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."

Who To Approach For An Annulment

A reader writes:

My husband was previously married when i got married to him.  since the catholic church does not allow that – we got married with the protestant church minster.  (For me this was my first marriage) – I want to know who can i approach for annulment of his first marriage and also that we can receive holy communion in this state.
thanks for your help.

The thing to do in your situation is for your husband to call your local parish and say that he is interested in pursuing the annulment process. They can then make an appointment for him to get set up with the paperwork to begin the process.

If you or he are interested in learning more about the annulment process first, I recommend

THIS HANDY BOOKLET

and

THIS GREAT BOOK.

Hope this helps!

Cessation Of Tongues?

Down yonder, a reader writes:

Mr. Akin,

In your opinion is it contrary to Catholic faith to hold a "cessationist" position on tongues?

As phrased, the answer to the question is no.

I should explain, a couple of things, though.

First, cessationism is a position that is common in many conservative Protestant circles that holds that the various miraculous gifts mentioned by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 have ceased to be given. In particular, this view holds that the gift of tongues has ceased to be given.

There are several different flavors of cessationism, WHICH YOU CAN READ ABOUT HERE.

From what I can tell, the cessationist viewpoint may have grown in Protestant circles as a reaction to the historic reports of miracles in Catholic circles (AS IN THESE QUOTES FROM THE CHURCH FATHERS). Since these miracles were regarded as evidence for the truth of the Catholic faith, Protestant apologetics sought to undercut them by claiming that God no longer did miracles–or at least miracles of this sort–and so all reported miracles were false, either being hoaxes, legends, or products of diabolical activity.

The problem with cessationism, even from a Protestant viewpoint, is that it is very hard to square with Scripture. There is no clear teaching anywhere in the New Testament that God will cease giving the different miraculous gifts prior to the Second Coming. Various verses are offered by cessationists to argue their case, the best of them being 1 Corinthians 13:8. Here it is in context:

8: Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as
for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.
9: For our  knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect;
10: but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 
11:
When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I
reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.
12:
For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in
part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully
understood.

The statement that prophecies will pass away and that tongues will cease is taken as evidence for the cessationist view.

The problem is that this passage contains time cues that make this interpretation implausible. Verse 10 refers to the imperfect (e.g., our partial knowledge, partial prophecies, etc.) passing away "when the perfect comes"–i.e., when we have perfect knowledge of God. This would seem to be something that does not apply in this life. We won’t have perfect knowledge of God until (a) we die or (b) the Second Coming happens.

Cessationists sometimes respond by arguing that we do have perfect knowledge of God–relative to our state in this life–in that the New Testament has been completed and so we have a complete scriptural knowledge of God.

Catholics might be quick to point out the problems with the doctrine of sola scriptura at this juncture, but this does not remove the cessationist’s argument. It merely pushes it back a step. While Catholics would not necessarily look on Scripture as providing a complete (perfect) knowledge of God in keeping with the state of this life (though some might hold to the material sufficiency of Scripture), Catholics would hold that the revelation Christian faith is closed and has been since the death of the last apostle (CCC 66-67). In other words, the deposit of faith is closed, and in that sense we do have complete knowledge of God according to the state of this life.

But this is not the only time cue that the passage contains. In verse 12 it refers to the time when perfection comes as when we will see "face to face" and "understand fully, even as [we] have been fully understood." These references point much more strongly to a direct encounter with God than a mediate one through his written (or unwritten) word. The references to faces and to our already being "fully understood" are indicative of a personal subject that we will see face to face and that already in Paul’s day (before the closing of the New Testament and the deposit of faith!) understood people fully. This strongly indicates that the subject is God (or God in Christ) and thus points to our personal encounters with God–at death or the Second Coming–as the time when the miraculous gifts will be done away with.

There are other passages that cessationists cite, but 1 Corinthians 13:8 tends to be cited the most (in my experience).

When I was a Protestant, I reviewed this subject in rather considerable detail (by which I mean that I studied my brains out on it) and concluded that the texts offered in favor of cessationism don’t prove what advocates of the position would like them to. Indeed, 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 is actually a good text for arguing against cessationism.

Despite this, one could hold that the gift of tongues has ceased without being in violation of Catholic faith.

To understand this, one need to distinguish between two different forms of faith: divine faith and Catholic faith.
Divine faith is faith in whatever God has revealed. Catholic faith is faith in whatever the Church has infallibly proposed to be divinely revealed.

Now, 1 Corinthians 13:8-12 could be interpreted as containing a divine revelation that tongues will not cease until the Second Coming. However, the Church has not infallibly defined that tongues will not cease until the Second Coming, therefore it is not contrary to Catholic faith to hold that they have. A Catholic does have the theological liberty to hold this position.

That being said, taking a categorical cessationist position goes against the grain of Catholic teaching. Throughout the ages there have been reports of various miraculous gifts, including tongues, and the Church has an open but cautious attitude toward these, in keeping with St. Paul’s injunctions:

So, my brethren, earnestly  desire to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues (1 Cor. 14:39)

and

Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise  prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is  good (1 Thess. 5:19-21).

While a complete cessationist view on tongues would rub against the grain of Catholic theology, a more moderate position would be much more in line with traditional Catholic thought. For example, if one were to maintain that, in our age, the authentic gift of tongues is a rare phenomenon then that would be consonant with the historic Catholic view.

It also would go along with what we know of parallel gifts in biblical times, for in the Old Testament there wre a number of periods in which the gift of prophecy was seldom given or even not given. God gave it at certain times and not others. One might hold a similar view of tongues–that God grants it in certain periods of Church history but not others.

That would leave open the question of whether we are presently living in a period in which he is granting it in a more common manner than has been the case in most periods of Church history.

Hope this helps!

