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."

OFB Film Ratings

A reader writes:

Jimmy-

For the first time in a long time I checked the USCCB film suitability rating for "Lion …" and was really disappointed to see that it received an "A-II — adults and adolescents" rating." The review is at http://www.usccb.org/movies/c/thechroniclesofnarnialionwitchwardrobe.shtml .

The two germane paragraphs are:

The climactic battle may be too intense for young children, as may be scenes involving a pack of vicious wolves serving as Jadis’ henchmen. Hardest of all to watch is Aslan’s atoning sacrifice, surrounded by hellish legions seemingly conjured from a Hieronymus Bosch painting. His apparent "defeat" is trumpeted by Jadis’ victory cry, "So much for love." Some parents may feel it inappropriately upsetting for a "family film," but Lewis himself argued that it was proper not to shield children from knowledge that they are "born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil."

and

The film contains some battlefield violence, intense scenes of child peril and menace, and several frightening sequences. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is A-II — adults and adolescents. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is PG — parental guidance suggested.

I contrast that with Steve Greydanus’ rating of "Kids & up – discernment required" at http://www.decentfilms.com/sections/reviews/2641 .

At any rate, I don’t know whether to be glad or not that few people apparently read and heeded the warning (as evidenced by the strong opening weekend box office, http://today.reuters.com/business/newsArticle.aspx?type=media&storyID=nN11596039).

I was wondering

1. if you you know anything about the film review office / effort of the USCCB?

Yes, I do.

2. who actually does the reviews?

It changes over time, but generally by laypeople who have been hired to work for the office. Currently duties are divided between a pair of gentlemen named Harry Forbes and David DiCerto, who wrote the Narnia review, which can be seen HERE along with his byline. (When the reviews appear on CNS you generally get the byline of the person doing it. The OFB site, though, does’t use bylines.)

3. how strong is the authority of the Bishop’s office behind these guidance efforts?

The film reviews do not engage the Church’s Magisterium, nor are they legislative acts, so they do not have doctrinal or judicial "authority."

They are opinions written at the bishops’ behest by laypeople who have been hired to bring a Catholic sensibility to film criticism and who have done well enough that they have been able to continue in their positions–which is to say, the bishops would like to provide these as a helpful service, but they’re not going to invest any kind of "authority" in them.

No Catholic is obligated to agree with these reviews, nor the ratings assigned to the movies, and the bishops don’t intend that. They’re just a service in hopes of being helpful.

For my own part, I have been impressed with how well the ratings were done a number of years ago when I was doing film criticism, though more recently I think they’ve had a significant number of incorrect ratings (or that was my impression the last time I paid attention to the ratings; I haven’t really hung out on their site of late and things may have improved.)

One thing to note about the lower end of the OFB scale is that it has a design flaw separating the A-I (general patronage) and A-II (adults and adolescents) ratings. Because there is no middle rating or qualifier here, if the movie would be disturbing to a significant number of kids then that makes it hard for them to give it an A-I rating and there is pressure for them to put it in the A-II category. The way the rating system is set up, there is no way for them to say "This would be okay for some pre-adolescents but not for others."

That’s an especial problem because there is just a world of difference between a five year old movie goer and an eleven of twelve year old movie goer. Also, children of the same age can be very different in their readiness to see particular movies due to maters of temprament and movie viewing experience.

The same thing happens at the jump from A-II (adults and adolescents) to A-III (adults). There’s no way to say "This is okay for some adolescents but not others."

Sometimes the reviews will assign a rating but clarify it in the review itself (e.g., we’re ranking it this way but it would also be okay for mature members of the next age group down) to try to get around the design flaw.

The MPAA gets around the children’s age problem by having G, PG, and PG-13, with the first meaning it’s okay for everyone, PG-13 meaning recommended for adults & adolescents, and PG meaning okay for some younger children but needing parental guidance.

Steve Greydanus does something simliar by having kids, kids with discernment (meaning: parents need to exercise discernment about whether a movie is suitable for the kid because it won’t be suitable for all kids), and teens, which are roughly equivalent (in theory) to G, PG, and PG-13 (though Steve might quibble with those rough identifications).

The OFB, though, just has the two rankings A-I and A-II for everybody under 18, and that creates some awkwardness when ranking movies like this.

