? It should be pointed out that imprimaturs are issued by “local ordinaries” (cf. can. 824 §1), and not all local ordinaries are bishops. For example, local ordinaries include vicars general and episcopal vicars (can. 134 §1).

The fact that non-bishops can issue imprimaturs is a significant sign that they are not acts of the Magisterium.

Further, to exercise his personal magisterium, a bishop must himself issue a teaching, but this is not what is happening when an imprimatur is granted. The bishop himself does not teach something; he authorizes someone else to do something—namely, to publish a work.

The situation is similar to when a bishop issues a mandate for a theologian to teach in a Catholic university (cf. can. 812). He’s giving permission for someone else to teach, but that does not make everything the theologian says part of the bishop’s personal magisterium.

Similarly, when a local ordinary—even a bishop—gives permission for a book to be published, it does not make everything the book says part of the bishop’s personal magisterium.

As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith explains:

Ecclesiastical permission or approval . . . guarantees that the writing in question contains nothing contrary to the Church’s authentic magisterium on faith or morals (II:7:2; cf. II:8:3).

This is a negative guarantee. It means that the work does not contradict Church teaching. However, it is not a positive guarantee that all of the opinions found in the book are true. In fact, this is sometimes expressly pointed out in the notification printed for an imprimatur.

For example, G. Van Noort’s 1954 book Dogmatic Theology: Volume I carries this notification:

The nihil obstat and imprimatur are official declarations that a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal and moral error. No implication is contained therein that those who have granted the nihil obstat and imprimatur agree with the opinions expressed.

What about private revelations and imprimaturs? In the 1917 Code of Canon Law, it was required that books of private revelations carry an imprimatur (cf. can. 1399 n. 5), however this is no longer required.

In fact, very few books today require imprimaturs or other forms of ecclesiastical permission. These include translations of Scripture (can. 825), liturgical books, liturgical translations, prayer books (can. 826), catechetical materials, religious textbooks used in Catholic schools, books sold or exhibited in churches (can. 827), and collections of official Church documents (can. 828).

Since comparatively few books require imprimaturs, this is why most books by Catholic publishers—including Catholic Answers—don’t carry them, and the same applies to books dealing with private revelations.

So, what does it mean if a book on an apparition gets an imprimatur? It does not mean that apparition is genuine. The Church has a separate process for investigating apparitions, and unless that process has been used, the apparition has not been approved as genuinely supernatural.

Even when the Church does approve an apparition, it does not mean that the faithful are required to accept it, only that they are authorized to accept it if it seems prudent. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explained when he was head of the CDF:

Ecclesiastical approval of a private revelation has three elements: the message contains nothing contrary to faith or morals; it is lawful to make it public; and the faithful are authorized to accept it with prudence

It’s also worth noting that, when the Church does investigate an apparition, it’s not just any bishop who can do so. Although the Vatican or the conference of bishops could intervene, the only local bishop with the authority to conduct such an investigation is the one where the apparition has been reported.

This means that an imprimatur issued by a bishop in another part of the world would be unrelated to the apparition approval process.

What an imprimatur would mean is that a bishop somewhere in the world has judged (based on the opinion that the censor gave him) that the work does not contain anything that contradicts Church teaching.

It may not even express itself well. It may have ambiguous statements that don’t necessarily contradict Church teaching but that could be understood in an erroneous way. It also may contain theological opinions that are false but that the Church has not (yet) condemned. And it may contain statements about non-religious matters that are inaccurate.

Of course, an individual bishop might favor the book—and the apparition on which it is based—and he might recommend them to others.

This would mean that he, personally, favors them, but his granting an imprimatur would not constitute an act of the Magisterium binding the faithful to give “religious submission of intellect and will” (Lumen Gentium 25) to the apparition or what it says.

Even if he were (very extraordinarily!) to issue a teaching document endorsing the apparition, it would at most bind only the faithful of his own diocese (can. 753), for an individual bishop cannot bind the faithful of another diocese by his personal magisterium. Such a bishop also would likely get in trouble with the Vatican for overstepping the apparitions approval process.

So the implications for an imprimatur being given to a book of private revelations are the same as they are for any other book. It’s a judgment by an individual bishop that the work does not contradict Catholic doctrine. Nothing more.

The Mathematics of the 12 Days of Christmas

This year, I went to a Christmas Eve Mass for families with children, and the priest gave a homily based on the song The 12 Days of Christmas.

He used it as a way of helping children think about different aspects of the Faith, based on the (baseless) idea that it was composed as a crypto-catechism for Catholic children when it was illegal to practice (or fully practice) Catholicism in Britain (1558-1829).

He wisely threaded the needle by calling the truth of this claim into question, without definitively saying that it’s false.

The truth is that there is no basis for this claim. It was apparently first proposed in 1979 as a speculative idea by a Canadian hymnologist, who offered no evidence for it.

Given (1) the gap of time involved, (2) the known history of the song, (3) the implausibility of many of the identifications involved, and (4) the fact you don’t need a code to teach children about the Faith when they won’t understand the code unless you first teach them about the Faith in plaintext, the proposal is almost certainly false (yes, I know the link is to Snopes, but that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong in this case).

The truth is that it’s a cute, nonsense song that was likely used as a children’s forfeit game (i.e., if you make a mistake, you forfeit the game).

But, given that it’s a popular Christmas song and kids like it, one can certainly use it as a means of reminding kids about elements of the Faith.

You just don’t want to imply that the catechism story is true.

You also probably don’t want to come out on Christmas Eve and simply say that the catechism story is certainly false–not when some of the parents in attendance may have told it to their kids. Saying, “Your parents are flat wrong, kids,” is not going to foster attachment to the Church, particularly among the Christmas and Easter Catholics who are present for one of the two times a year they actually show up and bring the kids.

As the priest proceeded through his homily, I couldn’t help thinking about something else, though: the mathematics of the song.

I mean, if your true love gives you a partridge in a pear tree on each of the 12 days, then you’ll have 12 partridges and 12 pear trees by the end of the days.

Similarly, if you get 2 turtle doves on each of the 11 days that begin after the 1st day, then you’ll have 22 turtle doves by the end.

I quickly realized the mathematical formula you’d need to calculate the total number of items your true love gives you (i.e., [1 x 12] + [2 x 11] + [3 x 10] + [4 x 9] + [5 x 8]+ [6 x 7]+ [7 x 6]+ [8 x 5]+ [9 x 4] + [10 x 3] + [11 x 2] + [12 x 1]).

But, since the purpose of listening to a homily isn’t working out math problems in your head, I tabled the matter until I got home and dumped it into a spreadsheet.

Here are the results:

A few items of note:

  • You get the fewest of the items that are introduced at the beginning and end of the days (12 partridges in pear trees and 12 drummers drumming), with the interim forming a smoothly rising and falling curve.
  • The peak of the curve is for the items introduced on days 6 and 7, so you get more geese a-laying and swans a-swimming than any other items (42 of each).
  • You get a total of 364 items over the course of the 12 days, which is a fascinating number since it’s just 1 short of the number of days in a year. However, that’s almost certainly a coincidence, and not something intended by the people (likely children) who first came up with the original, 12-based version of the song.

Here’s what the curve of how many items you receive looks like:

And here’s what the total accumulation of items your true love gives you looks like:

What I want to know is why the true love (or the gift-receiver) is so ornithologically obsessed. I mean, 6 of the days involve giving birds! (By contrast 5 days involve people performing various activities/services, and only 1 involves an inanimate object–the golden rings.)

I thought about doing a price estimation of how much all these gifts would cost, but it turns out that people are already doing that.

Every year, there’s a tongue-in-cheek Christmas Price Index and True Cost of Christmas estimate based on current market prices.

Turns out, for Christmas 2019, it would take and estimated $170,298.03 to provide these gifts–given certain assumptions. I guess that’s true love!

Of course, there has been criticism of the assumptions made in the Christmas Price Index–and yes, the criticisms are valid. However, a variant of the MST3K Mantra applies: “It’s just a song, I should really just relax.”

I mean, whimsical curiosity about things in a Christmas song is in keeping with the Christmas spirit, but relentless nitpicking . . . is less so.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Mysteries of the Magi

“When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem” (Matt. 2:1).

“Wise men” is a common translation in English Bibles, but it doesn’t give us a good idea who they were.

The Greek word used here is magoi—the plural of magos. These terms may be more familiar from their Latin equivalents: In St. Jerome’s Vulgate, we read that magi came from the east, and an individual member of the group would thus be a magus.

 

Who Were the Magi?

Originally, the term magi referred to a group of people in Persia (modern Iran). Around 440 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus listed the Magi as one of the six tribes of the Medes (Histories 1:101:1).

Apparently, they were like the Jewish tribe of Levi, for they exercised priestly functions. Herodotus says that, whenever a Persian wanted to sacrifice an animal to the gods, he would cut it up and then “a magus comes near and chants over it the song of the birth of the gods, as the Persian tradition relates it; for no sacrifice can be offered without a magus” (Histories 1:132:3).

In the book of Daniel, magi are also called upon to interpret dreams (1:20; 2:2, 10, 27).

Magi were also called upon to interpret heavenly omens. Consider the case of the Persian king Xerxes I (also known as Ahasuerus, who married the biblical Esther). In 480 B.C., he asked the magi to tell him the meaning of a solar eclipse that occurred as he was about to do battle with Greeks.

They said that the sun was special to Greeks, so when it abandoned its place in the daytime, the god was showing the Greeks that they would have to abandon their cities. This greatly encouraged Xerxes (Histories 7:37:4).

However, things didn’t work out well. His expedition against Greece ended up failing, but this does show the original magi were interpreters of portents in the sky—as later magi would be for the star of Bethlehem.

