Mass Stipends and Simony

If you look at the bulletin for a typical Catholic parish, you’re likely to see a schedule of upcoming Masses along with notes for “Mass intentions” like “for the holy souls in purgatory,” “pro populo,” “the Brown family,” “John and Jane Smith,” etc.

Some of these are straightforward. If the Mass intention is for the holy souls in purgatory, that means that the priest will intend to apply the spiritual benefits of the Mass in a special way to these souls.

Similarly, in Latin, pro populo means “for the people,” and so that Mass will be intended to benefit the people—meaning the people of the parish.

But what about Mass intentions for “the Brown family” or “John and Jane Smith”? Obviously, the Masses are intended for the benefit of the named individuals, but why do they rank? Why do they get Masses celebrated for their benefit?

The answer is that they asked. At some point, they spoke to the priest (or called the parish office), said that they’d like to have a Mass celebrated for their intentions, and got put on the schedule.

You can do the same thing!

But there’s something else that they likely did, which was to offer what’s known as a Mass offering or “stipend.” This is a sum of money that is given to the priest who celebrates the Mass.

At this point, your spider sense make go off. You may be wondering, “Money? For a Mass? Is this some clever device to extract money from the faithful? Is it a form of clerical abuse of the laity? And since the Mass is a sacred thing, is this the sin of simony?”

As we’ll see, the answer to these questions is no—at least, not unless a priest is breaking the law.

The Gospels record Jesus making statements that exist in tension with each other. For example, as Jesus is sending out the Twelve on a preaching mission, he tells them not to take a bunch of supplies with them, because “the laborer deserves his food” (Matt. 10:10). Luke’s parallel passage has “the laborer deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7).

Passages like this indicate that ministers of the Gospel have a right to earn their living from their ministry—a theme stressed in other passages in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 9:4-14; 1 Tim. 5:18), and St. Paul summarizes Jesus’ teaching by stating, “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:14).

On the other hand, just two verses before Jesus told the Twelve that the worker deserves his food, he told them, “You received without pay, give without pay” (Matt. 10:8).

That makes it sound like ministers shouldn’t charge for their work. As we often do in Christianity, we thus have two principles that at first seem opposed and need to be harmonized. They both reflect aspects of a deeper, more complex truth.

Light may be shed on the situation by the case of Simon Magus. In Acts 8, the magic practitioner Simon converts to Christianity through the ministry of Philip the Evangelist in Samaria, and then Peter and John arrive to confirm the Samaritan converts.

When the converts receive the Holy Spirit, Simon is impressed and offers them money, saying, “Give me also this power, that any one on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit” (Acts 8:19). Peter then rebukes him “because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money” (Acts 8:20).

This led to Simon’s sin being named after him—simony—and today it is defined as “the buying and selling of spiritual things” (CCC 2121).

How can we harmonize the biblical data? On the one hand, ministers have a right to earn their living from the gospel, so they must be able to receive money—or goods and services—in connection with their work. That’s not the problem.

The problem must be something more specific—like how or under what conditions they receive the money.

One way of receiving money is accepting donations in a general way, without them being tied to any specific act of ministry. This is how most ministers today—Catholic and otherwise—earn their salaries.

However, you also could pay someone on a per act basis. This is the way non-salaried employees get paid—e.g., for each bushel of grain harvested, each chair put together, or each article written, they receive a certain amount of money. The same could be applied to ministers.

There’s nothing immoral about either a general salary or a per act payment, and the same applies to ministerial laborers as much as any others.

So what was wrong about Simon’s situation? For a start, he was essentially offering to buy ordination from the apostles. But ordination is not simply a commercial good. It is a gift of God and a calling to the service of others. That fits with the definition of simony as the buying of spiritual things.

But perhaps there’s something more to learn here. What would Simon have done with ordination if he had obtained it? Presumably, he would have used it to make money.

He’d previously amazed people with his magic—from which he no doubt earned income—and after ordination he would offer to give the Holy Spirit to people in exchange for money, which would fit with the other side of simony—the selling of spiritual things.

This also would have been wrong for Simon to do, but why is that the case if ministers have a right to earn their living from ministry?

Think about what happens in a store: There’s something you want to buy—maybe even something you desperately need—and the seller asks money for it. But what if you don’t have the money? What happens then is that you don’t get the wanted or needed item.

Now cast your mind back to the ancient world, when the overwhelming number of people were poor and barely scraping by, living hand-to-mouth.

Spiritual things are the most essential things in life, and if they are being sold—in the proper sense of the term—then the poor would just have to do without spiritual things!

You’re a poor person and can’t pay to get baptized to be forgiven and go to heaven? Too bad for you!

Yet God loves the poor, and so Christian ministry must not allow such situations to occur.

Christian ministers deserve to earn a living from their ministry, but the poor deserve to have the benefits of that ministry, even if they can’t pay. Any system of compensation for Christian ministers must incorporate these principles.

Therefore, ministers cannot act like shopkeepers and deny spiritual goods to those who can’t afford to pay for them. There’s nothing wrong with compensating ministers on a per act-of-ministry basis, but if they refuse to minister to those who cannot pay then they cross the line into selling spiritual goods and thus into simony.

What about Mass stipends? There have been abuses of Mass stipends in the past, but for centuries the Church has implemented strict policies to prevent abuses.

There’s nothing wrong with compensating a priest for saying a Mass for your intentions, but there need to be—and are—laws to keep this from becoming a money-making scheme, an abuse of the faithful, or outright simony.

The principal laws are found in canons 945-958 of the Code of Canon Law. That’s right, 14 canons devoted to just this topic! Counted other ways, the section amounts to 22 subsections and over 800 words—just devoted to regulating the kinds of stipends priests can accept and how they must handle them. That’s an indication of how seriously the Church takes this issue.

A fundamental protection is set up even earlier, when the Code says:

The minister is to seek nothing for the administration of the sacraments beyond the offerings defined by competent authority, always taking care that the needy are not deprived of the assistance of the sacraments because of poverty (can. 848).

So a priest can’t ask (or hint) that he’d like more than what the locally approved offering is. In the United States, this ranges between $5 and $20 for the celebration of Mass, with most dioceses setting it around $10.

And even those who are impoverished are not to be “deprived of the assistance of the sacraments.” Later, this theme is picked up again: “It is recommended earnestly to priests that they celebrate Mass for the intention of the Christian faithful, especially the needy, even if they have not received an offering” (can. 945 §2).

With the poor and others who have not made an offering taken care of, that prevents outright selling and thus simony.

It also keeps this from being a form of spiritual abuse of the faithful: The Church earnestly exhorts the priest to say Mass for the intentions of a member of the faithful even without an offering.

And about this being a money-making scheme? The Code provides, “No one is permitted to accept more offerings for Masses to be applied by himself than he can satisfy within a year” (can. 953).

Except for Christmas, priests are allowed to keep only one Mass offering for himself per day (can. 951 §1), so if you multiply $10 by 365 days, that would be an annual sum of just $3,650. Nobody is going to get rich on that.

The Code also provides numerous other protections for the faithful. For example, if the faithful give an offering and it isn’t clear how many Masses they want said, the priest is supposed to compute it from the offering.

Back when I entered the Church in 1992, the standard Mass stipend in Arkansas was $5, and one family in my parish made a $50 donation—wanting only one Mass—and they were surprised to find 10 Masses listed on the schedule for their intentions!

The Code also mandates a bookkeeping system to ensure that the Masses are said. Pastors of parishes are “to have a special book in which they note accurately the number of Masses to be celebrated, the intention, the offering given, and their celebration,” and the bishop or his representatives are required to audit this book every year (can. 958).

The Code even provides punishments for priests who traffic in Mass offerings (can. 1383).

There are additional provisions to ensure that the wishes of the faithful are strictly honored in this matter, and the Church is very serious about Mass offerings remaining modest, in keeping with the legitimate financial support of the Church and its ministers, and not turning into a crass money-making scheme.

5 Things to Know About the Pope, St. Vincent of Lérins and Doctrinal Development

In a recent interview, Pope Francis invoked St. Vincent of Lérins in relation to the concept of doctrinal development — especially as a remedy to what the Pope called indietrismo (an attitude of “being backward-looking”) among some Catholics. He has done so previously.

The linkage of doctrinal development to Vincent of Lérins may come as a surprise for two reasons. One is that the concept is commonly linked to St. John Henry Newman, and the other is that Vincent is most famous for a quotation that some might take as rejecting doctrinal development.

Here are five things to know and share.

1) Who was St. Vincent of Lérins?

Vincent of Lérins was a French monk who lived in the early 400s. He belonged to a monastery on the Island of St. Honorat, one of the Lérins Islands off the southern coast of France.