The reader continues:

Btw, speaking with a friend of mine with younger kids (Paul Masek http://www.stlyouth.org/blogs/paul who started and runs www.reapteam.org, they do nearly 200 retreats a year for middle to high-school kids as part of the St. Louis Archdiocese), our non-scientific sampling after Mass had all of their kids really pumped after seeing the movie, and they talked about their fairly timid six or seven year old cousin who was not only not frightened, but called this "his favorite movie ever".

Wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Communion For Non-Catholics

A reader writes:

I just had a friend of mine inform me of something that I found troublesome. He is a Lutheran and married a Catholic woman. He told me that they are registered parishioners of a Catholic church and that he receives Communion there. He claims that his wife explained the situation to the pastor and he said it would be alright for him to receive communion. Of course I asked if there was any way that this could have been misinterpreted by his wife to which he claims not. In a brief questioning of my friend he does not have a full Catholic undertanding of the Eucharist is and that this is “no big deal”, and that this priest is “very liberal” and accommodating.

I have e-mailed this priest to see if there was a misunderstanding. I am all for my friend to receive the wonderful gift of the Holy Eucharist but he must go through the Church procedures for all the sacraments. Please give me information to help with this situation. It seems to me if this is indeed correct that this priest is handing Communion out like crackers…..

If the priest’s attitude is as reported then there is indeed a problem.

The Church’s law regarding this matter is found in Canon 844 §4 of the Code of Canon Law, which provides:

If the danger of death is present or if, in the
judgment of the diocesan bishop or conference of bishops, some other grave
necessity urges it, Catholic ministers administer these same sacraments [Communion, confession, anointing of the sick] licitly
also to other Christians not having full communion with the Catholic Church [e.g., Protestants],
who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on
their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to
these sacraments and are properly disposed [SOURCE].

This law is given pastoral expression by the bishops of the United States in their document on the reception of Communion, which states:

For our fellow Christians

We welcome our fellow Christians to this celebration of the Eucharist as our brothers and sisters. We pray that our common baptism and the action of the Holy Spirit in this Eucharist will draw us closer to one another and begin to dispel the sad divisions which separate us. We pray that these will lessen and finally disappear, in keeping with Christ’s prayer for us “that they may all be one” (Jn 17:21).

Because Catholics believe that the celebration of the Eucharist is a sign of the reality of the oneness of faith, life, and worship, members of those churches with whom we are not yet fully united are ordinarily not admitted to Holy Communion. Eucharistic sharing in exceptional circumstances by other Christians requires permission according to the directives of the diocesan bishop and the provisions of canon law (canon 844 § 4). . . .

For those not receiving Holy Communion

All who are not receiving Holy Communion are encouraged to express in their hearts a prayerful desire for unity with the Lord Jesus and with one another [SOURCE].

Given the above, if your Lutheran friend wishes to receive Communion on a regular basis in a Catholic church then he will need to embrace the Catholic faith and become a Catholic. (Which he should do anyway, for the sake of his soul.) Otherwise, he will need to abide by Church law and practice, as compassionately set out above.

Hope this helps!

Face Planters Do Face Plant?

Recently a reader e-mailed me regarding the ethics of face transplants, such as the one recently done in France.

I haven’t had a chance to fully research the facts of that case–and researching them is apparently somewhat difficult since there is considerable (and MOUNTING) dispute over what the facts in the case actually are.

Let me give what I think are some general principles, though:

Any part of the body–except the brain as a whole (since it is the seat of the personality)–is in principle transplantable provided (a) that you don’t kill the donor and and (b) that you don’t do more OR EQUAL harm to the donor than the benefit that the recipient will derive and (c) that the donor’s wishes aren’t violated and (d) there isn’t an acceptable alternative to transplantation–though let’s ignore this criterion for the moment.
If you were to transplant a face from a deceased person then (a) and (b) are taken care of, leaving you with (c). If the donor donates his face after his death, I don’t presently see a fundamental moral barrier to the procedure (ignoring condition [d]).
If the person is not "dead" but only "brain dead" then the question of whether (a) and (b) are met depends on whether you consider "brain death" an adequate criterion for "death." John Paul II expressed openness (in a document whose level of magisterial authority is not fully clear, though it certainly is not infallible) to using brain death as a criterion of death, but many Catholic moral theologians, physicians, and others (including myself, Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop Robert Vasa, Fr. Benedict Groeschel,
Charles Rice, Paul Byrne [past president of the Catholic Medical Assn.]) have significant reservations about this, both on a theoretical and practical level. On the theoretical level, is "brain death" really an adequate criterion for somatic death? On a practical level, the medical establishment has been infected with an anti-life ethic whereby numerous physicians have sought to expand "brain death" via loosey-goosey criteria that make it a declaration of brain death untrustworthy for practical purposes. If, though, you view "brain death" in the current environment as an adequate criterion of death then this case becomes equivalent to (2), above. If not, it becomes equivalent to (4), below.
If the donor is not dead and transplanting the face can be done without killing him (which is possible if fatal infection can be prevented) then condition (a) is satisfied. If the person also does not object to his face being transplanted then condition (c) is satisfied. That leaves us with condition (b). Here we run into a HUGE problem. While faces are non-vital organs (you CAN potentially live without them, as some accident victims can attest), it is difficult under normal circumstances to see how the removal of one person’s face so that another may have it would not constitute an immoral MUTILATION of the first person. While one person can sacrifice a good in order to provide a greater good for someone else, mere exchange of one face for another does not does that. It’s sacrificing one bodily good for (at most) an equal bodily good, which seems to be an impermissible mutilation of the donor.
To avoid the problem in (4), some have suggested removing faces from donors who are in a "persistent vegetative state." The argument, presumably, would be something like, "Hey, the donor isn’t using his face anyway, so why shouldn’t the recipient have the benefit of it? This way the good to the recipient outweighs the harm to the donor." This seems like an extraordinarily problematic course of action. First, a declaration that a person is in a PVS is another one of those things that–in the present, anti-life medical environment–is notoriously unreliable due to loosey-goosey criteria. Second, the fact that someone is in a persistent vegetative state does not mean that the person is in a permanent vegetative state. There is a chance (that will GROW WITH TIME as medical technology advances over the next few decades as nanotechnology comes online) that the person will recover from their "vegetative" state. Because of this possibility, it is not clear that the benefit to the recipient will outweigh the harm to the donor. How would you like to wake up and find that your face had been given to someone else?
One could say, in response to the concern that a patient might wake up and find his face gone is that, as medical technology advances we could also build him a new face. But this sword cuts both ways. As medical technology advances we could ALSO build a better face for the recipient WITHOUT a transplant. And we can do that NOW. This brings us back to the ignored condition, (d). True, an artificial face is not as good as a natural one, but it is a REAL POSSIBILITY. We can get skin and cartilage and bone–OR SUBSTITUTES FOR THEM–from a variety of sources that don’t require transplanting someone’s face. An artifically constructed face may not be as good as a natural one, but it may be "good enough" given the need for the harm done to the donor not to equal the benefit to the recipient.

It therefore strikes me that the prospect of face transplants is beset by extraordinary difficulties, even if a categorical rejection of it (per point [2]) is not immediately clear.

While the face may not be a vital organ, it is nevertheless a part of the body to which humans naturally attach ENORMOUS significance, and this puts it in a special category.

We might propose a taxonomy of body parts ranging from (1) the seat of the personality [the brain] to (2) unique vital organs [the heart, the liver] to (3) unique crucially important organs [the face] to (4) non-unique vital organs [lungs, kidneys] to (5) non-unique, non-vital organs [corneas, patches of skin, volumes of blood]–with it being progressively harder to have morally legitimate transplants as one moves up the scale, with it being impossible to transplant from a live person by the time one hits (2) and impossible to transplant from any person by the time one hits (1).

To point to the elephant in the living room: We naturally feel a profound sense of horror and revulsion at the idea of transplanting a face, particularly from a non-dead person, and we should GO WITH THAT FEELING.

I am reminded from the scene in Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldbulm says, "You were so preoccupied with whether or not your COULD that you didn’t stop to think if you SHOULD!"

That sounds very much like the current situation in France.

Many research-oriented doctors today are so concerned with trying out new techniques and being the first to do something that they totally ignore moral considerations such as those expressed above.

As the current French situation seems to be illustrating.

GET THE STORY.

Catholic Tunes For Your iPod?

A new Catholic music network–creatively titled Catholic Music Network–has now developed an online download service to provide Catholic tunes for download in .mp3 format (playable on virtually anybody’s computer if you have Windows Media Player, RealHorror, or Quicktime or playable on your portable device, such as an iPod).

Priced at 99 cents per tune, they’re competitive with iTunes–the media leader in this biz.

And, just in time for The Holiday, many of them are Holiday tunes! (Only without the political correctness.)

Check ’em out and

PARTY ON DUDES!

And Be Excellent To Each Other this Holiday season!