With time, the term magi ceased to refer exclusively to members of the Persian priestly caste. The skills they practiced became known as mageia, from which we get “magic” in English, and by the first century, anybody who practiced magic could be called a magos.

Thus in Acts 8, we meet a man named Simon, who was a Samaritan—meaning he had mixed Jewish ancestry. Simon practiced mageia (8:9, 11), and so he became known as Simon Magus.

Full Jews also could be magi, and in Acts 13 we meet a Jewish man named Bar-Jesus, who is described both as a magus and a false prophet (13:6).

This means that, in Jesus’ day, the term magus was flexible, so we need to ask another question.

 

Who Were These Magi?

Matthew’s magi were clearly dignitaries of some kind, as shown by the facts that they (1) saw themselves as worthy to congratulate a distant royal house on a new birth, (2) had the resources and leisure to undertake such a lengthy journey, (3) could offer costly gifts, and (4) received a royal audience with King Herod the Great.

Matthew says that they came “from the East,” which from the perspective of Jerusalem would point to locations like Arabia, Babylonia, and Persia.

There were Jews in all of these regions. Consequently, some interpreters have proposed that the magi who visited Jesus were Jews, who would naturally be interested in the newborn king of the Jews.

However, most scholars have concluded this is unlikely. If they were visiting Jewish dignitaries, Matthew would have identified them as co-religionists. The fact he merely describes them as being “from the East,” suggests that they were Gentiles who came from a distant, eastern land.

Matthew also says that they went back “to their own country” (2:12), suggesting they were among its native inhabitants rather than Jews living in exile.

In fact, there is a pattern in Matthew’s Gospel of Gentiles who respond to the true God. Matthew uses it to show his Jewish readers that Gentiles can be Christians. The pattern culminates in the Great Commission, when Jesus tells the apostles to “make disciples of all nations” (alternate translation: “make disciples of all the Gentiles”; 28:19).

The magi are part of this pattern: They are Gentile dignitaries who represent an early response to God’s Messiah, in contrast to the Jewish king, Herod, who seeks to kill him. This prefigures how the Jewish authorities will later kill Jesus, but Gentiles will embrace his gospel.

Scholars have thus concluded that Matthew’s magi were Gentile astrologers from an eastern land, though we can’t be sure which one (see Brown, The Birth of the Messiah, 168-170).

The earliest discussion we have is found in St. Justin Martyr, who around A.D. 160 said that they came from Arabia (Dialogue with Trypho 78:1), and around A.D. 210 Tertullian deduced that this is where they came from based on the gifts they offered (Against Marcion 3:13). In the ancient world, gold and frankincense were associated with Arabia, though this isn’t conclusive since they were widely traded in the region.

Many scholars have seen Babylon as a possibility, and the Jewish readers of Matthew would have been familiar with the book of Daniel, which associates magi with Babylonia. It’s also been argued that the major Jewish colony there could have given the magi a special interest in the Jewish Messiah, though this was also a common expectation of Jews in other lands.

Most Church Fathers concluded that the magi were from Persia. Just after A.D. 200, Clement of Alexandria identified them as coming from there (Stromata 1:15), and they were commonly depicted in early Christian art wearing Persian clothing. They thus may have been members of the original class of magi.

 

How Did They Know?

In popular accounts, the magi are depicted as following the star, which led them to Bethlehem. That has led many to see the star as a supernatural manifestation that moved around in the sky in a way stars don’t.

However, this isn’t what Matthew says. He never claims they were following the star, only that it was ahead of them as they went to Bethlehem and that it stood over the house (2:9). This was a providential coincidence.

They weren’t being led by the star for, as Benedict XVI points out, they initially went to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem—the natural place to find a newborn prince (Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, ch. 4). They assumed that Herod the Great or one of his sons had just had a baby boy who would grow up to be king.

When they learned there was no new prince at the palace, a consultation had to be held with the chief priests and scribes to learn where the magi really needed to go: Bethlehem (2:4).

The fact that the chief priests and scribes looked to a well-known prophecy of the birth of the Messiah (Micah 5:2; cf. Matt. 2:6) suggests the magi could have seen the appearance of the star as signaling not just the birth of an ordinary king but of a particularly great one—the predicted Messiah.

While magi weren’t following the star, it did tell them when he was born, for they said, “We have seen his star in the East” (2:2).

Recently, scholars have argued that this is a mistranslation and that the Greek phrase rendered “in the East” (en tê anatolê) should instead be “at its rising”—that is, when it rose over the eastern horizon as the Earth turns. Some have argued that this is a technical term for what is known as a star’s “heliacal” rising, which occurs when it briefly rises above the horizon just before sunrise.

The real question is what told them the star was significant and why they linked it to a king of the Jews. Here we can only speculate.

The system of constellations in use at the time, which includes our own zodiac, was developed in northern Mesopotamia around 1130 B.C, and it was used by Babylonian and Persian astrologers.

It’s not surprising that they would associate a particular star with the birth of a king, because at this time astrology was used to forecast national affairs. Horoscopes weren’t normally done for ordinary people.

Heavenly signs were interpreted as having to do with things of national importance, like relations between nations, wars and rebellions, whether the crops would be good or bad, epidemics, and kings.

It’s thus not a surprise that the magi would be looking for signs dealing with the births of kings.

What the star they saw might have been is difficult to determine, but one possibility is Jupiter. At this time Jupiter and the other planets were considered “wandering” stars since they moved against the background of “fixed” stars.

Unlike some later Greeks, Mesopotamian astrologers didn’t see the stars as controlling events on Earth. Instead, they thought the gods made their wills known through celestial phenomena—so it was a form of divine revelation.

Jupiter was associated with Marduk, the king of the Babylonian pantheon, and it was often involved in signs associated with kings.

For example, one Babylonian text says that if Jupiter remains in the sky in the morning, enemy kings will be reconciled with each other.

An Assyrian text indicates that if a lunar eclipse takes place and Jupiter is not in the sky then the king will die. To protect the king, the Assyrians came up with an ingenious solution: They took a condemned criminal and made him a temporary, substitute “king” who could then be executed to save the life of the real king!

Whether Jupiter was the star the magi saw will depend on when Jesus was born, and that’s something scholars debate.

 

When Was Jesus Born?

According to the most common account you hear today, Herod the Great died in 4 B.C., so Jesus would have to have been born before this.

In Matthew 2:7, Herod secretly learns from the magi when the star appeared, and in 2:16, he kills “all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men.”

This indicates the star was understood as appearing at Jesus’ birth, which is to be expected since such portents were associated with births (as opposed to conceptions).

It also indicates Jesus was born up to two years before the magi arrived, though it may not have been a full two years, since Herod may have added a “safety” margin to his execution order.

Many scholars have thus proposed that Jesus was born around 7-6 B.C., and this is the date you commonly hear.

However, other scholars have argued that this calculation is wrong. A better case can be made that Herod died in 1 B.C. (see Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, 2nd ed., and Andrew Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul).

This likely would put Jesus’ birth in 3/2 B.C., which is the year identified by the Church Fathers as the correct one.

It also fits with Luke’s statement that Jesus was “about thirty years old” when he began his ministry (3:23), shortly after John the Baptist began his in “the fifteenth year of the reign Tiberius Caesar” (3:1)—i.e., A.D. 29. Subtracting 30 from A.D. 29, we land in the year 2 B.C. (bearing in mind that there is no “Year 0” between 1 B.C. and A.D. 1).

 

What Was in the Sky?

Regardless of which view of Jesus’ birth is correct, it occurred in the first decade B.C. So what notable astronomical events took place then that could have served as the star of Bethlehem?

A large number have been proposed. The following list contains only some:

7 B.C.

  • 1: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

6 B.C.

  • April 17: Jupiter has its heliacal rising in Ares (a constellation associated with Judaea), with several other significant features in the sky
  • May 27: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction
  • 6: Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction

5 B.C.

  • March: A comet in Capricorn

4 B.C.

  • April: A comet or nova (which one is unclear) in Aquilea

3 B.C.

  • August 12: Jupiter and Venus rise in the east, in conjunction with each other, in Leo, near Regulus
  • 11: The sun in mid-Virgo, with the moon at the feet of Virgo
  • 14: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus

2 B.C.

  • 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
  • May 8: Jupiter in conjunction with Regulus
  • June 17: Jupiter in conjunction with Venus

One of the most interesting of these events is the rising of Jupiter and Venus on August 12, 3 B.C. Since Babylonian times, Jupiter was seen as a heavenly king, and Venus was seen as a heavenly queen, suggesting a birth. Further, the Babylonians named Regulus (the brightest star in Leo) “the king,” and the lion was a traditional symbol of the tribe of Judah (cf. Gen. 49:9).

Also very interesting is what happened on September 11th, 3 B.C. In Revelation, John says, “A great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (12:1). This woman then gives birth to Jesus (12:5). Some have proposed that this encodes information about when he was born: When the sun was in the middle of Virgo (“the virgin”) and thus “clothing” it, with the moon at her feet.

Unfortunately, we can’t say which—if any—of these events corresponds to the star of Bethlehem without knowing precisely when Jesus was born. That’s something the Bible never tells us, and the Church Fathers had different opinions, with only some proposing December 25th.

 

What Was the Role of Jewish Thought?

Thus far we’ve looked at how the magi would have interpreted celestial events largely in terms of establish, Mesopotamian astrology.

This association with paganism gives rise to questions, such as, “Would God really use pagan astrology to signal the birth of his Son?”