When Vincent was born is unknown. His death occurred sometime between A.D. 434 and 450.

One of the controversies of his time centered on questions of grace, free will, predestination and original sin. The two poles of this debate were the British monk Pelagius and the North African bishop St. Augustine. The former stressed free will and minimized the role of grace in the Christian life, while the latter did the reverse.

Many in this time were not fully satisfied with the positions proposed by either Pelagius or Augustine, and some advocated middle positions, some of which were later deemed heretical and referred to as “semi-Pelagianism.”

Like many in France at this time, Vincent has been regarded as a semi-Pelagian, but it is unclear what his exact position was. Further, since semi-Pelagianism had not been condemned in his day, he was not blocked from being regarded as a saint.

His feast day in the Roman Martyrology is May 24.

 

2) What is St. Vincent famous for writing?

We may have more than one work that Vincent penned, but the only one regarded as certainly by him is called the Commonitories (from a Latin term meaning “remembrances” or “warnings”).

He wrote it under the pen name Peregrinus (Latin, “the Pilgrim”), and he composed it about the year 434 — three years after the Council of Ephesus declared that the Blessed Virgin Mary can be referred to as the Theotokos (Greek, “God-Bearer” or “Mother of God”).

This title is not found in Scripture and arose from popular piety. As a result, some viewed it as an impermissible addition to Christian faith and practice.

Between the Theotokos controversy and the Pelagian-Augustinian controversy, the topic of whether developments of doctrine were legitimate or heretical was under discussion at the time.

It was in this context that Vincent wrote the Commonitories, and he set before himself the task of determining how to distinguish the true Catholic faith from heresies, writing:

With great zeal and full attention I often inquired from many men, outstanding in sanctity and doctrinal knowledge, how, in a concise and, so to speak, general and ordinary way, I might be able to discern the truth of the Catholic faith from the falsity of heretical corruption.

From almost all of them I always received the answer that if I or someone else wanted to expose the frauds of the heretics and escape their snares and remain sound in the integrity of faith, I had, with the help of the Lord, to fortify that faith in a twofold manner: first, by the authority of the divine Law; second, by the tradition of the Catholic Church.

Vincent thus appeals to both Scripture and Tradition, and the Commonitories has passages that have been cited both by those who are cautious about the idea of doctrinal development and by those who are enthusiastic about it.

3) What did Vincent write that those who are cautious about doctrinal development cite?

Vincent explains that, although Scripture is “more than sufficient in itself,” it is interpreted in different and heretical ways by some people, and so he explains that one must interpret it in light of how it has been read in the Church. He states:

In the Catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always and by all [quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus].

This is truly and properly ‘Catholic,’ as indicated by the force and etymology of the name itself, which comprises everything truly universal.

This general rule will be truly applied if we follow the principles of universality, antiquity and consent.

This is the most famous passage in St. Vincent. It is an expression of what has become known as the “Vincentian Canon” and — taken on its own — it could be read as putting a firm break on any doctrinal development.

If we must “hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” then that could seem to leave no room for development in Catholic teaching over time.

The passage thus has been cited by those who wish to deemphasize the possibility of doctrinal development.

However, this is not the only thing that Vincent has to say on the subject.

4) What did Vincent write that those who are enthusiastic about doctrinal development cite?

Later in the Commonitories, Vincent makes it clear that he believes in the idea of doctrinal development, which he refers to as “progress [profectus] of religion.” He writes:

Teach precisely what you have learned; do not say new things even if you say them in a new manner.

At this point, the question may be asked: If this is right, then is no progress of religion possible within the Church of Christ?

To be sure, there has to be progress, even exceedingly great progress.

You’ll notice that one of the things Vincent mentions is the possibility of teaching things one has learned in the past but saying them “in a new manner.”

This refers to the controversies the Church had gone through in which new vocabulary was introduced to express ideas handed down from the apostles — such as saying that Christ is homoousios (Greek, “consubstantial”) with the Father or that Mary is Theotokos.

This teaching of ancient things “in a new manner” thus refers to a form of what is today called doctrinal development. He later refers to this as “presenting in new words the old interpretation of the faith.”

To explain his idea of progress or development, Vincent states that:

It must be progress in the proper sense of the word, and not a change in faith.

Progress means that each thing grows within itself, whereas change implies that one thing is transformed into another.

Hence, it must be that understanding, knowledge and wisdom grow and advance mightily and strongly in individuals as well as in the community, in a single person as well as in the Church as a whole, and this gradually according to age and history.

Vincent then offers an analogy:

The growth of religion in the soul should be like the growth of the body, which in the course of years develops and unfolds, yet remains the same as it was.

Much happens between the prime of childhood and the maturity of old age.

But the old men of today who were the adolescents of yesterday, although the figure and appearance of one and the same person have changed, are identical.

There remains one and the same nature and one and the same person.

The limbs of infants are small, those of young men large — yet they are the same.

By contrast, he states:

If, on the other hand, the human form were turned into a shape of another kind, or if the number of members of the body were increased or decreased, then the whole body would necessarily perish, or become a monstrosity, or be in some way disabled.

In the same way, the dogma of the Christian religion ought to follow these laws of progress, so that it may be consolidated in the course of years, developed in the sequence of time, and sublimated by age [ut annis scilicet consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate] — yet remain incorrupt and unimpaired, complete and perfect in all the proportions of its parts and in all its essentials.

Finally, he states:

It is right that those ancient dogmas of heavenly philosophy should in the course of time be thoroughly cared for, filed and polished; but it is sinful to change them, sinful to behead them or mutilate them.

They may take on more evidence, clarity and distinctness, but it is absolutely necessary that they retain their plenitude, integrity and basic character.

Vincent thus believes in a form of doctrinal development whereby what has been passed down from ancient times can be expressed in new words that provide greater clarity and distinctness but that leave its fundamental substance unaltered.

5) What should we make of St. Vincent’s discussion of these points?

It is clear that Vincent is aware the Catholic faith can be expressed (and has come to be expressed) in ways that were not used in the past, and thus that a form of doctrinal development occurs.

However, this is not a form of development without limits. For Vincent, something is only a genuine development if it preserves what was authoritatively handed down from the beginning — at least implicitly, similar to the way men may grow beards even though babies don’t have them.

Vincent thus seeks to strike a balance that acknowledges the necessity of doctrinal continuity with the past and the need for variability of expression with time in order to bring out ancient truths more clearly in the present.

This is essentially the form of doctrinal development endorsed by St. John Henry Newman and — more recently — by Benedict XVI.

In the Commonitories, Vincent has more to say about the application of the principles he describes — and applying the principles correctly is the real challenge.

However, it would be a mistake to focus on the Vincentian Canon to the exclusion of doctrinal development — as if all development is illegitimate — or to focus on his statements about doctrinal development to the exclusion of the Vincentian Canon — as if we could engage in a form of development untethered from the teaching of Christ and the apostles.

Vincent believed in both continuity and development.

Cleansing the Temple

One of the events recorded in all four Gospels is Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple. On this occasion, Mark tells us, Jesus “entered the Temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the Temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons; and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the Temple” (Mark 11:15-16).

A question that occurs to almost everyone who reads this passage is: Why did Jesus do this?

However, a second question occurs to those who study the Gospels closely: When did Jesus do this? Matthew, Mark, and Luke present it as occurring at the end of Jesus’ ministry, but John presents it as occurring at the beginning of the ministry.

Here we’ll look at both questions.

On why Jesus did it, the Gospels provide clues. The fullest version is found in Mark, who records Jesus saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers” (Mark 11:17).

Here Jesus combines two quotations from the Old Testament. The first is from Isaiah 56:7, where the prophet describes a day when God will bring Gentiles to Jerusalem, where they will worship him, and he will accept their offerings. Thus the Temple is called “a house of prayer for all the nations.”

The Temple was structured as a series of four progressively more holy courtyards. From the outermost to the innermost, they were

    • the court of the Gentiles, where Gentiles could (and did!) come to worship God;
    • the court of women, where Jewish women could worship;
    • the court of Israel, where Jewish men could worship; and
    • the court of priests, where Jewish priests ministered.

Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple on the grounds that it was to be a house of prayer for all the nations may indicate that the money-changers and the sellers of sacrificial animals had set up shop in the court of the Gentiles and were misappropriating worship space for ordinary commerce.

That leads us to the second quotation, which is from Jeremiah 7:11, where the prophet excoriates the people of his day for performing immoral and pagan practices and—in God’s eyes—turning his Temple into “a den of robbers” (that is, a place where robbers feel safe in their immoral lifestyle).