“It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like The Holiday”

A reader e-mails this press release from The Catholic League:

December 9, 2005

HOLIDAY CAROLS

In keeping with the spirit of political correctness, the Catholic League recommends the adoption of the following songs at Holidaytime:

“I’m Dreaming of a White Holiday”; “O Holiday Tree”; “All I Want for The Holiday Is My Two Front Teeth; “We Wish You a Merry Holiday”; “The Twelve Days of the Holiday”; “The Holiday Song”; “Rockin’ Around The Holiday Tree”; “You’re All I Want For The Holiday”; “Baby’s First Holiday”; “Do They Know It’s The Holiday”; “Merry Holiday Darling”; “I’ll Be Home For The Holiday”; “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like The Holiday”; “Blue Holiday”; “The Holiday Waltz”; “Holly Jolly Holiday”; “So This Is The Holiday”; “Merry, Merry Holiday Baby”; “Have Yourself a Merry Little Holiday”; “Twas the Night Before The Holiday”; “Holiday Serenade”; “Feliz Vacaciones.”

SOURCE.

Can you think up any more holiday songs that the Catholic League might ought to add to their list?

Okay, What Is It With The Good Homilies All Of A Sudden?

I got back from my trip to the Grand Canyon Sunday and I was DOG TIRED. I mean, I was PLUM TUCKERED OUT.

I’d driven 1200 miles in 48 hours (make that 1500 in 72 hours if you count the trip to the mud volcanoes), slept little and fitfully on hard hotel beds, and gone hiking in almost-freezing-cold weather at an altitude of 6000 feet (in a body acclimatized to 500 feet).

It was EXHAUSTING.

So when I got back, I was exhausted. But I had a problem: I still needed to go to Mass. With an hour to go before the last Mass of the day, I was falling asleep. So I set my alarm clock to give me 20 minutes to get up and get to Mass and then took a catnap.

I awoke debating with myself whether I was sufficiently tired to be excused from my Sunday obligation, but decided to go to Mass anyway.

If the priest celebrating Mass would have turned out to be the pastor, I seriously considered asking him if I could be excused from my Sunday obligation if I’d go to a daily Mass later in the week (pastors have the authority to excuse you), but it wasn’t the pastor. Instead, it was Fr. "Deep Voice," who was being assisted by a deacon.

I really dread going to the last Mass of the day on Sundays, because it’s the "youth Mass" at my parish, with its "youth choir" and "youth band" and "youth readers" and is designed to appeal to "youth." As a result, I find the music horrible, and so it was no surpise when they started Mass with a song whose opening melody line was (I am NOT kidding) "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" played in a minor key. (The song is called "Sing Out Earth And Sky." Pray that this sanity-shattering liturgical horror is never inflicted on your parish.)

The homily was done by the deacon.

I ended up being glad that the pastor wasn’t the priest in attendance, because as a result of not being excused from my Sunday obligation, I got to hear one of the best homilies I’ve heard in a long time (not counting Fr. "You Decide!"’s recent memorable homily).

It started off as a standard "Let’s diss the commercialization of Christmas without offending anyone" homily–you know, the one in which the homilist talks about how much he enjoys Christmas celebrations and buying presents and such, thus providing himself heat shield for the deplorations of commercialization that he’s about to give. As formulaic as this type of homily tends to be, I appreciate them to a significant degree because at least people are being reminded that they need to resist the commercialization of Christmas and remember its spiritual significance.

But then the deacon’s homily really TOOK OFF!

After inoffensively dissing the commercialization of Christmas, he then asked (forcefully) "But who’s birthday is it, anyway!?"

He then asked (again, forcefully): "Is Jesus on your Christmas list?–And is he at THE TOP of that list?"

He then said that he wanted to give us some "shopping ideas–like the commercials do on television–for things that you might want to buy as presents for Christmas. I’m not talking about a CHEAP GIFT that is gone the next day. I’m talking about a GOOD GIFT."

He then went on to name things that we might give (to Jesus) as gifts for Christmas, such as:

Donating to or volunteering our time at homes for unwed mothers.
Resolving to go to Mass every Sunday next year if we aren’t already going to Mass regularly.
Resolving to go to Mass an ADDITIONAL day each week if we are going to Mass on Sundays. ("I didn’t say it would be easy," he added.)
Signing up to do an hour of Eucharistic adoration each week (possibly following his own example of signing up for a hard-to-fill hour; he mentioned that his is 1 a.m. Sunday morning, and he added that, although he often wakes up for it thinking "Why did I ever volunteer for this?" that he NEVER regrets it once he is there and sitting in Jesus’ presence).