That’s a matter for God to decide. Scripture indicates God cares for all people and makes himself known to them in various ways (cf. Rom. 1:19-20). It wouldn’t be so much God using pagan astrology to mark the birth of his Son as choosing to preserve certain true ideas among Gentiles to point to this event.

Also, if the magi were Persians, they wouldn’t have been polytheists. By this period, the Persians did not believe in the old gods, and their dominant religion was Zoroastrianism.

This faith teaches the existence of a single, great, all-good Creator God who they refer to as “the Wise Lord” and who will vanquish evil in the end. They believe in the renovation of the world, the final judgment, and the resurrection of the dead.

If the magi were Persians, they could have seen themselves as spiritual kin to the Jews and as worshipping the same God—the only true God—using their own term for him.

Finally, they may well have had contact with Jews living in their own land, and thus come into contact with biblical revelation that could have influenced their perception of the star.

They could have learned, for example, of the lion as a symbol of Judah, and they could have associated the coming Jewish Messiah with a star.

One of the most famous messianic prophecies is “a star shall come forth out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel” (Num. 24:17).

This prophecy was already associated with the Messiah, which is why in the A.D. 130s the messianic pretender Simon bar Kosiba was hailed as “Simon bar Kokhba” (Aramaic, “Simon, son of the Star”).

 

What About Astrology?

What about the role of astrology itself in this account? While astrology was popular among Gentiles, it wasn’t as popular among Jews, who often looked down on it.

This is itself a sign that Matthew’s tradition about the magi is historically accurate. It’s not the kind of thing that Jewish Christians would tend to make up.

However, while astrology wasn’t as popular among Jews as among Gentiles, it did exist.

Genesis says that God made the sun, moon, and stars “to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years” (1:14). This could mean that they are simply to be time keeping markers.

But some Jews thought that their function as “signs” went beyond this and included information about future events. Thus, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain astrological texts.

In the ancient world, there was no rigid distinction between astronomy and astrology. It’s only in the last few centuries that the two have been disentangled. This happened as scientists learned more about the effects the sun, moon, and stars do and don’t have on life here on Earth.

Even Thomas Aquinas, based on the science of his day, thought that the heavenly bodies had an influence on the passions and could, for example, make a man prone to anger—but not in such a way that it would overwhelm his free will (Commentary on Matthew 2:1-2, ST I:115:4, II-II:95:5).

Subsequent scientific research showed they don’t have this kind of effect, and consulting the stars for these purposes is superstition. Thus the Catechism today warns against consulting horoscopes (CCC 2116).

While the stars don’t have the kind of influence many once thought, that doesn’t mean God can’t use them to signal major events in his plan of the ages. The fact he signaled the birth of his Son with a star shows he can. This isn’t what people think of as astrology, but it’s part of divine providence.

In fact, this doesn’t appear to be the only time God did something like that. On the day of Pentecost, Peter cited the prophet Joel’s prediction that the moon would be turned to blood as fulfilled in their own day (Joel 2:31-32; Acts 2:20-21).

It so happens, on the night of the Crucifixion (April 3, A.D. 33), there was a lunar eclipse visible from Jerusalem. The moon did turn to blood.

The Point of Lazarus and the Rich Man

In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man and their respective fates in the afterlife.

This parable is unique in that it is the only one of Jesus’ parables that involves a named figure–Lazarus. (It also mentions Abraham by name, but he can be seen as belonging to a different category as an archtypical figure from Israel’s history).

It’s also striking that, in the course of the parable, it is proposed that Lazarus come back from the dead, which the historical Lazarus actually did (John 11).

Further, Luke knows the Bethany family to which Lazarus belonged, as he mentions Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42).

All of these factors have led some to question the extent to which this story even is a parable–as opposed to a straightforward account of what happened to Lazarus in the afterlife.

 

Is It a Parable?

I think it’s possible that the narrative is in some way based on the experience of the historical Lazarus, though it is probably in some degree a parable.

First, we don’t have an indication that the historical Lazarus was a beggar, especially not the kind described in the parable. Instead, we have him living with his two sisters, and they apparently had considerable financial resources, since John identifies Lazarus’s sister Mary as the woman who broke the bottle of (very!) costly ointment over Jesus’ head (John 12:1-3).

Second, in the parable, the proposal that Lazarus be sent back from the dead is seemingly refused (Luke 16:27-31), which is the opposite of what happened to the historical Lazarus.

However that may be, Jesus told this for a purpose, and it wasn’t simply to tell us about a particular incident. He was making a larger point.

 

A Common Mistake

One of the dangers modern interpreters can fall into is pressing the details of a biblical passage into telling us things they aren’t meant to–like when geocentrists take references to the sun rising as if they were meant to be lessons about the physical structure of the cosmos and the absolute (rather than relative) motion of objects within it.

Something similar can happen with symbolic texts, as when people see stars falling from the sky in prophetic passages and think “meteor shower.”

One of the best checks on the tendency to inappropriately press the details in a passage is to stop and ask what the biblical author is trying to tell us–what’s his overall point?

Is the biblical author trying to tell us that the sun moves rather than the earth? Is he trying to tell us about a meteor shower, as opposed to something else (the fall of angels? the fall of princes?)?

 

The Point(s) of Parables

This test also applies to parables. One needs to take a step back from the detail of the text and ask, “What is the fundamental point that Jesus is making here?”

There may be more than one point, and these can be identified by looking at the different characters in the parable. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example, there are different points made with the prodigal son, his older brother, and his father.

In this parable, there are different points being made with Lazarus and the rich man, with Abraham representing as an arbiter who serves as the voice of God’s will (just as the father expresses God’s attitude in the Prodigal Son).

 

Hell or Purgatory?

Interpreters down through the ages have understood that, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich man, Jesus is contrasting the two fundamental fates that await us in the afterlife: salvation and damnation.

On this interpretation, Lazarus is saved, while the rich man is damned.

However, some in recent times have proposed that the rich man isn’t actually in hell but in purgatory.

The basis for this proposal is the fact that the rich man asks Abraham to send Lazarus back from the grave to warn his brothers of the fate that awaits them (Luke 16:27, 30).

Is that the action of a damned soul? Isn’t he showing love for his brothers by wanting to save them from his fate, and would such love be inconsistent with a truly damned soul? If so, wouldn’t that point to him being in purgatory rather than hell?

 

Pressing This Detail

If we assume that this detail of the parable can be reliably pressed, the answer is no.

What hell excludes is the supernatural love of God (i.e., the virtue of charity, as described in 1 Cor. 13). It does not exclude natural affections that people may have for things.

Even a damned soul may still like ice cream–or, as in the case of the rich man in this parable, a drop of cool water for his tongue (Luke 16:24).

In the same way, a damned soul might still have natural affection for his brothers and want to see them not suffer.

Some have even proposed that the rich man could have a selfish motive for his request concerning them–e.g., it would increase his shame for them to follow his bad example or otherwise increase his suffering to see fellow family members damned.

Even granting that this detail of the parable is meant to be pressed yields a negative answer: The rich man does not need to be in purgatory rather than hell to account for how the parable is written.

But should we be pressing this detail in the first place?

There is reason to think that we should not.

 

Pressing Another Detail

For example, look at another detail of the parable: Why Abraham can’t send Lazarus to put a drop of cool water on the rich man’s tongue. Abraham explains:

Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us (Luke 16:25-26).

Abraham’s appeal is thus twofold: (1) the rich man is experiencing what he deserves under divine justice (since he cared only for himself in life and ignored the suffering beggar outside his own door), and (2) there has been a chasm fixed to prevent anyone from relieving the sufferings of people like him.

Even if we understand the chasm not as a physical valley in the afterlife but as a symbol of inability, we have good reason not to press this detail in a literal way.

If we did so, it would mean that there would be people in heaven who–knowing that God’s justice is being done to people like the rich man–would nevertheless want to thwart this justice and are only restrained from doing so because God has set a (spiritual) barrier between them.

That’s problematic because the souls of the righteous would not want to thwart divine justice!

It’s also problematic because, if the rich man were only in purgatory, then the saints could  and would help his sufferings by interceding for him.

It’s more natural not to press this detail and see Abraham as saying, (1) justice is being done and (2) one’s fate is fixed (not that any of the righteous would literally want to undo divine justice).

 

Asking the Purpose

If that detail of the parable shouldn’t be pressed, it raises questions about how far the rich man’s request regarding his brothers should be.

Is Jesus really trying to tell us that the damned intercede on behalf of their living relatives or is he making another point?

The damned might or might not literally intercede for those still living, but it’s easy to show that Jesus is making a different point. In fact, he’s making several, as revealed by Abraham’s responses to the rich man’s requests.

When the rich man first proposes sending Lazarus back, Abraham replies:

They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them (Luke 16:29).

This is the first point: The living already have a revelation of God’s will in the form of Moses and the prophets. They should listen to the message they already have.

When the rich man makes the proposal again, saying that if someone comes back from the dead then his brothers will repent, Abraham says:

If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead (Luke 16:31).

This is the second point: Being willing to repent is based on a fundamental readiness to do God’s will, as expressed in Moses and the prophets. If one has a heart too hard to do that, even someone returning from the dead won’t change it.

Of course, in an individual case, it might. If you knew for a fact that someone was back from the dead with a message that you need to repent, it might well prompt you to alter your behavior!

But this isn’t about an individual case. It’s about the fact that Jesus’ own resurrection will not automatically produce repentance.

At this point in Luke’s narrative, Jesus has already “set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51), and he has already predicted his death and resurrection more than once and will soon do so again (Luke 9:21-22, 9:43-45; cf. 18:31-34).

The real point that is being made with the figure of Abraham is that if people in Israel don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t be convinced by Jesus’ resurrection, either.

That’s the point Jesus is making.