The fact the money-changers and sellers felt safe in the Temple—and the fact they were engaged in commerce—make the reference to the den of robbers appropriate.

The other Gospels do not pick up on the detail about the Gentiles that Mark includes. Matthew and Luke omit “for all the nations” from the Isaiah quotation, and John has Jesus telling the sellers of pigeons, “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (John 2:16).

These accounts focus more on the use of the Temple to earn a living rather than for worship as what is objectionable, though this is consistent with Mark’s account.

On the question of when Jesus did it, there have been several proposals:

    1. Jesus chronologically did it at the end of his ministry (per the Synoptic Gospels), and John presents it at the beginning for theological reasons.
    2. Jesus chronologically did it at the beginning of his ministry (per John), and the Synoptics present it at the end for theological reasons.
    3. Jesus did it twice—at both the beginning and the end of his ministry.

None of these options should be dismissed out of hand. It is demonstrable that the Evangelists do not always record events in chronological order. Instead, they sometimes put material in topical order—as when Matthew gathers together teachings of Jesus into major discourses (e.g., the Sermon on the Mount is a collection of Jesus’ ethical teachings that are scattered in different places in Luke).

There’s more to say about these three possibilities than we can explore here, but I’ll offer a few thoughts.

You might argue for proposal 1 by noting that the Synoptic Gospels link the cleansing of the Temple to Jesus’ death. Immediately after his remark concerning the den of robbers, Mark continues: “And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him” (Mark 11:18).

Matthew and Luke put a little more space between the clearing of the Temple and the plot to kill Jesus, but all three have the cleansing as an initiating event in the conflict between Jesus and the Jerusalem authorities. Mark links them explicitly, and it’s understandable why—after a public outburst in the Temple—the authorities would act against Jesus. One might thus regard this as the chronological placement of the event.

However, you might argue for proposal 2 by pointing out that John is demonstrably concerned with chronology, so one could view his account as an attempt to clarify exactly when the incident happened.

Like the Synoptics, John notes that the incident happened when “the Passover of the Jews was at hand” (John 2:13). The question would be which Passover, and here John provides a clue. Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” after which “the Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple [Greek, naos], and will you raise it up in three days?’” (vv. 19-20).

Unfortunately, this common translation appears to be mistaken. John distinguishes between the Temple in general, including its courtyards—for which he uses the term hieron—and the inner part of the Temple that only the priests could enter—for which he uses the term naos. Here John uses naos, and the naos was completed in 18/17 B.C.

This reveals that the verse should be translated according to another grammatically possible reading, which would be “This temple [naos] has been built for forty-six years.”

The forty-sixth anniversary of the naos’s completion would be A.D. 30, so John is locating the clearing of the Temple at Passover in A.D. 30.

While some think Jesus was crucified in A.D. 30, this is mistaken. The evidence indicates he was born in 3/2 B.C., and Luke states that he “was about thirty years of age” when he began his ministry (Luke 3:23). That means Jesus began his ministry about A.D. 29, so John situates the clearing of the Temple toward the beginning of Jesus’ ministry—in A.D. 30—with Jesus not being crucified until A.D. 33.

We thus have an indication from the Synoptics that the clearing led directly to the death of Jesus and an indication from John that it happened at the beginning of the ministry.

This leads us to proposal 3—that Jesus cleared the Temple twice, once at the beginning and once at the end of his ministry, like bookends.

This proposal is rejected by many scholars, but it is the most straightforward reading of the evidence.

One author who defends the two-clearings hypothesis is Joel McDurmon, and he proposes a reason why Jesus would clear it twice.

Simply to bookend his ministry with the two actions would be reason enough to do this, but McDurmon proposes that Jesus was modeling his actions after an Old Testament ritual whereby a priest was required to inspect a house that had become infested with “leprosy” (Lev. 14:33-53).

Houses can’t get the disease we call leprosy, so this was most likely a form of mold or mildew. The priest was required to inspect the house more than once:

    1. If he found “leprosy” in the house, he would order it closed for seven days.
    2. If, when he came back, it appeared that the disease had spread, the priest would have the affected plaster and stones yanked out and replaced.
    3. If the disease broke out again later, the priest would order the house destroyed.

McDurmon links the first and second clearings of the Temple to the second and third of these inspections. He concludes that after the initial clearing, Jesus rejected the Temple officials and replaced them with his disciples as “living stones,” and after the second clearing, he announced the destruction of the Temple.

This is interesting, but it is very speculative. The text does not mention or clearly imply a connection to Leviticus 14. Further, the priest is required to visit the house three times before ordering its destruction: (1) an initial inspection, (2) a second inspection seven days later, and (3) a third inspection at a later time if the disease breaks out again.

For the parallel to fit, Jesus would have needed to visit the Temple seven days before the first cleansing and see its corruption, but there is nothing like that in John or the Synoptics.

McDurmon tries to argue that the first visit is accomplished seven days before John’s cleansing by Jesus’ baptism and his constitution as the new Temple, but there are multiple problems with this: (i) Jesus was always the new temple; he didn’t become it upon baptism, (ii) he didn’t see corruption in himself when he was baptized, (iii) he didn’t visit the Jerusalem temple and see its corruption between his baptism and the first cleansing, and (iv) there are more than seven days between Jesus’ baptism and the first cleansing.

McDurmon tries to argue that this period is only seven days, but John does not say or imply this. In John, the length of time between the two is indeterminate. Further, we’ve already seen that Jesus’ ministry began in A.D. 29, but the first cleansing didn’t happen until Passover of 30—considerably more than seven days later.

The theory McDurmon proposes is thus interesting, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

Even apart from McDurmon’s proposals, there is reason to favor the two-cleansing hypothesis. John is clearly writing with supplemental intent—that is, he intends to supplement the material found in the Synoptic Gospels by principally relating stories not found in them.

In fact, the outline of John’s Gospel is designed to interlock with the Gospel of Mark, so John expects you to already know the Synoptic tradition, including the clearing of the Temple at Jesus’ final Passover in A.D. 33.

Why wouldn’t he mention both clearings, then? Because of economics. All four Evangelists keep their Gospels to the length of a single scroll because books were fantastically expensive at the time. A single copy of Matthew cost the equivalent of more than $2,200.

Because of his supplemental intent, John chose to include the clearing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and because of economics, he chose to omit the one at the end so that he could keep his Gospel to a single scroll.

We also have other indications that John’s clearing of the Temple is designed to flesh out the Synoptics’ record. In Mark, Jesus’ accusers claim, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands’” (Mark 14:58; cf. 15:29).

Jesus doesn’t say anything like that in Mark, but John records that during the first clearing of the Temple, Jesus had said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). John thus appears to be supplementing Mark to indicate when the witnesses heard Jesus say something along these lines—it was during the first cleansing of the Temple, at the beginning of the ministry.

On that occasion, the Temple authorities didn’t act against Jesus. However, after he grew a reputation as the Messiah over the course of his ministry (cf. John 6:15), when he proved to be a repeat offender by clearing the Temple again, they did act against him.

More can be said about all this. In his book The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, Craig Blomberg offers additional considerations favoring the two-clearings hypothesis (see pp. 216-219). But for our purposes, it’s enough to say that the idea that Jesus cleansed the Temple two times should not be rejected out of hand.

The case may not be 100% conclusive, but the hypothesis should not be dismissed as a naive “harmonization” of the Gospels. John writes with supplemental intent and crafts the outline of his Gospel around that of Mark, so he clearly expects us to read his Gospel in light of the Synoptics.

Was Mary Q?

It’s clear that there is a literary relationship between the three Synoptic Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke have many passages in common—down to the level of individual words in Greek.

Most scholars have concluded that the majority of these passages are due to Matthew and Luke copying from Mark. In the process of doing so, they both abbreviate Mark’s accounts and polish his Greek style to make it better.

But setting aside the passages that all three Synoptic Gospels have in common, there are still 235 verses shared only by Matthew and Luke.

To explain these, many scholars have proposed that both Matthew and Luke are drawing on a hypothetical common source, which has been named “Q” (from the German word Quelle, which means source).

Recently, I encountered the suggestion that it was the Virgin Mary herself who was behind the Q source, and I was asked what I thought of this possibility.

A careful reading of Luke’s Gospel reveals that the Virgin Mary was one of his sources of information. Luke signals this twice in his “Infancy Narrative,” or account of the events leading up to Christ’s birth and what happened in his childhood.

The Gospels contain subtle cues about who the Evangelists were using as their sources, and these would have been more obvious to ancient readers than they are today.

One such cue is found in Luke 2:19. After recounting the events up to Jesus’ birth, Luke states: “But Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.” That’s a signal that Mary was the source of Luke’s information for the material we have just read.