I mean, his homily totally ROCKED!

It wasn’t standard Christmas holiday sentiments and vague generalities about what to do in our lives. It was loaded with SPECIFICS and CHALLENGING BUT ACHIEVABLE SPECIFICS that can help DRIVE HOME to people the significance of Christmas if they make and follow-up on these resolutions.

YEE-HAW!!!

Now: I had been thinking early on of excusing myself for the concluding rites, in view of how tired I was, but after the deacon’s homily zoomed up into the stratosphere, I knew I had to hang around and thank him after Mass.

Credit where credit is due.

FOUND! The Sipapuni!

I’ve found the Sipapuni!

"What’s the Sipapuni?" you ask.

Well–that’s it! Right there! In the middle of the picture. The reddish round thing on the edge of the river. Has a little black dot in the center of it.

"Okay, but can I have a more informative answer?" you ask.

Sure. The Sipapuni is a natural formation on the Little Colorado River, about four miles upstream from where it intersects with the Colorado River. It’s in the Grand Canyon, though it’s just outside Grand Canyon National Park.

The Sipapuni is a travertine dome, which means that it’s a dome made of calcium carbonate (think: limestone)–usually layered–and formed from spring water, particularly the water of a hot spring. That black dot in the center of the Sipapuni is the spring, and the reason it’s a different color than the surrounding land is because of minerals in the spring water that leave orange and yellow deposits.

"Okay, but why is the Sipapuni important and why does it have a name–whereas so many travertine domes don’t?"

Because the Sipapuni is an enormously important location in the folklore of several American Indian tribes, particularly the Hopi and the Zuni.

According to both of these tribes, the Sipapuni is the location from which man emerged into this world. In other words, it’s their equivalent of the Garden of Eden.

According to both tribes (though the details vary), the beings that eventually emerged into the world went through a series of other worlds before climbing up out of the Sipapuni into ours.

In Hopi folklore, this is the fourth world. Things weren’t going so good in the third world, and so they found a way to climb up into a new, largely uninhabited world and became the human race.

In Zuni folklore, humans passed through a series of four caves before emerging through the Sipapuni, making this the fifth world.

Other tribes also believe that humans emerged from a site in the Grand Canyon but do not identify it with the Sipapuni, claiming that the site has been lost.

The idea that a body of people have an identifiable Eden that you can go see with your own eyes (though they don’t want you to do that since the site is considered sacred) is something I find fascinating.

If the early part of the book of Genesis were to be taken literally, you could get a rough fix on Eden’s location, but not with this kind of precision–and you certainly can’t find it today with Google’s satellite imagery.

HERE’S ANOTHER PICTURE OF THE SIPAPUNI WITH LATITUDE & LONGITUDE MEASUREMENTS.

HERE’S THE INTERSECTION OF THE COLORADO AND LITTLE COLORADO IF YOU WANT TO NAVIGATE EAST (RIGHT) TO THE SIPAPUNI FOR YOURSELF.

HERE’S A HOPI CREATION ACCOUNT FEATURING THE SIPAPUNI.

Having discussed where Hopi and Zuni Eden is, sometime soon I’ll have to tell you about where Zuni Heaven is.

The Grinch List

I’ve had a number of requests for lists of stores that are and aren’t honoring the ~~holiday~~Christmas season by calling it "Christmas."

Now I’ve found one!

Concerned Women for America has developed a list of stores that are honoring the Christmas spirit by referring to Christmas–as well as stores that are hypocritically trying to get your Christmas money out of your Christmas pocket without ackowledging the Christmas that you are celebrating.

In other words: The Politically Correct Commercializers.

My own philosophy is that if any business wants my Christmas dollars then they can darn well ackowledge that they ARE Christmas dollars–either by sending me a CHRISMAS catalogue or by wishing me "Merry CHRISTMAS" or what have you.

But none of this "Holiday catalogue" or "Happy holidays" crud.

Any business going that route will get NONE of my Christmas dollars.

And, since boycotts are no good unless you tell the person THAT and WHY they’re being boycotted, I plan on telling such business that’s what I’m doing.

I, for one, refuse to sit by and allow Christmas to be banished from public consciousness and be added to the social "taboo" list the way that Christian concepts have in so many areas in our society.