And so that’s why the parable depicts the rich man as asking for Lazarus to be sent back from the dead: It’s to set up the points that Abraham makes in reply.

This doesn’t mean that people in the rich man’s condition never intercede for those they cared for in life, but since the purpose of the request is to set up a different set of points, it means we can’t press the request as if it’s determinative of the meaning of the text.

Instead, we need to look at the big picture to see what can safely be gotten from the text.

 

The Big Picture

So what’s Jesus’ fundamental point in telling this parable?

The most obvious interpretation is that there are two destinies awaiting people in the afterlife–a good one (experienced by Lazarus) and a bad one (experienced by the rich man).

Further, you had better make your decision in this life, because these two destinies are immutable, as illustrated by the chasm between them. Once you’re in the suffering condition, there is no relief.

And, don’t expect people in Israel to be convinced by the resurrection of Jesus. If they can find ways to ignore the message of Moses and the prophets (which predict Jesus), they can find ways to ignore the implications of Jesus’ resurrection as well.

These points–which see the rich man as being in hell–make much better sense of the text than the idea that Jesus is ignoring the possibility of someone going to hell and instead warning us about the temporary state of purgatory, which for some reason the righteous are powerless to assist with.

That’s not to say that more isn’t going on with this parable. The factors that echo (and don’t echo) what we know about the historical Lazarus make it very intriguing.

But pressing the details in a way that would put the rich man in purgatory rather than hell isn’t reliable.

Just the Facts: the Amazon Synod

The three-week Synod of Bishops for the Amazon has drawn to a close, with a final Mass celebrated by Pope Francis on Sunday, October 27.

The synod was held to address two principal topics, both mentioned its title, Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology.

By discussing “new paths for the Church,” it sought to address pastoral concerns in the pan-Amazon region of South America, and by discussing “an integral (i.e., complete) ecology,” it sought to address environmental concerns in the region.

So, what happened, and what happens now?

Controversy erupted over the synod before it even began, with some criticizing its initial working document as being insufficiently focused on Christ and the Christian faith.

The controversy expanded following a tree-planting ceremony held at the Vatican on October 4, just before the start of the synod.

This ceremony featured several wooden carvings of a naked, pregnant woman whose identity was ambiguous. They were identified by various parties as representations the Virgin Mary, Mother Earth, the Incan earth deity Pachamama, or some kind of symbol of life.

These carvings were taken from the Roman church where they were housed and thrown into the Tiber River, though they were later recovered.

The Italian police commander who took charge of them upon their recovery suggested that they might be present during the closing Mass of the synod, but this did not happen. Instead, a traditional image of Mary was used.

When the Synod of Bishops meets, it uses a working document prepared ahead of time as a starting point for its discussions, and then it prepares a final document that is submitted to the pope.

It’s then up to the pope to decide what—if anything—is to be done on the basis of the synod’s advice.

The final document produced by this synod discussed a wide variety of subjects—many more than we can cover here—but we will focus on two that have been lightning rods.

Based on the initial working document, various commentators expressed concerns that the synod might call for the ordination of married men to the priesthood and for the ordination of women to the diaconate.

The final document submitted to the pope did contain paragraphs discussing these subjects, though they contained qualifiers that weren’t always reported in the press. John Allen notes:

In the final document of the synod released Saturday night Rome time, the 184 voting members, mostly bishops from the nine countries that contain a share of the Amazon rainforest, appeared to offer cautious approval to all three ideas—married priests, women deacons, and an Amazon rite—but with an emphasis on “caution.”

Some of that was actually anti-climactic, since Francis himself drew the synod to a close by insisting that it would be a mistake to focus on internal Church debates, saying the emphasis instead should be on the fate of the Amazon itself.

On ordaining married men to the priesthood, the final document cited a shortage of priests in the Amazon that can lead to gaps of months or years between visits by a priest who can celebrate the Eucharist, confessions, and the anointing of the sick.

It therefore proposed establishing criteria to ordain priests who are “suitable and esteemed men of the community, who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and receive and adequate formation for the priesthood, having a legitimately constituted and stable family” to serve “in the most remote areas of the Amazon region.”

Married priests are found in many Eastern rite Catholic churches, but for many centuries, the Latin rite of the Catholic Church has ordained only celibate men to the priesthood—at least under ordinary circumstances.

There have been exceptions, such as when a couple with no children at home separates to devote themselves to God (e.g., the wife becomes a nun and the husband becomes a monk or priest). Recently, the Holy See has allowed the ordination of married men in the Latin rite who were clergymen in another Christian body.

Under present Latin canon law, a man who has a wife is impeded from ordination except to the permanent diaconate (can. 1041 §1), but this impediment can be dispensed by the Holy See (can. 1047 §2 n. 3).

The final synod document proposes that a new exception be made for certain married men in the Amazon, though the document notes that some synod members preferred “a more universal approach to this subject.”

Since divine law and Church teaching do not require that only unmarried men be ordained to the priesthood, the question of ordaining married men is a subject of prudential judgment on which Catholics can hold different views.

The situation is different when it comes to women deacons, for here Church teaching is involved.

The Church teaches that “Only a baptized man validly receives sacred ordination” (CCC 1577). It also teaches that the diaconate is one of the three grades of holy orders (CCC 1554). From that, it follows that the Church teaches only a baptized man can validly be ordained to the diaconate.

Yet in the early Church there were women who were called “deaconesses” (cf. Rom. 16:1).

How can these things be squared? The standard view is that the deaconesses in the early Church did not receive the sacrament of ordination but were called “deaconesses” because of their role in serving the Church (Greek, diakonos, “servant”). However, some argue that they were ordained.

In 2016, Pope Francis convened a commission to study the subject, but its results were inconclusive.

The synod referred to this commission, and its concluding document noted that some of the synod fathers favored the permanent diaconate for women. It stated, “We would therefore like to share our experiences and reflections with the commission and await its results.”

Here the participants ask to provide input to the commission. No doubt, the bishops who favored ordaining women to the diaconate would continue to urge that, while bishops who did not favor this proposal would urge the reverse.

Unlike ordaining married men to the priesthood, ordaining women to the diaconate would require a change in Church teaching. Would such a change be possible?

In 1994, John Paul II ruled that it has been definitively (infallibly) settled that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood, and in 2002, Joseph Ratzinger approved a document of the International Theological Commission that concluded that, on the subject of ordaining women to the diaconate, it still “pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.”

It thus held that this was still a subject of possible doctrinal development.

What is Pope Francis likely to do in regard to these questions?

Just before the synod, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Congregation for Bishops, indicated that Pope Francis is skeptical of ordaining married men to the priesthood, though he noted that he had authorized discussion on the subject.

Whether he will agree to the synod’s request to make exceptions for married men in certain regions of the Amazon remains to be seen.

On the question of women deacons, Pope Francis has indicated he will try to reconvene the commission studying this question for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Whether a reconstituted commission would be able to achieve more of a consensus than the first one did remains to be seen—and it would take some time for the new commission to do its work.

The next concrete development is expected to be the publication of a document that popes traditionally release after a synod (known as a post-synodal apostolic exhortation). This may happen before the end of the year, and it will provide a clearer idea of what Pope Francis plans to do in response to the synod.

Now, as Pope Francis discerns his response, is a good time for prayer.

 

Pronouncing Biblical Names (Wherein I Rant)

Pronouncing biblical names is often tricky. They’re names from other languages, after all.

Some have become standard, English names. But for every David or John there’s also an Artaxerxes and a Mahershalalhashbaz.

When you’re reading the Bible aloud and you come across a name, you may:

  1. Use the standard English pronunciation
  2. Use the standard pronunciation in the original language (Hebrew, Greek, etc.)
  3. Fake it

Many readers that I hear seem to prefer option 3.

However, that’s not what I want to rant about today. Instead, I want to rant about a pet peeve of mine.

Yes, I know it’s trivial, but it drives me nuts.

 

Elijah and Elisha

Consider the names of these two Old Testament prophets: Elijah and Elisha.

They’re different, no? One of them has a /j/ in it and the other has an /sh/ in it.

And that’s the only difference.

So it should be the only difference in how you pronounce them, right?

 

The Traditional English Pronunciation

Sure enough, in the traditional English pronunciation, it is: Elijah is pronounced ee-LIE-jah and Elisha is pronounced ee-LIE-shah.

If somebody names their kid Elisha, you call him ee-LIE-shah.

At least, that’s how you do it if you’re using the standard English pronunciation.

 

The Traditional Hebrew Pronunciation

Normally when reading aloud, you wouldn’t want to use anything but the standard English pronunciation.

It would confuse your audience, and you could come across as just showing off.

Like if you pronounced the name David as dah-WEED in church for no reason.

However, there are situations—like in a language class—where you’d want to know the pronunciation in the original language.

So how would you pronounce Elijah and Elisha in biblical Hebrew?

There are a few things you need to know:

  1. Hebrew doesn’t have the /j/ sound; it uses the /y/ sound instead.
  2. Every syllable in Hebrew must begin with a consonant, even if it’s just a glottal stop—i.e., a constriction of the throat (we actually have this consonant in English, but it’s not part of our alphabet; if you pay attention, you can hear yourself saying it on the front of the word apple).
  3. After a glottal stop, Hebrew tends to have a short vowel that’s basically equivalent to the English /uh/ sound (like in the word upper).
  4. Both Elijah and Elisha start with a glottal stop followed by a short vowel.
  5. Both Elijah and Elisha have a long /ee/ sound (as in seem) in the middle.
  6. Hebrew tends to stress the last syllable of the word (in contrast, English often stresses the next-to-last syllable, as in gateway or edition).