He may have interviewed her personally or he may have gotten the information by a chain of transmission leading back to Mary, but one way or another, she’s the source.

Luke then describes several incidents taking us down to the discovery of Jesus in the temple when he was twelve years old, and Luke says, “and his mother kept all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:21). That’s another signal that Mary was the source of the information we have just read—i.e., the reason Luke has this information is because Mary kept it in her heart, and that’s how Luke knows it.

The difficulty for the “Mary is Q” theory is that these passages occur in Luke’s Infancy Narrative, and that is not part of the 235 verses that Matthew and Luke have in common. In other words, it’s not part of the “Q material” that the two Gospels share.

Further, Luke only mentions Mary remembering things in these two passages, suggesting that she was not the source of later material in his Gospel.

So it appears that Mary was (directly or indirectly) one of Luke’s sources, but that she was not responsible for the 235 verses reckoned as part of Q.

What would explain those verses? Many scholars have proposed that there was a “Q document” that Matthew and Luke drew on, but we have no direct evidence that such a document existed, and I think there’s a simpler explanation: Matthew just copied from Luke.

Matthew clearly organizes material that is scattered in different places in Luke, and with the idea of Q being entirely speculative—rather than supported by evidence—it’s easier to explain the relationship by saying that Matthew was an organizer who sequenced material from Luke than it would be to explain why Luke smashed Matthew’s careful organization for no clear reason. As one scholar put it, Luke would have needed to unscramble the egg “with a vengeance.”

I thus conclude that—if there ever was a “Q document”—it was likely just a collection of notes Matthew took while reading Luke, and Luke was itself drawn from a variety of sources.

One of Luke’s sources was the Virgin Mary, though she was not behind the so-called “Q material.”

Are Saturday Evening Masses Based on an Ancient Jewish Practice?

According to the current Code of Canon Law:

A person who assists at a Mass celebrated anywhere in a Catholic rite either on the feast day itself or in the evening of the preceding day satisfies the obligation of participating in the Mass (can. 1248 §1).

Sunday is a holy day of obligation (can. 1246 §1), and as a result, you can fulfill your Sunday obligation either by going to Mass during the 24 hours of Sunday or on Saturday evening.

(The same principle applies to holy days of obligation that fall on other days of the week—though we won’t go into that here).

Masses celebrated on the evening of the preceding day are commonly called “vigil Masses,” though this isn’t their official name.

Instead, they are formally known as “anticipated” Masses since they use the same readings as the following day rather than special readings designed for a vigil service.

 

A Proposed Explanation

Many people want to know why this is permitted. Why can we fulfill our Sunday obligation by going to Mass on Saturday evening?

A common proposal is that it is because—in the Jewish timekeeping system—the day begins at sunset, and so there is a sense in which Sunday begins on Saturday evening.

Catholics are thus allowed to fulfill their Sunday obligation at this time in honor of Christianity’s Jewish heritage.

It’s a plausible explanation, but is it true?

Here are three problems with it.

 

Jewish Practice Was Inconsistent

The first problem is that Jewish reckoning of when the day begins was inconsistent.

There are four logical points during the day where it makes sense to start a new day:

    • Sunrise
    • Sunset
    • Midnight
    • Midday (i.e., noon)

Different cultures have used various points for their day divisions. In the Handbook of Biblical Chronology (2nd ed.), Jack Finegan writes:

11. In ancient Egypt the day probably began at dawn, in ancient Mesopotamia it began in the evening.

Among the Greeks the day was reckoned from sunset to sunset, while the Romans already began the day in the “modern” fashion at midnight.

Summing up the different reckonings among different people in his time Pliny [the Elder] wrote:

The Babylonians count the period between two sunrises, the Athenians that between two sunsets, the Umbrians from midday to midday, the common people everywhere from dawn to dark, the Roman priests and the authorities who fixed the official day, and also the Egyptians and Hipparchus, the period from midnight to midnight [Natural History 2.79.188].

But what about the Israelites? When did they reckon the day as starting? The answer is that it varied. Finegan continues:

12. In the Old Testament the earlier practice seems to have been to consider that the day began in the morning.

In Gen 19:34, for example, the “morrow” (asv) or “next day” (rsv) clearly begins with the morning after the preceding night.

The later practice was to count the day as beginning in the evening.

So in the Old Testament it looks like the early practice was to reckon the day as beginning at sunrise, but the later practice seems to have been to reckon it as beginning at sunset.

And since the New Testament is later than the Old Testament, that means that—in Jesus’ day—the day began at sunset, right?

Well . . .

13. In the New Testament in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts the day seems usually to be considered as beginning in the morning.

Mark 11:11 states that Jesus entered Jerusalem, went into the temple, and when he had looked at everything, since it was “now eventide” (asv) or “already late” (rsv), went out to Bethany with the twelve; verse 12 continues the narrative and tells that on the “morrow” (asv) or the “following day” (rsv) they came back to the city.

It is evident that the new day has begun with the morning following the preceding evening.

Likewise Matt 28:1; Mark 16:1f., and Luke 23:56–24:1 all picture the first day of the week beginning with the dawn following the preceding Sabbath.

And Acts 4:3, for an example in that book, tells how Peter and John were put in custody “until the morrow, for it was already evening,” thus clearly indicating that the new day would begin the next morning.

It has been suggested that this counting of the day as beginning with the morning is a continuation of the earlier Old Testament practice already described (§12), and that this usage was maintained in parts of Galilee and was followed by Jesus and the early disciples, which would account for its appearing so frequently in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts.

But is there no trace in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts of the idea of the day beginning at sunset? And what about the Gospel of John? Finegan continues:

On the other hand, even though the common reckoning in the Synoptic Gospels is from the morning, in Mark 1:32 = Luke 4:40, the later Old Testament (§12) and Jewish usage of counting the one day as ending and the next as beginning at sunset is plainly reflected in the fact that the people of Capernaum were free to bring the sick to Jesus at sunset when the Sabbath came to an end.

As for the Fourth Gospel, in John 20:1 Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark, yet it is already “on the first day of the week.”

This can be explained by supposing that the late Old Testament and Jewish usage is in view, according to which the new day had begun at the preceding sunset, or it can be explained equally well by supposing that John is giving the description in terms of the official Roman day which, as Pliny told us (§11), began at midnight.

In either case, the new day had begun already before the sunrise.

So Jewish practice about when the day began was inconsistent. The Old Testament uses both sunrise and sunset as points for beginning the day, and the New Testament isn’t consistent, either.

The Synoptic Gospels and Acts usually have the day starting with sunrise (though not always), and it isn’t clear (at least from what Finegan writes) whether John is using sunset or midnight.

This is not a strong basis for saying the modern practice of anticipated Masses is simply a continuation of a well-established Jewish practice from the days of Jesus.

However, there’s another problem.

 

The Practice Was Introduced in the 1960s

The second problem is that anticipated Masses date to the 1960s.

They aren’t something that the Church has been doing for the last 2,000 years—which is what you would expect if they were simply the continuation of an ancient Jewish practice.

Instead, what happened was that in 1964, the Vatican made an announcement (on Vatican Radio) that the faithful could fulfill their Sunday obligation on Saturday evenings in certain churches that had been designated for this purpose by the local bishop.

The permission applied only to Sundays (not other holy days of obligation), and it did not apply to all locations where Mass was being celebrated—only to specially designated churches.

Most fundamentally, it was only at the discretion of the local bishop—not part of the Church’s universal law.

That changed in 1983 with the release of the revised Code of Canon Law, which removed these restrictions and allowed the faithful to fulfill their Mass obligation on the preceding evening for Sundays and other holy days and anywhere a Mass is being celebrated, as long as it is “in a Catholic rite.”

(This means, among other things, that the Mass doesn’t have to use the next day’s readings, as these will vary between rites; e.g., the Chaldean rite uses a different lectionary than the Roman rite).

So this is not an immemorial practice. It was introduced to the universal Church—at the bishop’s discretion—in the 1960s and then broadened in 1983. It thus isn’t simply a continuation of an ancient Jewish practice.

Still, it’s possible that—in the 1960s zeal for restoring ancient liturgical uses—that the Vatican decided to restore an older practice that had fallen into disuse.

So is that what they did?

 

It’s Not What They Said

The third problem with the idea is that it’s just not what the Vatican said when they introduced the practice.

On June 12, 1964, Vatican Radio announced:

The faithful can also satisfy the Sunday precept of holy Mass by assisting at the celebration of the divine service in the afternoon of Saturday in churches specifically designated by the local ecclesiastical authority.

The Sacred Congregation of the Council, at the request of local Ordinaries [i.e., bishops], granted the faculty to celebrate holy Mass after first Vespers on Saturday together with the valid discharge of the Sunday precept.