As bad as the commercialization of Christmas is (something we must also all fight), having it vanish from our culture in a fit of political correctness is not acceptable.

GET THE LIST.

FLASH! Fr. “You Decide!” Breaks Form!

Since I knew I’d be visiting the mud volcanoes on Dec. 8, I went to the vigil Mass for the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 7th.

The priest was Fr. "You Decide!"–so named because his homilies ALWAYS follow a set formula of opening with a joke and then concluding with him posing a rhetorical question about whether you should do A (an obviously bad thing) or B (an obviously good thing), at which point he says "You decide!" and goes and sits down again.

Only that’s NOT what he did for the Immaculate Conception!!!

Instead he opened by explaining, in simple terms, what the Immaculate Conception is. (I.e., no opening joke–and actually EXPLAINING CHURCH TEACHING yet!)

Then he talked about the meaning of the doctrine and about history and how we should pray more. And he gave a specific recommendation of praying the Angelus as an example of a traditional prayer.

And then he finished and didn’t say "You decide!" It was an honest, straightforward homily without artificial encumbrances that explained Church teaching and sought to apply it to the congregation’s lives in a way that involved specific suggestions instead of vague generalities. In short: It was what a homily is SUPPOSED to be.

It was GREAT!

Now, Fr. "You Decide!" always makes a bee-line for the sacristy after Mass, so I followed him into the sacristy and said:

<great sincerity>Excuse me, Father, but I just wanted to say that I thought that was the best homily I’ve ever heard you preach. It was simple, direct, and explained Church teaching without any artificiality and with specific suggestions for what we could do, and I wanted to thank you for it.</great sincerity>

Just wanted to give credit where credit was due–and hopefully reinforce this kind of homily.

Who knows? Perhaps soon he’ll be known as "The Priest Formerly Known As ‘Fr. You Decide!’"

We Are Church?

A reader writes:

How would you respond to a deacon during a homily who said: "If everyone were to leave this building, it would no longer be a Church–the people are the Church?

I’d say that he has a point but he’s expressing it in a rather boneheaded way.

It’s true that, THEOLOGICALLY SPEAKING, the Church of Christ is the body of people who are incorporated into Christ and that particular churches (e.g., the church of the Diocese of San Diego) are bodies of people who are incorporated into Christ and united to their bishop.

But it’s also true that Christian tradition across MULTIPLE LANGUAGES–INCLUDING LATIN–has received the usage of referring to specific buildings used by the Church as "churches" (Latin, ecclesiae).

Now, of these two uses the first is the original and more important, but human beings of normal intelligence normally have no trouble allowing words to have TWO OR MORE senses and being able to distinguish which sense is being used in what circumstance.

For an individual to pedantically insist on one usage to the exclusion of another usage that has DEEP roots in Christian tradition for his own pet theological concerns is to reject the customs and linguistic identity markers of the Christian community and MAY serve as a sign that he has a problem adhering to that community as it has traditionally understood itself.

It’s the verbal equivalent of a religious not wearing a habit, and it’s no surprise that many dissidents have highly stressed the idea of the Church as a community of people to the exclusion of other senses (e.g., church buildings, church hierarchy). Some–and I’m not accusing your deacon of being a dissident–have even banded together under the ungrammatical banner "We Are Church."

When one encounters such brazen defiance of established Christian linguistic custom, it’s enough to make one want to say, "TALK NORMAL, YA IDJIT!"

I don’t suggest that you should seriously say that to your deacon, though. If you are looking for something practical to say to him, you might try something like this:

Dear Deacon:

I was disturbed by your recent homily in which you said that "If everyone were to leave this building, it would no longer be a Church–the people are the Church."

While it is true that the original and more important meaning of the word "Church" refers to a body of people, Christian tradition has long received the usage of referring to buildings used by the Church as "churches." This is the case even in Latin. Most people have no trouble distinguishing the senses that different words have and are smart enough to handle both the idea of the Church as a people and the idea of churches as buildings.

You should be aware that when you criticize a deeply-embedded Christian usage of a term, it is quite disturbing to the faithful. Since you are rejecting the linguistic customs of the Christian community, it raises doubts in the faithful’s minds about how well you adhere to that community as it has historically understood itself.

If you don’t want to raise such doubts in the minds of the people to whom you are trying to minister, you may wish to find a way to express the fact that the Church is primarily the body of people incorporated into Christ without attacking long-held word usages of that community. After all, referring to church buildings as "churches" is part of "the Pope’s English."