With that in mind, you can work out how you should (roughly) pronounce Elijah and Elisha:

  • Elijah becomes uh-lee-YAH
  • Elisha becomes uh-lee-SHAH

 

The Newfangled Nonsense Pronunciation

In recent years—in some circles—the people who write biblical name pronunciation guides have been promoting a ridiculous, alternative pronunciation of this name.

I suspect it’s the same people who were pushing for all manner of liturgical novelties in the 1970s and 1980s, including items of Orwellian Liturgical Newspeak (e.g., “We Are Church,” which is just bad English).

The alternative pronunciation they’ve been promoting is ee-LISH-ah.

No!

This is not the standard English pronunciation, and as far as Hebrew goes, Every. Syllable. Of. This. Is. Wrong.

  • The /ee/ on the front is wrong because Hebrew has a short vowel here: /uh/ as in upper, not /ee/ as in seem.
  • The /LISH/ is wrong (a) because it’s improperly given the stress, when that should be on the last syllable, (b) because it grabs the /sh/ that must be on the beginning of the last syllable, and (c) because it uses a short /i/ sound (as in hit) when it should be an /ee/ sound (as in seem).
  • The /ah/ on the end is wrong (a) because it doesn’t have a consonant on the front of it and (b) because it isn’t stressed, as it should be.

Weirdly, the people promoting the ee-LISH-ah pronunciation haven’t been doing the same thing with Elijah. They haven’t been urging people to pronounce it ee-LIJJ-ah.

This makes me suspect that they wanted to use the difference in pronunciation to help people keep Elijah and Elisha straight, given how similar their names are.

But they needn’t bother. Most people today don’t know the difference between Elijah and Elisha in the first place.

And they’re doing violence to the language.

So please, do not pronounce Elisha so that it kinda-sorta sounds like the word delicious.

The fancy way of saying that one word kinda-sorta sounds like another is to say that the two words are assonant.

So please, when it comes to Elisha, don’t be an assonant.

Does Pope Francis Believe Jesus Was God?

Here we go again. It’s a predictable pattern:

  1. Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari publishes an article attributing shocking statements to Pope Francis
  2. The press and the blogosphere freak out
  3. The Vatican Press office issues a statement saying that Scalfari isn’t reliable
  4. Things die down for a while, but lingering damage is done

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

This time, on October 9th, Scalfari said:

Those who have had, as I have had many times, the good fortune to meet him and speak to him with the greatest cultural confidence, know that Pope Francis conceives Christ as Jesus of Nazareth, man, not God incarnate. Once incarnated, Jesus ceases to be a God and becomes a man until his death on the cross. . . .

Another episode, also well known, occurs when Jesus is already crucified and there again repeats and is heard by the apostles and women who are kneeling at the foot of the cross: “Lord, you have forsaken me.”

When I happened to discuss these phrases, Pope Francis told me: “They are the proof that Jesus of Nazareth, once he became man, even if he were a man of exceptional virtue, was not a God at all” (Edward Pentin).

Sure enough, the director of the Vatican Press Office promptly put out a statement later the same day. Public consternation continued, and the next day, the Holy See Press Office issued an even more forceful denial:

“The Holy Father never said what Scalfari wrote,” Vatican communications head Paolo Ruffini said at an Oct. 10 press conference, adding that “both the quoted remarks and the free reconstruction and interpretation by Dr. Scalfari of the conversations, which go back to more than two years ago, cannot be considered a faithful account of what was said by the pope.”

“That will be found rather throughout the Church’s magisterium and Pope Francis’ own, on Jesus: true God and true man” (Catholic News Agency).

Scalfari isn’t a reliable source, for several reasons. To be blunt:

  1. He is an atheist, and people often aren’t careful when describing the views of those who believe differently than they do.
  2. He doesn’t use a tape recorder or even a note pad; he reconstructs the quotations he attributes to the pope from memory.
  3. He is 95 years old, and people of that age frequently suffer from memory problems.
  4. He is a journalist, and journalists frequently slant and distort things they were told to gin up sales and clicks.
  5. The Vatican Press Office has issued repeated warnings and denials concerning Scalfari.

Frankly, Francis should stop talking to the man. Perhaps he’s granted interviews to him to engage with secular culture, as a form of evangelization. Perhaps to evangelize Scalfari specifically—as he is on eternity’s doorstep.

But every time he speak to him, we have a blow up like this, the Church takes a hit, and some of the faithful doubt Francis’s orthodoxy.

Prudence says Francis should stay away from him.

He may already be doing so. The latest Scalfari eruption isn’t based on a new interview but on Scalfari’s memories of a conversation that occurred years ago.

The Holy See’s statement of October 10th notes it is based on memories “which go back to more than two years ago.” In his article, Scalfari says:

I remember these events that allowed me to meet Pope Francis several times, to discuss with him themes and problems that concern the history of humanity as a whole.

This suggests Francis hasn’t met with Scalfari in some time. Good.

What about the claim that Scalfari attributes to Pope Francis—that God somehow stopped being God when he became incarnate and remained simply a man until his death on the Cross?

This claim makes no sense. God can’t stop being God. He is immutable. The Second Person of the Trinity took on or added a human nature to his divine nature. He didn’t switch from having one to the other.

The conceptual incoherence of the claim gives us immediate reason to doubt it.

Francis has been clear on the fact Jesus remained God during the incarnation. A few moments Googling the Vatican web site turns up multiple instances. A few examples, in chronological order:

The grace which was revealed in our world is Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, true man and true God (Homily, Dec. 24, 2013).

God became mortal, fragile like us, he shared in our human condition, except for sin, but he took ours upon himself, as though they were his own. He entered into our history, he became fully God-with-us! (Angelus, Jan. 5, 2014).

[For men and women of today, we have] to bring them the Gospel, Jesus Christ himself, God incarnate, who died and rose to free us from sin and death (Message for 48th World Communications Day, 2014).

When you touch the wounds of the Lord, you understand a little more about the mystery of Christ, of God Incarnate (Address, Apr. 30, 2015).

One Person of the Trinity entered into the created cosmos, throwing in his lot with it, even to the cross (Laudato Si 99).

For Christians, all the creatures of the material universe find their true meaning in the incarnate Word, for the Son of God has incorporated in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of definitive transformation (Laudato Si 235).

God chooses an uncomfortable throne, the cross, from which to reign by giving his life (Angelus, Oct. 21, 2018).

Could Francis have said something that formed the basis of what Scalfari attributed to him?

Sure. In Philippians, Paul writes:

Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:5-8).

Paul’s point is that, although Jesus actually was equal to God the Father, he was nevertheless willing to humble himself in the Incarnation. He took on human form and lived as a man, being “obedient unto death” on the Cross.

Also, Hebrews notes that, Jesus was “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning” (Heb. 4:15).

Do we find this same thinking in Francis’s writings? Yes, we do.

[Jesus] does not reveal himself cloaked in worldly power and wealth but rather in weakness and poverty: “though He was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.” Christ, the eternal Son of God, one with the Father in power and glory, chose to be poor; he came amongst us and drew near to each of us; he set aside his glory and emptied himself so that he could be like us in all things (cf. Phil 2:7; Heb 4:15) (Lenten Message 2014, 1).

In looking to his face, what do we see? First of all the face of an “emptied” God, of a God who has taken on the condition of servant, humbled and obedient unto death (cf. Phil 2:7) (Address, Nov. 10, 2015).

Here we have all the elements that Scalfari mentions:

  • The Pre-Incarnate Christ is God
  • He becomes man
  • He lives in a human mode, “even if he were a man of exceptional virtue” (i.e., “without sinning”)
  • He returns to a glorified mode of existence after his death on the Cross

It looks like Scalfari simply mangled something Pope Francis said based on the teachings of St. Paul and Hebrews.

Scalfari, like some heretics in Church history, mistook Christ’s self-“emptying” as a loss of divinity. But this is not what Paul said or meant. As Pope Francis explained, Jesus is “true man and true God.”

This incident provides us with several lessons that apologists should keep in mind:

  1. Christology is a subject that involves precise distinctions that must be carefully made. In fact, it took the Church centuries to hammer out the correct language for articulating those distinctions.
  2. It’s important that we communicate the Church’s teachings using clear and precise language at all times.
  3. There are some individuals for whom the costs of engaging in dialogue outweigh the benefits.

 

Pope Francis Institutes Annual Sunday Devoted to God’s Word

On September 30th, Pope Francis decreed that the third Sunday of Ordinary Time henceforth will be celebrated as the Sunday of God’s Word.

He did this in a document titled Aperuit Illis (Latin, “He opened them”), referring to how Christ opened the minds of the disciples so they could understand the Scriptures (Luke 24:45).

Pope Francis had proposed this idea in 2016 (see Misericordia et Misera 7).

Every day of the Church’s liturgical year involves reading Scripture at Mass and in the liturgy of the hours.

Precisely because Scripture is a regular part of the Church’s life, some can treat it as routine and unexceptional.

The new Sunday celebration is meant to provide an annual reminder of just how precious God’s word is and to encourage us to appreciate that fact.

Pope Francis points out a number of ways the Sunday will be celebrated:

The various communities will find their own ways to mark this Sunday with a certain solemnity.

It is important, however, that in the Eucharistic celebration the sacred text be enthroned, in order to focus the attention of the assembly on the normative value of God’s word.

On this Sunday, it would be particularly appropriate to highlight the proclamation of the word of the Lord and to emphasize in the homily the honor that it is due.

Bishops could celebrate the Rite of Installation of Lectors or a similar commissioning of readers, in order to bring out the importance of the proclamation of God’s word in the liturgy.

In this regard, renewed efforts should be made to provide members of the faithful with the training needed to be genuine proclaimers of the word, as is already the practice in the case of acolytes or extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.