It is left to the prudent judgment of the Ordinaries to indicate the times, localities, and churches which will enjoy this faculty as has already been done in some dioceses of Italy, Switzerland, and Argentina (n. This concession has also been recently granted to Catholics in Israel where, as is known, Sunday is considered a working day).

Among the considerations which have prompted this concession at the present time are:

        • the enormous and ever-increasing frequency of weekend trips and of skiing excursions for whose patronizers the schedules of departure and return make it at least difficult to fulfill the Sunday precept;
        • the situation in which numerous mountain villagers find themselves where, during the long periods of isolation brought about by accumulation of snow, part of the inhabitants would not be able to get to church and can at present have contact with the priest on Saturday;
        • the serious dearth of clergy in some countries in which at present the priest by being able to celebrate four Sunday Masses including that on Saturday, will meet the greater number of the faithful [Canon Law Digest 6:670-671].

So the Vatican indicated that the reasons anticipated Masses were introduced included modern weekend travel, weather conditions, and a shortage of priests in some countries.

None of these considerations were restoring an ancient Jewish practice.

However, Vatican Radio did say that the named factors were “among the considerations” leading to the decision. That doesn’t completely rule out that the decision was influenced by an older Jewish practice in some way.

But it would indicate that this either wasn’t a consideration or wasn’t a principal consideration.

 

Conclusion

In light of these factors, it wouldn’t be responsible to tell people that we can fulfill our Sunday obligations on Saturday evening based on ancient Jewish time reckoning:

    • Ancient Jewish practice was actually mixed, including in the time of Christ
    • There was no continuation of the day-begins-at-sunset practice in the Church, and anticipated Masses were only introduced in the 1960s
    • When they were introduced, all the named factors leading to the decision were modern, not ancient

 

Blessings: 7 Things to Know and Share

 

There is currently considerable discussion about whether it is possible to bless persons in same-sex unions.

In light of this, it can be useful to step back and take a look at the topic in general.

Here are 7 things to know and share about blessings.

 

1) What are blessings?

The English word bless is used to translate the Latin word benedicere and the Greek word eulogein. Both of these mean “to speak good.”

In Scripture, the terms have a variety of uses. For example, one may bless God by speaking good of God—i.e., praising him (Ps. 68:26, Jas. 3:9, etc.).

However, another prominent use of the term is speaking good about something other than God in hopes of bringing about good effects. Thus the patriarch Isaac intended to bless his son Esau to bring good things upon him, but through Rebekah’s intervention, this blessing was stolen by Jacob (Gen. 27).

To bless is the opposite of to curse (Latin, malidicere, “to speak evil”). When a person curses something, he speaks evil about it in order to bring about evil or bad effects. Thus the Moabite king Balak sought to have the prophet Balaam curse Israel to harm the nation, but through God’s intervention the curse was turned into a blessing (Num. 22-24).

Blessings and curses of this type are sometimes called invocative because they invoke either good or evil upon the person or thing.

Whether the blessing or curse ultimately achieves its effect depends on the will of God, who is the one being invoked and asked to help or harm someone.

Another kind of blessing has developed which involves permanently changing the status of someone or something by setting it apart for a holy purpose. This type of blessing is sometimes called constitutive because it constitutes the person or thing in its new, holy status. This form of blessing is also sometimes referred to as a consecration.

The Catechism states:

Certain blessings have a lasting importance because they consecrate persons to God, or reserve objects and places for liturgical use.

Among those blessings which are intended for persons—not to be confused with sacramental ordination—are the blessing of the abbot or abbess of a monastery, the consecration of virgins and widows, the rite of religious profession, and the blessing of certain ministries of the Church (readers, acolytes, catechists, etc.).

The dedication or blessing of a church or an altar, the blessing of holy oils, vessels, and vestments, bells, etc., can be mentioned as examples of blessings that concern objects (CCC 1672).

 

2) What can be blessed?

A wide variety of people and things can be blessed. The Catechism specifically mentions persons, meals, objects, and places (CCC 1671).

 

3) Who are the parties involved in a blessing?

There are several parties that can be involved in a blessing. They include:

    • The person being blessed (or those that are helped by a blessed object or thing)
    • The person who performs the blessing
    • The Church, which has authorized some blessings to be given in its name
    • God, who is the ultimate source of all blessing (Jas. 1:17)

The Church is not involved in all blessings but only those it has authorized. These may be considered official blessings. They involve the intercession of the Church, as expressed through the authorized person performing the blessing.

Other blessings—such as those performed by ordinary people (e.g., when we say “God bless you” to someone)—may be considered unofficial.

 

4) Do blessings take effect automatically?

The standard answer is no, but careful reflection suggests that the answer is more complex than that.

In the case of constitutive blessings—such as the blessing of an abbot or abbess or the blessing of a church or an altar—the answer would appear to be yes.

If the Church’s official rite of blessing has been used for an abbot or abbess, that person really has been consecrated or set aside for a holy office, even if the man or woman is personally unworthy. Similarly, if a church or altar has been consecrated, it really has been set apart for sacred use.

When it comes to invocative blessings, the matter is different. Blessings are not sacraments but sacramentals. In fact, the Catechism notes that “Among sacramentals blessings . . . come first” (CCC 1671).

Sacraments are rites instituted by Jesus that God has promised to use to distribute his grace—especially sanctifying grace—so long as the recipient does not put a barrier in the way of receiving it.

Sacramentals are rites instituted by the Church, and so God has not promised to distribute his grace on each and every occasion that they are performed. The 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia states:

Blessings are not sacraments; they are not of divine institution; they do not confer sanctifying grace; and they do not produce their effects in virtue of the rite itself, or ex opere operato. They are sacramentals.

Similarly, the Catechism states:

Sacramentals do not confer the grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that the sacraments do, but by the Church’s prayer, they prepare us to receive grace and dispose us to cooperate with it (CCC 1670).

In general, whether an invocative blessing has its intended effect will depend on the piety of the one receiving the blessing and whether it is God’s will for the person to receive the intended good.

 

5) What effects do blessings have?

The Catholic Encyclopedia states:

[T]hey produce the following specific effects:

        1. Excitation of pious emotions and affections of the heart and, by means of these, remission of venial sin and of the temporal punishment due to it;
        2. freedom from power of evil spirits;
        3. preservation and restoration of bodily health.
        4. various other benefits, temporal or spiritual.

All these effects are not necessarily inherent in any one blessing; some are caused by one formula, and others by another, according to the intentions of the Church.

The particular effects that a blessing involves will depend on the words used in the blessing—i.e., what does the blessing ask God to do?

One should consult The Book of Blessings for the words used in official blessings.

 

6) Who can perform blessings?

There has long been an association between blessings and the priesthood. Thus Numbers 6:22-27 states:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel: you shall say to them,

‘The Lord bless you and keep you;

the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.’

So shall they put my name upon the people of Israel, and I will bless them.”

However, blessings were not restricted to priests. In the Old Testament, the patriarchs gave blessings to their children, and various prophets (including Balaam) pronounced blessings also.

Also, Israel—like the Church—was called to be “a kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6, Rev. 1:6; cf. 1 Pet. 2:9). As a result, there are situations in which laity also can give blessings. The Catechism explains:

Sacramentals derive from the baptismal priesthood: every baptized person is called to be a “blessing,” and to bless.

Hence lay people may preside at certain blessings; the more a blessing concerns ecclesial and sacramental life, the more is its administration reserved to the ordained ministry (bishops, priests, or deacons) (CCC 1669).

The Church’s Book of Blessings notes who can perform which individual blessings. Sometimes this will be the bishop, sometimes a priest, sometimes a deacon, sometimes a lay person, and sometimes a combination of these.

Among others, laity are authorized to perform the blessing of an Advent wreath, a Christmas manger or Nativity scene, a Christmas tree, and throats on St. Blase’s Day (Feb. 3). They also are authorized to help with the distribution of ashes on Ash Wednesday, though the blessing of the ashes is reserved to a priest or deacon.

There are no limits to who may perform unofficial blessings. Any person can say, “God bless you” to another, bless a meal, or bless their children.

 

7) Where can I learn more?

The single most authoritative source on blessings is the Church’s Book of Blessings. It contains not only the texts used for individual, official blessings, it also contains introductions to the individual texts, as well as a general introduction to the subject of blessings.

Also helpful is Fr. Stephen J. Rossetti’s book The Priestly Blessing: Recovering the Gift. It contains a discussion of the history of blessings in light of Church teaching and the opinions of theologians.

Who Is Mary Magdalene?

All four Gospels refer to a woman named Mary Magdalene. She is one of the witnesses of Christ’s crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, and she is often named first in lists of women.

All this makes it clear that she was prominent in the early Christian community and was well-known by the authors of the Gospels.

But who was she? What do we know about her? And how has her image changed over time?

 

What’s in a Name?

The first thing to note is her name: Mary Magdalene. Magdalene is not a last name. They didn’t have last names in first century Jewish society, so what does this term mean?

It helps if you look at the Greek behind it. In Matthew, Mark, and John, she is referred to as Maria hê Magdalênê or Mariam hê Magdalênê. These would be literally translated as “Mary the Magdalene”—so a Magdalene is a kind of person.

The specific kind of person a Magdalene represents is someone from the fishing village of Magdala, which was a mostly Gentile town of about 40,000 people on the western side of the Sea of Galilee.

So Mary was from Magdala in Galilee. She is thus being referred to by a naming convention whereby you give the person’s name and place of origin—as in “Jesus of Nazareth” (Acts 10:38) or “Jesus the Nazarene” (Matt. 26:71).

However, this place designation is not the most common way that women were referred to in first century Palestinian Jewish culture. Instead, they were normally named based on their relatives.

Men were often referred to using a patronym—that is, their father’s name—as in “Simon son of Jonah” (Matt. 16:17) or “Simon son of John” (John 1:42).

However, when an Israelite woman got married, she left the house of her father and became a member of her husband’s household. Consequently, women were commonly referred to in different ways:

    • An unmarried woman would be referred to using her father’s name—e.g., “Anna the daughter of Phanuel” (Luke 2:36).
    • A married woman would be referred to using her husband’s name—e.g., “Joanna the wife of Chuza” (Luke 8:3).
    • A woman who was a mother might be referred to using the name of her son or sons—e.g., “Mary the mother of Jesus” (Acts 1:14), “Mary the mother of James and Joseph” (Matt. 27:56). This would happen especially if the woman was a widow and no longer had a husband.
    • And if a woman didn’t have such a living father, husband, or son, she might be referred to by the name of her siblings—e.g., though the Gospels never do this, you could refer to “Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus”

But none of these things happen for Mary Magdalene. Instead of specifying which Mary we’re talking about by referring to her relatives, she gets a place designation.

This suggests that she didn’t have any relatives that were well known in the early Christian community, so they defaulted back to a place name.

Most likely, she had no father, husband, or sons—and she certainly didn’t have any that were well-known.

The identifying thing that stuck out in the minds of the first Christian communities was that she was a Galilean from Magdala, so that’s how they referred to her.

 

A Former Demoniac and Woman of Means

Luke tells us two interesting things about Mary Magdalene. At one point, he says:

Soon afterward [Jesus] went on through cities and villages, preaching and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means (Luke 8:1-3).

This tells us that “seven demons had gone out” of Mary, so she was a former demoniac, and given the context, it was likely Jesus who cast the demons out of her, something that is explicitly stated in the longer ending of Mark (Mark 16:9).

She is also grouped women who provided for Jesus and the Twelve “out of their means.” This suggests that Mary was a woman of means. She had money—i.e., disposable income that she could use to support Jesus and his mission.

 

A Key Witness

All four Gospels indicate that Mary was a key witness to the events of the climax of Jesus’ ministry.

She had come with his traveling party to his final Passover in Jerusalem (Matt. 27:55, Mark 15:41), and there she witnessed the Crucifixion (Matt. 27:56, Mark 15:40, John 19:25).

She also witnessed his burial (Matt. 27:61, Mark 16:47) and his resurrection (Matt. 28:1, Mark 16:1, John 20:1), after which she returned and told the Twelve (Luke 24:10, John 20:18).

Luke mentions that the women had prepared spices with which to anoint Jesus’ body on Good Friday, after the Crucifixion (Luke 23:56), and then they brought the spices to the tomb on Easter Monday (Luke 24:1). Mark adds the detail that they had bought the spices (Mark 16:1), which would again suggest that Mary Magadele had financial resources.

But when they arrived at the tomb, they discovered it empty, and angels appeared to them and announced that Jesus has been raised.

John records a touching story of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalen (John 20:11-18). He doesn’t mention other women being with her, so it is possible she was alone.

When she realizes that she is seeing Jesus, she is overjoyed but he gives her a warning. Some translations render it, “Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” This translation is confusing since—before the Ascension happens—Jesus invites Thomas to touch his wounds (John 20:27).

Better translations would be “Do not hold me” (RSV), “Stop holding on to me” (NAB:RE), and “Do not cling to me” (ESV). The idea is that Mary shouldn’t become overly attached to Jesus now that he’s back, because he’s going to be Ascending to the Father and she will not always be able to be with him.

 

Do We Know More?

We’ve covered the passages in the New Testament that explicitly name Mary Magdalene, but some Christians have wondered if she may be mentioned in other passages—either with the name Mary or without it.

For example, it has been speculated that she may be the sinful woman (likely a prostitute) who weeps on Jesus’ feet, wipes them with her hair, and anoints his feet (Luke 7:36-50).

The answer is that she almost certainly is not this woman. Not only does Luke not name her, he also relates this story at the end of chapter 7 of his Gospel. The very next thing he says is the passage quoted above, where Mary Magdalene is introduced.

It is scarcely likely that Luke would omit the woman’s identity at the end of chapter 7 and then immediately introduce her by name at the beginning of chapter 8. We thus have no basis for besmirching Mary Magdalen’s reputation by accusing her of being a prostitute.

Many have identified Mary Magdalen with Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, including Pope Gregory I (590-604). However, this also is a mistake.

One reason is that Mary Magdalene is identified as “the Magdalene” in all four Gospels, while the two Gospels that refer to the sister of Martha and Lazarus (i.e., Luke and John) identify her with respect to her siblings. This means that the latter Mary had prominent siblings that were known in the Christian community, while Mary Magdalene did not.

Further, Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus isn’t from Magdala. She isn’t even from Galilee. John tells us: “a certain man was sick, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha” (John 11:1).

Bethany is just outside Jerusalem in Judea, so Mary, Martha, and Lazarus were Judeans rather than Galileans, and Mary of Bethany would have had no need to follow Jesus from Galilee to Jerusalem for the final Passover, because she lived right there!

The idea that Mary Magdalen and Mary of Bethany were the same person was common for a long time in the Western church (not the Eastern churches), and this left a mark on the Western liturgical calendar.

Mary Magdalen has long had a memorial on July 22, while Martha has one on July 29. But now that the confusion between Mary Magdalen and Mary of Bethany has been cleared up, the Congregation for Divine Worship ordered in 2021 that the July 29 memorial be listed as that of “Martha, Mary, and Lazarus”—giving the other two Bethany siblings their due on the calendar.

 

 

Has the Church Abolished Third Class Relics?

Here is a traditional way of categorizing relics:

    • First class relics consist of the bodies or parts of the bodies of saints or blesseds.
    • Second class relics consist of clothing or other articles used by the saint or blesseds.
    • Third class relics consist of objects touched to a first class relic (or, according to some accounts, also to a second class relic).

These categories are familiar to many Catholics in the English-speaking world, but (at the time of writing), Wikipedia says something interesting in its article on relics:

In 2017, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints abolished the relics of the third degree, introducing a two-stage scale of classification of relics: significant (insigni) and non-significant (non insigni) relics.

Is this true? Has the Vatican changed the way relics are categorized? And have third class relics been abolished?

 

The Three-Fold System

To answer this question, we need to ask about the history of the three-fold system of classification.

Despite considerable searching, I have been unable to locate any official Church document that uses the terms “first class,” “second class,” and “third class” for relics.

Neither do the terms appear in scholarly sources where you might expect it to appear. For example, the article on relics in the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia does not use these terms. Similarly, the terms are not used in the 1970 encyclopedia Sacramentum Mundi.

 

What Church Documents Say

What do we find in official Church documents when relics are discussed?

According to the 1917 Code of Canon Law:

The important [Latin, insignes] relics of saints or blesseds are the body, head, arm, forearm, heart, tongue, hand, leg, or other part of the body that suffered in a martyr, provided it is intact and is not little (can. 1281 §2).

Here we have only a definition of important relics, but the implication would be that there also are less important ones.

The parallel canon in the 1983 Code of Canon Law (can. 1190) does not provide a definition of important relics, but it does refer to “relics of great significance,” implying that there also are relics of lesser significance.

The 1977 rite for the Dedication of a Church and an Altar discusses placing relics beneath a church’s altar and notes:

Such relics should be of size sufficient for them to be recognized as parts of human bodies.

Hence excessively small relics of one or more saints must not be placed beneath the altar (II:5a).