Pastors can also find ways of giving a Bible, or one of its books, to the entire assembly as a way of showing the importance of learning how to read, appreciate and pray daily with sacred Scripture, especially through the practice of lectio divina (n. 3).

Some groups may see the Bible as something that is exclusively theirs. Biblical scholars, members of the clergy, and Protestants sometimes fall into this trap. However, Pope Francis emphasizes that this is not the case:

The Bible cannot be just the heritage of some, much less a collection of books for the benefit of a privileged few. It belongs above all to those called to hear its message and to recognize themselves in its words. At times, there can be a tendency to monopolize the sacred text by restricting it to certain circles or to select groups. It cannot be that way. The Bible is the book of the Lord’s people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division towards unity (n. 4).

A key way the Church helps people appreciate Scripture is through the homily, in which a priest or deacon explains the readings and helps the faithful apply them to their lives. Pope Francis indicates that this “is a pastoral opportunity that should not be wasted!” He writes:

Sufficient time must be devoted to the preparation of the homily. A commentary on the sacred readings cannot be improvised. Those of us who are preachers should not give long, pedantic homilies or wander off into unrelated topics. When we take time to pray and meditate on the sacred text, we can speak from the heart and thus reach the hearts of those who hear us, conveying what is essential and capable of bearing fruit (n. 5).

In recent years, skeptical biblical scholars have cast doubt on the historical reliability of Scripture—including its accounts of Jesus’ resurrection—but Pope Francis rejects this:

Since the Scriptures everywhere speak of Christ, they enable us to believe that his death and resurrection are not myth but history, and are central to the faith of his disciples (n. 7).

He goes on to repeat the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the inerrancy of Scripture:

Dei Verbum stresses that “we must acknowledge that the books of Scripture firmly, faithfully and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred Scriptures” (Dei Verbum 11).

Since the Scriptures teach with a view to salvation through faith in Christ (cf. 2 Tim. 3:15), the truths contained therein are profitable for our salvation. The Bible is not a collection of history books or a chronicle, but is aimed entirely at the integral [i.e., complete] salvation of the person. The evident historical setting of the books of the Bible should not make us overlook their primary goal, which is our salvation. Everything is directed to this purpose and essential to the very nature of the Bible, which takes shape as a history of salvation in which God speaks and acts in order to encounter all men and women and to save them from evil and death (n. 9).

He also cautions against neglecting the Old Testament and regarding it as something that does not apply to us:

The Old Testament is never old once it is part of the New, since all has been transformed thanks to the one Spirit who inspired it (n. 12).

Pope Francis stresses the role of the Holy Spirit in helping us understand and apply the Scriptures, which helps avoid a restrictive, fundamentalist reading:

Without the work of the Spirit, there would always be a risk of remaining limited to the written text alone. This would open the way to a fundamentalist reading, which needs to be avoided, lest we betray the inspired, dynamic and spiritual character of the sacred text. As the Apostle reminds us: “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor. 3:6). The Holy Spirit, then, makes sacred Scripture the living word of God, experienced and handed down in the faith of his holy people (n. 9).

While Scripture is inspired by God in a unique sense, Pope Francis sees the ongoing activity of the Holy Spirit as providing a form of “inspiration” today (note his quotation marks):

God’s revelation attains its completion and fullness in Jesus Christ; nonetheless, the Holy Spirit does not cease to act. It would be reductive indeed to restrict the working of the Spirit to the divine inspiration of sacred Scripture and its various human authors. We need to have confidence in the working of the Holy Spirit as he continues in his own way to provide “inspiration” whenever the Church teaches the sacred Scriptures, whenever the Magisterium authentically [i.e., authoritatively] interprets them, and whenever each believer makes them the norm of his or her spiritual life (n. 10).

As I discuss in my book The Bible Is a Catholic Book, Catholics rely on the triad of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Pope Francis has already mentioned Scripture and the Magisterium, and he stresses that Tradition “is also God’s word,” stating:

We frequently risk separating sacred Scripture and sacred Tradition, without understanding that together they are the one source of revelation. The written character of the former takes nothing away from its being fully a living word; in the same way, the Church’s living Tradition, which continually hands that word down over the centuries from one generation to the next, possesses that sacred book as the supreme rule of her faith (n. 11).

He also exhorts us:

The sweetness of God’s word leads us to share it with all those whom we encounter in this life and to proclaim the sure hope that it contains (n. 12).

The first celebration of the Sunday of God’s Word will be in 2020, when the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time will be January 26th.

Why Was Arius a Heretic?

Erick Thomas Ybarra writes:

Jimmy Akin’s argument here on the doctrine of Justification is right on the money, and it is why I wish the authors of the Open Letter did not write on this point. It is very clear Amoris dodges this accusation. . . .

My concern, however, with Akin’s article, and I would ask him to clarify for me, is that his argument on the “canonical crime of heresy” vis-a-vis the definition of dogma which requires both divine & catholic faith, would render the ancient presbyter Arius as free of the canonical crime of heresy.

The Council of Nicaea (325) gives us the Creed with “homoousian” (one substance), but only anathematizes those who hold to it, and does not specify anywhere in clear enough terms that the matter is “divinely revealed”.

Happy to oblige!

The reason that Arius counts as a heretic can be answered in more than one way.

 

By Historical Standards

The first way involves judging him by the standards of his own time. In this era, the term “heresy” did not have its modern, technical meaning.

Instead, as I discuss here, it was used in a broader sense that could refer to anything that conflicted with basic Christian doctrine or practice.

Consequently, it was not necessary at that time to show that a particular doctrine had been infallibly defined as divinely revealed to label someone a heretic.

Arius’s denial of the divinity of Christ unambiguously conflicted with basic Christian teaching, as solemnly confirmed by the First Council of Nicaea, and so he was labelled a heretic.

Thus, Arius has been known as a heretic down through history.

 

By Modern Standards

A second way of approaching the question is to apply the standards of our time, retrospectively, to the case of Arius. In other words: Would he be convictable as a heretic given the modern use of the term?

Today the term heresy, in simple language, refers to the obstinate, post-baptismal refusal to believe a dogma (for the technical definition, see CIC 751 with CIC 750).

Arius certainly was obstinate at the Council of Nicaea. He refused to submit to its teaching on the divinity of Christ and was consequently sent into exile. He also was baptized.

This leaves us with the question of whether the divinity of Christ is a dogma—that is, a truth that the Magisterium has infallibly defined to be divinely revealed.

There are several issues to be considered here:

  1. What the Council of Nicaea actually said
  2. What authority the Council was understood to have at the time
  3. What authority it is understood to have today

 

What Nicaea Said

Regarding the first question, the Council published what scholars refer to as the Creed of Nicaea. It was later supplemented at the First Council of Constantinople (381) to for the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (more popularly called the “Nicene” Creed).

The main difference between the two creeds is that the Creed of Nicaea did not end the same way. It didn’t have the passage declaring the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Instead, it ended this way:

[We believe . . .] in the Holy Spirit.

However, those who say: “There was a time when he [the Son] was not” and “Before he was born he was not” and that he was made from nothing or who say that the Son of God may be of a different hypostasis or essence, or may be created or subject to change and alteration, [such persons] the Catholic Church anathematizes (DH 126).

As Erick points out, the anathema at the end of the Creed does not mention the doctrine being divinely revealed.

However, another part of the Creed indicates that divine revelation is involved. The Creed begins:

We believe in one God, the Father almighty, creator of all things, visible and invisible, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-Begotten gener­ated from the Father, that is, from the being of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with [homoousion] the Father, through whom all things were made, those in heaven and those on earth . . . (DH 125).

The key part of this for our purposes is the verb that introduces and governs the entire sentence: “We believe” (Greek, pisteuomen, Latin, credimus).

This verb indicates that the truths articulated belong to the Faith (Greek, hê pistis, Latin, fides), and thus as belonging to divine revelation.

We thus have the text of Nicaea indicating that divine revelation is involved.

 

What Authority the Council Was Understood to Have at the Time

The First Council of Nicaea was initially confirmed by the authority of the Emperor Constantine. Bishop Karl Josef von Hefele notes:

Constantine the Great solemnly confirmed the Nicene Creed immediately after it had been drawn up by the Council, and he threatened such as would not subscribe it with exile. At the conclusion of the Synod he raised all the decrees of the assembly to the position of laws of the empire; declared them to be divinely inspired; and in several edicts still partially extant, he required that they should be most faithfully observed by all his subjects (A History of the Councils of the Church, I:42).

This is interesting from the point of view of history, but the question from a theological perspective is what the pope said about the Council. According to von Hefele:

The signatures of the Pope’s legates, Hosius, Vitus, and Vincentius, subscribed to the acts of the Council before the other bishops, must be regarded as a sanction from the See of Rome to the decrees of Nicaea. Five documents, dating from the fifth century, mention, besides, a solemn approval of the acts of the Council of Nicaea, given by Pope Sylvester and a Roman synod of 275 bishops. It is granted that these documents are not authentic, as we shall show in the history of the Council of Nicaea; but we nevertheless consider it very probable that the Council of Nicaea was recognized and approved by an especial act of Pope Sylvester, and not merely by the signature of his legates, for the following reasons:—

It is undeniable, as we shall presently see, that

α. The fourth ecumenical council looked upon the papal confirmation as absolutely necessary for ensuring the validity of the decrees of the Council; and there is no good ground for maintaining that this was a new principle, and one which was not known and recognized at the time of the Nicene Council.