The requirement that relics should be “of sufficient size . . . to be recognized as parts of human bodies” also corresponds to the 1917 Code’s requirement that an important relic be “intact” and “not little.”

Another discussion is found in the Congregation for Divine Worship’s 2002 Directory for Popular Piety and the Liturgy, which states:

The term “relics of the saints” principally signifies the bodies—or notable parts of the bodies—of the saints who, as distinguished members of Christ’s mystical body and as temples of the Holy Spirit (cf. 1 Cor 3, 16; 6, 19; 2 Cor 6, 16) in virtue of their heroic sanctity, now dwell in heaven, but who once lived on earth.

Objects which belonged to the saints, such as personal objects, clothes, and manuscripts are also considered relics, as are objects which have touched their bodies or tombs such as oils, cloths, and images (n. 236).

The Directory covers what the term relics “principally signifies”—i.e., “bodies—or notable parts of the bodies” of saints.

This largely corresponds to what the 1917 Code referred to as “important relics,” except that the latter named only eight body parts (head, arm, forearm, heart, tongue, hand, leg, or part that suffered in martyrdom).

The 2002 document extended this to any part of the body, provided it is “notable”—corresponding to the 1917 Code’s requirement, “provided [that] it is intact and is not little.”

The Directory also covers other things besides what the term “principally” means. It also includes things owned by the saints or touched to their bodies or tombs.

 

Evaluating the Three-Fold System

If you look at the discussion provided by the Directory for Popular Piety, it would be easy to read the first class/second class/third class system onto it:

    • First, the Directory mentions bodies and parts of them.
    • Second, it mentions things that belonged to the saints.
    • Third, it mentions objects touched to bodies.

However, there are some differences. One is that the Directory mentions “notable” parts of bodies—not very small ones—so the latter would not be within what the term relics “principally signifies.”

And second, the Directory refers to “objects which have touched their bodies” as relics. It does not discuss whether an object touched to just a part of the saint’s body is a relic. If you touch the object to the substantially intact body of the saint, it clearly would count, but if you just touched it to a saint’s finger (or something smaller), it might not.

Finally, the Directory also includes objects touch to the tombs of saints—not just their bodies—as relics.

Despite these differences, the three-fold classification system approximates what the Directory says, and it is a useful way of categorizing relics.

Yet it does not appear that the three-fold system is an official one. The fact that Church documents don’t use it and that it does not appear in various scholarly resources suggest that this is instead a popular system of categorization and that the terms “first class,” “second class,” and “third class” are non-official.

Each of the Church sources that we’ve looked at uses primarily a two-category system. Into the first category goes what the 1917 Code called “important relics,” what the 1977 rite of dedication considered relics suitable for putting under altars, and what the 2002 Directory said that the term relics “principally signifies.”

Into the second category goes everything else. By implication of the 1917 Code, this would include non-enumerated body parts or ones that are small or non-intact. By implication of the 1977 rite, it would include body parts that are too small to be recognized as parts of the human body. And according to the 2002 Directory, it would include non-notable body parts, objects that belonged to the saints, and objects touched to their bodies or tombs.

 

Introducing a Two-Stage System?

Now let’s look at what the Congregation for Divine Worship did recently. In 2017, it published an instruction titled Relics in the Church: Authenticity and Preservation. The introduction to this document states:

The body of the blesseds and of the saints or notable parts of the bodies themselves or the sum total of the ashes obtained by their cremation are traditionally considered significant relics [Italian, reliquie insigni]. . . .

Little fragments of the body of the blesseds and of the saints as well as objects that have come in direct contact with their person are considered non-significant relics [Italian, reliquie non insigni].

Here we see the same two-fold classification system we’ve seen in other Church documents: the important relics and everything else.

The English translation uses the term “significant,” but you’ll note that the Italian original uses the adjective insigni, which is a cognate of the Latin term insignes, which was used in the 1917 Code (quoted above). It also could be translated distinguished, eminent, great, or important.

But we’re talking about the same, two-fold classification system that Church documents have traditionally used.

Wikipedia is wrong in saying that the Congregation “introduce[ed] a two-stage scale of classification of relics.”

 

Abolishing Third Class Relics?

Did the Congregation abolish third class relics?

Clearly, it did not. Among the non-significant relics it included (1) “little fragments of the body” and (2) “objects that have come into direct contact with their person.”

The second of these two categories would include both what English-speakers commonly call second class relics (objects owned by the saints, since obviously they touched the things that belong to them) and third class relics (since the document does not say that the saint must have touched them during life).

Wikipedia is thus wrong (or at least its current article is). All the 2017 instruction did was repeat the same two-fold classification system that Church documents have traditionally employed, and it elaborated the same sub-categories that are evident from the 2002 Directory on Popular Piety.

The first class/second class/third class categorization is simply an unofficial system that overlaps with and approximates the official one.

Here is how the two systems compare:

Item Church System Unoffical System
Body Significant First Class
Notable body part Significant First Class
Small body part Non-significant First Class
Object owned by saint Non-significant Second Class
Object touched directly to saint or tomb Non-significant Third Class

 

Pope Francis Celebrates Blaise Pascal

The French mathematician, philosopher, and apologist Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was born 400 years ago. The anniversary of his birth was recently celebrated by Pope Francis in an apostolic letter titled Sublimitas et Miseria Hominis (“The Grandeur and Misery of Man”)—reflecting one of the themes in Pascal’s writing.

Recent popes, such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have expressed appreciation for Pascal, and in 2017 Pope Francis reportedly said that he “deserves beatification.”

The pope’s 5,400-word apostolic letter makes for interesting reading. Papal documents like this are commonly ghost written, and the pope then makes the words his own when he signs and issues the document. The same is presumably true of this letter, and it is clear that whoever drafted it knows Pascal’s life and thought very well. It’s a quality read!

At least in Catholic circles, Pascal is best known today for two things: his Provincial Letters, which are a defense of the Jansenists against their Jesuit opponents, and his Pensees (French, “Thoughts”), which consists of notes that he took in preparation for an apology defending the Christian faith that he wanted to write.

However, these writings come from the later period of Pascal’s life, and he is remembered outside Catholic circles for other contributions. As the letter notes, “In 1642, at the age of nineteen, he invented an arithmetic machine, the ancestor of our modern computers.”

Pascal also made contributions in other areas, including physics (specifically, fluid dynamics, where he proposed what is now known as Pascal’s law) and mathematics (where he made numerous contributions, including being one of the founders of probability theory).

Pope Francis’s apostolic letter touches briefly on such contributions, but it focuses on the development of Pascal’s life and his Christian faith, which became more prominent as he got older.

A turning point in this regard occurred on the night of Monday, November 23, 1654, when Pascal was 31-years old. For two hours—between 10:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m.—he had a profound mystical experience that led to a religious conversion.

Afterward, he wrote an intimate series of thoughts about this experience on a sheet of paper. How meaningful the experience was to him is illustrated by the fact that he thereafter carried the paper with him, keeping it in the lining of his coat, where it was discovered after his death.

What we know about this powerful mystical experience comes from the brief, tantalizing statements he made on the paper. It is now known as Pascal’s Memorial, and an English translation is available here.

Pope Francis’s letter discusses the Provincial Letters and the Jansenist controversy that occasioned them. Since the Jesuits were the target of the Provincial Letters, it is interesting to see what Francis—the first Jesuit pope—has to say. He writes:

Before concluding, I must mention Pascal’s relationship to Jansenism. One of his sisters, Jacqueline, had entered religious life in Port-Royal, in a religious congregation the theology of which was greatly influenced by Cornelius Jansen, whose treatise Augustinus appeared in 1640. In January 1655, following his “night of fire” [i.e., his mystical experience], Pascal made a retreat at the abbey of Port-Royal. In the months that followed, an important and lengthy dispute about the Augustinus arose between Jesuits and “Jansenists” at the Sorbonne, the university of Paris. The controversy dealt chiefly with the question of God’s grace and the relationship between grace and human nature, specifically our free will. Pascal, while not a member of the congregation of Port-Royal, nor given to taking sides—as he wrote, “I am alone. . . . I am not at all part of Port-Royal”—was charged by the Jansenists to defend them, given his outstanding rhetorical skill. He did so in 1656 and 1657, publishing a series of eighteen writings known as The Provincial Letters.

Although several propositions considered “Jansenist” were indeed contrary to the faith, a fact that Pascal himself acknowledged, he maintained that those propositions were not present in the Augustinus or held by those associated with Port-Royal. Even so, some of his own statements, such as those on predestination, drawn from the later theology of Augustine and formulated more severely by Jansen, do not ring true. We should realize, however, that, just as Saint Augustine sought in the fifth century to combat the Pelagians, who claimed that man can, by his own powers and without God’s grace, do good and be saved, so Pascal, for his part, sincerely believed that he was battling an implicit pelagianism or semipelagianism in the teachings of the “Molinist” Jesuits, named after the theologian Luis de Molina, who had died in 1600 but was still quite influential in the middle of the seventeenth century. Let us credit Pascal with the candor and sincerity of his intentions.

Pope Francis also touches on Pascal’s apologetics and his famous work, the Pensees. Interestingly, he does not mention the most famous part of the Pensees, which is a passage in which Pascal seeks to help those who feel unable to choose between skepticism and Christianity based on evidence.

He proposes what has become known as Pascal’s Wager, in which he offers a way to use practical reason to decide between the options when an evidential solution seems unavailable. In essence, Pascal argues that if one adopts or “bets” on skepticism and it turns out that skepticism is true, then one will at most reap a finite benefit. However, if one “bets” on Christianity and it turns out that Christianity is true, then one will receive an infinite benefit. It is thus in one’s interest to wager that Christianity is true if one feels unable to decide based on the evidence.

It should be noted that the Wager is designed only to decide between Christianity and skepticism. However, Wager-like reasoning can be applied to other religious options. (For example, if one is deciding between reincarnation and the view we only have one life, it is better to wager that we only have one life, so we need to make this one count.)

Pascal experienced his final illness in 1662. Shortly before his death, he said that if the doctors were correct and he would recover, he would devote the rest of his life to serving the poor.

However, he did not recover, and he passed on to his reward at the age of 39. It is not clear what he died of, but tuberculosis and stomach cancer have been proposed.

It is good to see Pascal being recognized for his contributions. He was, indeed, a genius, as well as a man of profound faith and insight. He is well worth studying by contemporary apologists.

What Counts as Valid Wine for the Eucharist?

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In a disturbing story coming out of the Kansas City archdiocese, The Pillar reports:

“It has recently been reported by two priests, having served in three different parishes, that upon their appointment to these parishes they soon discovered the long-term use of wines that were in fact invalid matter for the confection of the Eucharist,” Archbishop Joseph Naumann noted in a May 31 letter obtained by The Pillar.

As a result, he wrote, in those parishes, “for any number of years all Masses were invalid and therefore the intentions for which those Masses were offered were not satisfied, including the obligation pastors have to offer Mass for the people.”

“This is a gravely serious situation for which we must now petition the Holy See for guidance on restorative matters.”

The article does not say what wines were being used or what made them invalid, but the faithful in other dioceses may be concerned about the wine used at the Masses they attend, so it’s worth looking at what kinds of wine can be validly used to consecrate the Eucharist.

According to the Code of Canon Law:

Can. 924 §1. The most holy eucharistic sacrifice must be offered with bread and with wine in which a little water must be mixed.

    • 2. The bread must be only wheat and recently made so that there is no danger of spoiling.
    • 3. The wine must be natural from the fruit of the vine and not spoiled.

“Fruit of the vine” means grapes, so wines that are based on other plants are not allowed (e.g., elderberry wine, strawberry wine, dandelion wine, rice wine). If any of the latter were being used in Kansas City, they would be understood to be invalid.

The elements required for the valid celebration of the Eucharist are based on what Jesus used on Holy Thursday: unleavened bread (cf. Matt. 26:17) and grape wine (Jesus references “fruit of the vine,” e.g., in Matt. 26:29).

However, bread and wine were made multiple different ways in the first century, and no detailed instructions were given about which specific types could be used in the Eucharist.

For example, during the festival of Unleavened Bread, Jews were forbidden to have leaven in their houses, so their bread during this period—which would have been made from wheat—was unleavened. But the lack of leaven was not required of Jews at other times of year, and it was not required at all of Gentiles.

Consequently, some early Christians celebrated the Eucharist using leavened bread. The Church determined that this valid matter, and today leavened bread is used in many Eastern Catholic churches.

Similarly, you might think that since the wine becomes Christ’s blood, the use of red wine might be mandatory at Mass, but it’s not. White wine is perfectly valid matter.

It’s also interesting that white wine doesn’t have to be made from white grapes. It is sometimes made from red grapes and the skins are removed during the fermentation process. Thus it appears that you do not have to use the entire grape in making wine for the Eucharist. It is sufficient that grapes—but not necessarily the whole grape—be used.

Given the lack of early, detailed instructions to the contrary and the flexibility that we have just seen, it would appear that anything that the first Christians would have considered wheat bread and grape wine would be valid matter for the Eucharist.

This is suggested by the Congregation for Divine Worship’s 2004 instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum, which states:

The bread used in the celebration of the Most Holy Eucharistic Sacrifice must be unleavened, purely of wheat, and recently made so that there is no danger of decomposition. It follows therefore that bread made from another substance, even if it is grain, or if it is mixed with another substance different from wheat to such an extent that it would not commonly be considered wheat bread, does not constitute valid matter for confecting the Sacrifice and the Eucharistic Sacrament (n. 48).

So only bread made from pure wheat is licit (lawful) to use, but it would still be valid matter if mixed with other substances, as long as it would “commonly be considered wheat bread.”

The same should be true of wine. It might be illicit (unlawful) to use if mixed with other things, but it would still be valid matter as long as it would commonly be considered grape wine.

In regard to both elements, this flexibility is good, and it is part of God’s general policy of making the sacraments hard to break, because humans are fallible and will break things if they can. The sacraments are not meant to be fragile and invalidated by the smallest deviation.

The smallest deviations may be illegal, but the sacrament will still be valid if a priest, sacristan, or other person makes a mistake. As long as you’ve got wheat bread and grape wine—even if they aren’t pure—the consecration will be valid.

What are the limits of valid matter? The Church has not provided us with a comprehensive answer to this question, but it has provided us with pieces of it.

For example, in 2003 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued letter in which it authorized the use of mustum for priests who are alcohol intolerant or who suffer from alcoholism. It stated:

Mustum, which is grape juice that is either fresh or preserved by methods that suspend its fermentation without altering its nature (for example, freezing), is valid matter for the celebration of the Eucharist (n. A.3).

Fresh grape juice contains no alcohol, so the validity of mustum indicates that the alcohol content of Eucharistic wine can be as low as zero percent.

What about the other end of the spectrum? How much alcohol can the wine have?

In 1896, the Holy Office confirmed that it was licit to use wine that had been fortified up to 18% alcohol content (DH 3313), so up to at least that level is valid.

There is an interesting history about how such fortification can occur. In 1887, the Holy Office was asked whether it would be preferable to prevent wine from spoiling by adding a small quantity of brandy (which is made from distilled wine) or by heating it to 149 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Holy Office responded that the heating method was preferable, but it did not rule out adding brandy (DH 3198). This would indicate that the addition of a substance labelled something other than “wine” (i.e., brandy, even though it’s made from wine) could be used in principle.

In 1890, the Holy Office was asked whether you could simply add alcohol to the wine to make it more long-lasting, and the Holy Office said yes, as long as the alcohol was extracted from grape wine (DH 3264).

And in 1896, the Holy Office was asked whether you could add sugar from sugar cane during the fermentation process to raise the alcohol content. The Holy Office replied that alcohol made with grapes should be used instead (DH 3312), but it didn’t say that adding sugar would make the wine invalid.

In 2013, the Congregation for Divine Worship also stated that adding sulfites during the fermentation process and the use of genetically modified organisms would not affect validity (Letter, Dec. 9, 2013, Prot. N. 89/78—44897).

We thus see the competent Vatican dicasteries urging the use of products made from grapes (of any kind, red or white, and including genetically modified ones), but not excluding the use of brandy, sugar, alcohol (made from grapes), or sulfites as preservatives. For some of these, their use was recommended, but in no case did the Holy See say that their use would invalidate the wine.

This indicates that there is flexibility regarding what wine is licit to use, and what wines are valid to use will be even broader.

The Holy See has not tried to tell us what the limits of validity are. It is gravely sinful to use doubtful or clearly invalid wine, but there is more flexibility here than many might suppose.

My suspicion is that the principle used in the early Church is correct—i.e., a wine is valid if it would be considered grape wine in the common opinion of men, even if it has minor admixtures.

I don’t know what kind of wines were being used in the Archdiocese of Kansas City. If they were using wine made from elderberries, other fruit besides grapes, or other plants like dandelions or rice, then it would be clearly invalid. If they were using grape wines that had admixtures, the matter is not as clear.

Fortunately, Archbishop Naumann has indicated the archdiocese will seek guidance from Rome on how to deal with the situation, and Rome’s response may help clarify the limits of validity.