β. Again, in 485, a synod, composed of above forty bishops from different parts of Italy, was quite unanimous in asserting, in opposition to the Greeks, that the three hundred and eighteen bishops of Nicaea had their decisions confirmed by the authority of the holy Roman Church (confirmationem rerum atque auctoritatem sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae detulerunt).

γ. Pope Julius I [r. 337-352] in the same way declared, a few years after the close of the Council of Nicaea, that ecclesiastical decrees (the decisions of synods) ought not to be published without the consent of the Bishop of Rome, and that this is a rule and a law of the Church.

δ. Dionysius the Less also maintained that the decisions of the Council of Nicaea were sent to Rome for approval; and it is not improbable that it was the general opinion upon this point which contributed to produce those spurious documents which we possess (ibid. I:44-45).

At this time, the theology of ecumenical councils and when they teach infallibly had not been worked out. That was a subject that would be clarified through later doctrinal development. However, Nicaea was held by its supporters to be divinely guided and supremely authoritative. (The Arians, naturally, disagreed.)

 

What Authority the Council Is Understood to Have Today

Now that the theology of ecumenical councils has undergone a high degree of doctrinal development, how is First Nicaea viewed from a contemporary perspective?

It is universally regarded as the first of the ecumenical councils. According to Church teaching:

The college of bishops exercises power over the universal Church in a solemn manner in an ecumenical council. But there never is an ecumenical council which is not confirmed or at least recognized as such by Peter’s successor (CCC 884).

Bishop von Hefele argues that First Nicaea was recognized as ecumenical by a special act of Pope Sylvester I (r. 314-335), during whose reign it occurred.

However, even if it turned out that Pope Sylvester did not recognize it by a special act, the council would still be ecumenical.

A special act of recognition by the pope is not required—only the recognition itself. Subsequent popes—including all of the recent ones—have unmistakably recognized this council as ecumenical, and so it is.

 

Prosecuting Arius for Heresy by Modern Standards

That brings us to the Creed of Nicaea’s infallibility. While the theology of magisterial infallibility also had not been developed at the time the Council met, it has now, and the Church holds that:

[When the bishops are] gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church, whose definitions must be adhered to with the submission of faith (Lumen Gentium 25).

At Nicaea, the bishops were gathered in an ecumenical council, so that leaves us with the question of whether the Creed of Nicaea counted as a definition—that is, as a statement the bishops intended to be binding on all the faithful and to absolutely bring all legitimate discussion of a matter to an end.

Note that an ecumenical council—like a pope—does not have to use any set form of words to issue a definition. It does not have to say “anathema” or “we define.” It just has to indicate in one way or another that the matter is definitively settled.

In this case, it did. The bishops of the Council of Nicaea clearly intended to bring all legitimate discussion of the topic to an end, for all of the faithful, and to make this point they put their teaching in the form of a profession of faith for the faithful to say.

This profession of faith also has become universal in both East and West as an obligatory expression of Christian truth. One cannot be an orthodox Christian and deny it. (This means, among other things, that the ordinary and universal magisterium also has infallibly taught it, not just the extraordinary magisterium.)

That brings us to the final issue, which is whether the use of the verb “believe” (pisteuomen/credimus) indicates a matter of divine revelation.

It does. In the Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei, Ratzinger and Bertone note that the verb “believe” (Latin, credo) is used for “all those doctrines of divine and Catholic faith which the Church proposes as divinely and formally revealed and, as such, as irreformable” (n. 5).

By contrast, the verbs “accept and hold” (Latin, amplector ac retineo) are used for “all those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area, which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed” (n. 6).

Such a truth is thus a “sententia definitive tenenda” (Latin, “opinion to be definitively held”—as opposed to be believed with divine and Catholic faith).

Thus, from a modern perspective, the confession of faith offered in the Creed of Nicaea—or the modern Nicene Creed—consists of matters to be believed, not merely held, and thus as consisting of truths contained in divine revelation.

Consequently, Ratzinger and Bertone state that among truths of this kind “belong the articles of faith of the Creed, the various Christological dogmas and Marian dogmas” (n. 11).

By requiring Christians to profess belief in the divinity of Christ, Nicaea thus infallibly defined that this is a truth of divine revelation.

Therefore, even when we apply modern criteria, Arius was a heretic.

A Second Response to Peter Kwasniewski

Peter Kwasniewski, responding to my previous post, says:

Jimmy Akin wrote a reply to some stray comments of mine on Facebook, and I therefore owe him and my readers at least a brief response. (In the coming days, you can expect to see a more robust rejoinder or two made to all of our critics; it will be worth the wait.)

He then says:

There are two problems with Akin’s argument.

Let’s look at both of them.

 

Kwasniewski’s First Argument: The Possibility of Observing the Commandments

He writes:

1) The letter certainly contains charges that fulfill even Mr Akin’s definition of the requirements for the delict of heresy. Most obviously the first one:

“A justified person has not the strength with God’s grace to carry out the objective demands of the divine law, as though any of the commandments of God are impossible for the justified; or as meaning that God’s grace, when it produces justification in an individual, does not invariably and of its nature produce conversion from all serious sin, or is not sufficient for conversion from all serious sin.”

This rests on the dogmatic pronouncement of the Council of Trent, session 6, canon 18:

“If anyone says that the commandments of God are impossible to observe even for a man who is justified and established in grace, let him be anathema” (DH 1568).

The initial quotation (“A justified person has not the strength . . .”) is not a quotation of Pope Francis. It is a construction of the authors of the Open Letter, whose meaning they attribute to Pope Francis. They only later quote Pope Francis’s words in an attempt to justify their initial paraphrase, and they do not provide argumentation as to why we should take his words in the sense they attribute to him.

This is a flaw in the drafting of the Open Letter. It would be better if they had used Pope Francis’s own words and contrasted them directly with the quotation from Trent, providing exegesis as to why we must understand something Francis said as contradicting Trent. This they do not attempt.

They also fail to provide the needed analysis of Trent’s statement. The use of the penalty of anathema, in this case, indicates that Trent is making an infallible definition. However, as I document here, it does not indicate that Trent is saying this matter is divinely revealed and thus a dogma. More than a mere use of “anathema” is needed for that.

It is possible for the canon to be understood as asserting a truth known by reason or “founded upon” Scripture without being directly contained in divine revelation (see my previous documentation). I can think of arguments on both sides of the issue.

Whatever conclusion one might draw based on them, this canon will not sustain a successful charge of heresy against Pope Francis.

To see why, we need to do the work that the authors of the Open Letter failed to do—i.e., to conduct an exegesis of the relevant texts.

In the first place, we need to understand Trent. As is regularly underscored in textbooks on magisterial statements, the decrees of ecumenical councils must be understood in terms of the problems that they were addressing. The same is true of Scripture. Only after this step is completed can we relate what they have to say to problems raised in later ages.

So, what was Trent combatting in this canon? Basically, there were Protestant authors who were saying that it was altogether impossible for a justified man to observe God’s commandments. Some went as far as saying that every single thing a person did was mortal sin.

Trent’s concern is to reject this error and affirm that it is possible for “a man who is justified and established in grace” to observe God’s commandments.

Note the inclusion of the phrase “and established in grace.” This means that factors in addition to justification are needed for a man to observe God’s commandments. This is proved by canon 22, which reads:

If anyone says that without God’s special help a justified man can persevere in the justice he has received or that with it he cannot persevere, let him be anathema (DH 1572, emphasis added).

In other words, the just man requires God’s “special help” (Latin, speciali auxilio) to observe the commandments. This is what is meant in canon 18 when it refers to the just man being “established in grace.” Trent thus is not saying that justification alone provides this ability.

Trent also is assuming the usual conditions needed for mortal sin are met. It is talking about people who are capable of performing human acts, and who thus have adequate consent and knowledge. It is not talking about people who are deprived of the needed consent or knowledge.

There is no guarantee here that God will ensure that the just always have the knowledge and freedom needed to avoid objectively grave sins. For example, there is no guarantee that a baptized child below the age of reason—who is justified by virtue of baptism—will always be able to avoid objectively grave sin. God does not guarantee, and Trent does not mean, that a baptized three-year old will always have the knowledge and freedom needed to resist the urge to run into oncoming traffic or eat something labelled “poison.”

Neither is there a guarantee that these will be the case for people at later stages of life. People can go senile. They can go insane. They can get brain damage. They can be incompletely or even erroneously catechized. There are all kind of things that can cause a just person to be deprived of the knowledge and freedom necessary to objectively observe the commandments.

None of those situations are covered by Trent’s definition, which is meant to deal with the situation of a just man who is established in grace, who possesses reason and is capable of performing human acts—i.e., who has sufficient freedom and knowledge.

So how does that relate to what Pope Francis said?

When the authors of the Open Letter attempt to document the error they attribute to him in the quotation above, they cite four texts (see Open Letter [A] 1, 9-11).

Three of these are quotations in which the Pope says things about Martin Luther and the Reformation. None of these even mention the issue at hand—whether it is impossible for a just man established in grace to observe the commandments. They are therefore inadequate to proving a charge of heresy on this point.

The remaining one is this:

Saint John Paul II proposed the so-called “law of gradualness” in the knowledge that the human being “knows, loves and accomplishes moral good by different stages of growth.” This is not a “gradualness of law” but rather a gradualness in the prudential exercise of free acts on the part of subjects who are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law (Amoris Laetitia 295).

Here Pope Francis refers to John Paul II’s discussion of the law of gradualness in Familiaris Consortio 34. One can ask whether Pope Francis understands this principle in exactly the same way as John Paul II, but that’s not our question here. Our question is whether Pope Francis contradicts canon 18 of Trent’s Decree on Justification.

So, what can we say about that?

Unfortunately, the authors of the Open Letter have truncated Pope Francis’s remarks in a way that hides relevant context from the reader. To quote him more fully, he says:

This is not a “gradualness of law” but rather a gradualness in the prudential exercise of free acts on the part of subjects who are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law. For the law is itself a gift of God which points out the way, a gift for everyone without exception; it can be followed with the help of grace, even though each human being “advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of God’s definitive and absolute love in his or her entire personal and social life” (Amoris Laetitia 295, emphasis added).

The authors of the Open Letter omitted Pope Francis’s words stressing that God’s law is the same for everyone and that it can be kept with the help of grace! That’s precisely what Trent was saying!

This omission is so significant, given the error Pope Francis is being accused of, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was deliberately left out to deprive the Open Letter’s readers of information that would be damaging to the authors’ case.

Where Pope Francis goes beyond canon 18 is in calling attention to the fact that there are some situations, particularly at early stages of moral catechesis, where people “are not in a position to understand, appreciate, or fully carry out the objective demands of the law.”

But Trent didn’t deny that. It never said that the moment you’re justified you’re guaranteed divinely infused catechesis about the whole law of God. If that did happen, we wouldn’t need children to memorize the commandments or learn their meanings and applications as part of their catechism classes.

Trent assumed in canon 18 that we’re talking about a person who has the knowledge and freedom needed to place an authentically human act.

So, what if you get bad catechesis early in life and thus a late start on mature moral development?

In that case, you need to recognize the truth of God’s law, which “points out the way . . . for everyone without exception” and “can be followed with the help of grace,” even if this means that one “advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of God’s definitive and absolute love in his or her entire personal and social life.”

That last quotation, which Amoris Laetitia gives, by the way, is also from John Paul II. It’s from Familiaris Consortio 9.

The Open Letter thus wholly fails to sustain a charge of heresy against Pope Francis on this point.

 

A Side Question from Louie Verrecchio

Although the authors of the Open Letter do not cite Amoris Laetitia 301 in relation to their first charge of heresy, Louie Verrecchio thinks it relevant. He quotes the passage as follows:

A subject may know full well the rule [divine law concerning the mortal sin of adultery], yet have great difficulty in understanding its inherent values, or be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin. (AL 301)

Given the analysis of Trent that we have already offered, part of the solution to Louie’s query is clear: When section 301 refers to the possibility of someone having “great difficulty in understanding its [the law’s] inherent values,” there is no conflict with Trent. The Council did not define that people will never have incomplete or bad catechesis, resulting in a malformed conscience.

But what about the statement that it’s possible a person may “be in a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin”?

What might that mean?

This could have been expressed more clearly—e.g., with the addition of a relevant example—but it is possible to imagine situations that the pope would see as fitting this description.

For example: Suppose that a person has been raised culturally Catholic but given no catechesis at all. Let’s suppose that it’s a woman from one of the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. She marries a man, but he beats her, and she divorces him. She then marries another man, without an annulment, and they have several children. He then starts beating her, too. She thinks about leaving him also, but he makes it clear that if she does so, he will kill both her and the children. In fact, she realizes that she will be in danger if she even stops sleeping with him.

At this point, out of desperation, she turns to God and has a religious conversion. She begins attending religious education classes at her local parish and discovers that she’s been living out of conformity with God’s law all this time.

There is certainly a way through this situation that—however difficult it may be—does not involve her sinning.

But at her present stage of moral catechesis, she may believe that her moral duty to protect the children and provide for their welfare is such that she believes it would be a sin for her to stop sleeping with this monster. She may thus believe that she is in “a concrete situation which does not allow him or her to act differently and decide otherwise without further sin.”

The situation I have proposed is extreme, but extreme situations help make points clear. That’s why they’re used in thought experiments.

Of course, however difficult it may be for her to discern, there is a way for her to deal with this situation without sin. God’s law never creates true double-bind situations.

But his permissive will allows situations to exist where it is very difficult to discern and follow the right path.

I take that to be what Amoris Laetitia means. Indeed, the context is one in which the document is discussing difficult situations that make it difficult to fully follow God—a process of discernment that “must remain ever open to new stages of growth and to new decisions which can enable the ideal to be more fully realized” (AL 304).

Given all of these factors, an orthodox reading of AL 301 is entirely possible. One cannot show from the text that Pope Francis is intending to teach that God’s law contradicts itself in such a way that there is literally no non-sinful option in some cases.

But if he’s not saying that, then he’s not saying that it’s impossible to keep the commandments.

AL 301 is thus not a suitable basis for sustaining a charge of heresy, even if canon 18 of the Decree on Justification is taken as establishing a dogma rather than just an infallible truth. You’d need something much more explicit and unambiguous to sustain a charge of heresy.

 

Kwasniewski’s Second Argument: Understanding Dogma

For his second argument, Kwasniewski writes:

2) Akin supposes that for a truth to be held of Divine and Catholic Faith, it must be expressly taught by the organs of the extraordinary magisterium as divinely revealed, but this is not so.

It’s not so, and Kwasniewski is misrepresenting me. The extraordinary magisterium does not have to be involved. The ordinary and universal magisterium can do it.

A truth should also be held with Divine and Catholic Faith if it is taught by the ordinary and universal magisterium as divinely revealed . . .

Correct. At this point, Kwasniewiski inserts a footnote, which reads:

He [Akin] verbally concedes this point but then restricts the definition of the ordinary and universal magisterium to a consensus of the episcopate so explicit that it would actually end up forming part of the extraordinary magisterium.

I do no such thing. The criteria for the ordinary and universal magisterium defining a point are as follows:

Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held (Lumen Gentium 25).

Kwasniewski appears to confuse two issues: (1) the degree of consensus that exists among the bishops and (2) whether they are meeting in an ecumenical council. The latter is what is relevant to the bishops exercising the extraordinary magisterium; the former is not. There is no degree of consensus among the world’s bishops—however high it may be—that would turn an act of the ordinary and universal magisterium into an act of the extraordinary magisterium.

His assertion that I restrict the ordinary and universal magisterium “to a consensus of the episcopate so explicit that it would actually end up forming part of the extraordinary magisterium” appears to indicate that he does not know what these terms mean.

To resume:

. . . — and such truths are not (as Mr Akin falsely supposes) limited to those truths taught AS divinely revealed by the episcopate dispe[r]sed  throughout the world . . .

Once again, Kwasniewski misrepresents me. I do not suppose that the ordinary and universal magisterium is capable only of defining something as divinely revealed. It’s not. It can also define various non-revealed truths, and it can define revealed truths as true–without defining them as divinely revealed (as Ratzinger and Bertone indicate it did with papal infallibility prior to Vatican I, which raised that infallible teaching to the status of a dogma).

However, if it does so, then it does not have to be held by divine and Catholic faith, only Catholic faith.

If you’re going to sustain a charge of heresy based on the ordinary and universal magisterium, you must show that the ordinary and universal magisterium has defined a truth “proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and universal magisterium” (CIC 750 §1; cf. 751)—i.e., a dogma.

I would note that, in the Open Letter, the signatories nowhere appeal to the ordinary and universal magisterium. The term does not appear anywhere in the document. If they are reconfiguring their case to appeal to the ordinary and universal magisterium (as I, frankly, expected they would once criticism of the document started), then I take this as a recognition of the weaknesses and inadequacies of the initial case they presented.

. . . but also include anything taught directly in the literal sense of scripture (because both the ordinary and universal magisterium and the extraordinary magisterium have taught the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture), the unanimous scriptural interpretations of the Fathers (from which a Catholic may not dissent, according to the definitions of Trent, Pius IV, and Vatican I), the unanimous consensus of the faithful concerning divine revelation (Lumen Gentium 12), and even the “universal and constant consent” of theologians concerning divinely revealed truth (Pius IX, Tuas libenter).

There are several problems here:

  1. Things taught in the literal sense of Scripture require divine faith—because they are divinely revealed. They do not require divine and Catholic faith if the Magisterium has not defined their sense. The fact that the Magisterium has defined the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture does not mean that it has defined what an individual passage of Scripture means in its literal sense. Therefore, divine and Catholic faith does not apply to such truths, only divine faith.
  2. Trent issued a disciplinary decree (not a doctrinal definition) that required Catholic authors not to hold positions “contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published.” It did not define that the Fathers (who included non-bishops) could infallibly define doctrines apart from the exercise of the Magisterium of their day. Pius IV required adherence to this principle, and Vatican I renewed the same decree, but neither defined that the Fathers—as a body—could infallibly define things. The Magisterium of their day—either extraordinary or ordinary and universal—could do so, but that’s a distinct and only partially overlapping body.
  3. The supernatural discernment of the faithful discussed in Lumen Gentium 12 is not exercised independently of the Magisterium. If you want to show that a matter has been infallibly defined, it has to be the Magisterium that does it, not the faithful conceived of separately.
  4. Kwasniewski flatly misreads Tuas Libenter. In it, Pius IX states that divine faith must be extended “to those matters transmitted as divinely revealed by the ordinary Magisterium of the whole Church dispersed throughout the world”—and which are therefore “for that reason, held by the universal and constant consensus of Catholic theologians as belonging to the faith” (DH 2879, emphasis added). In other words, Catholic theologians have always accepted what the ordinary and universal Magisterium has said belongs to the faith as belonging to it. He doesn’t say that orthodox theologians can themselves define that something belongs to divine revelation, apart from the Magisterium, or that the Magisterium always infallibly defines a sufficiently agreed-upon theological opinion. Kwasniewsky has the causal arrow pointing the wrong way.

Given the number of misrepresentations and misunderstandings we have documented—including of basic terms—it will be interesting to see the response that Kwasniewsky says is forthcoming from the signatories.