The Mountain Hare

Giant_pink_bunnySome folks in Italy have made a giant pink bunny that they’ve gone and put on a mountainside.

EXCERPTS:

The 200-foot-long toy rabbit lies on the side of the 5,000 foot high Colletto Fava mountain in northern Italy’s Piedmont region.

Viennese art group Gelatin designed the giant soft toy and say it was "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool".


And Gelatin members say the bunny is not just for walking around – they are expecting hikers to climb its 20 foot sides and relax on its belly.

GET THE STORY.

Amazingly, the creators expect the bunny to stay on the mountain for 20 years. I don’t see how that’s possible, though, given the effects of weather and what the bunny is made out of. After the first few rainstorms, I think the bunny would start getting pretty ripe, and 20 years is an awful long time to be exposed to the elements.

The Gift Of Tongues

A reader writes regarding an answer I gave on yesterday’s radio show:

I was a bit concerned with your response to the woman asking about her
friend who "has the gift of tongues" after having asked for it. From
what my priest has said (primarily using the works of St. Thomas
Aquinas, I believe), the gift of tongues is a charismatic Grace and
that NO charismatic Grace should be asked for as they are unnecessary
to salvation and they come with such a large responsibility.

While I would love to have a citation to St. Thomas Aquinas so that I could look up what passage your priest may have been thinking of, all I can say is that this is not the attitude of St. Paul. In 1 Corinthians 14:1, he writes:

Make love your aim, and earnestly desire the  spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.

Since the gifts in question are the charismatic ones (prophecy, tongues, interpretation of tongues, etc.), Paul certainly is not discouraging people from wanting or even asking for these gifts. At one point he even instructs them to ask for such a gift:

 Therefore, he who speaks in a tongue  should pray for the power to interpret (1 Cor. 14:13).

While God may not give these gifts today as often as he did in the first century, meaning that there is less of a reason to ask for them to day, I don’t see how one could support the position that one should never ask for charismatic gifts.

One can be too concerned about charismatic gifts and that can lead one into problems (like manufacturing the appearance of them when God has not really given them), but the idea that one should never ask for them is not supportable from Scripture.

The reader continues:

Furthermore, many charismatic Graces can be immitated by devils, so
asking for such a Grace can open one up to devils.

This does not follow. If you ask God to give you a gift, that does not mean that you are creating an avenue for the devil to do something in your life. Asking God for a grace is never itself an avenue for the devil to do something. You must be doing something else (in addition to asking God) to open yourself up to evil.

It’s hard to see what that might be in this case. People who are interested in praying in tongues are generally pretty closed in spirit to the devil. Their wills are set in opposition to his. That makes it unlikely that he would be able to gain influence. The disposition of the will is crucial for that.

It would be more likely that people who are overly concerned about speaking in tongues would run ahead of God’s grace and manufacture the experience themselves–so that it is of natural origin–but if their wills are set on following God and not the devil then the he will not have an opening through which to affect them.

My priest actually
used the gift of tongues as an example, saying that one who truly has
that particular Grace understands what he is saying, like St. Catherine
of Sienna. God does not give such a Grace only to have the recipient be
in the dark.

If your priest said that then he again appears to be in disagreement with St. Paul, who is very clear than uninterpreted tongues are not understood by the speaker–including St. Paul himself! He writes:

For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one
understands him, but he utters mysteries in the Spirit. . . .  For if I pray  in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. . . .  I thank God that I speak in  tongues more than you all; nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind,
in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue (1 Cor. 14:2, 14, 18-19).

The reader continues:

God gives that Grace to His saints so that they may teach
others and spread understanding, not confusion.

True, which is why Paul indicates that tongues should only be used in church if they are interpreted, making them equivalent to prophecy (1 Cor. 14:27-28, 5).

Furthermore, devils can
put words into one’s mouth, so this "gift" can easily be the work of a
devil, NOT the Holy Spirit.

I have no evidence of this whatsoever. Unless one has deliberately opened oneself up to someone other than God, this will not happen. As long as one’s will is oriented to God, the devil has no opening.

I’ve heard priests give examples of learned
scholars and priests going to Charismatic Masses where people were
"speaking in tongues" and these men who were fluent in other languages
reported that the words they heard uttered from some people with this
"gift" were in fact words that were, to be polite, not praising Our
Lord.

Without specifics, I can’t really comment on this. I would note, however, that there are also anecdotal reports of people who know other languages going to service where speaking in tongues was occurring and hearing people praise God in other languages.

In most cases, they reported that people were merely babbling. In
one case, a man knowingly recited part of the Ave Maria (in Latin,
obviously) and the one with the "gift" to translate these words quoted
nothing even close to the Hail Mary.

This is not evidence of the devil. It is evidence instead of people running ahead of God’s grace and manufacturing tongues or the interpretation of tongues, which is a phenomena that does happen.

 

It also seems to me that not telling this misled, if not
gullible, woman such information is doing her and all other listeners a
great disservice. Many listeners could have walked away from the
program today under the impression that asking for this delicate
charismatic Grace is a good thing to do. I would think that it would be
incredibly important to stress just the opposite.

A long time ago I learned two lessons: (1) Answer questions as they are put to you and (2) in a pastorally sensitive situation, don’t supply information that the inquirer hasn’t asked for unless there is a compelling reason and you can back up if you are challenged on it.

The lady who called in did not ask me my opinion of how often tongues are genuine, so I didn’t offer an opinion on this. I have my own view, but I cannot back it up from Church teaching or other sources. I thus was not asked about it and had no compelling reason to inject it into the discussion. It is a matter on which Catholics can hold different opinions.

Neither did the woman ask me about whether one should seek the gift of tongues. The Church does not teach that people should not seek this gift. I also disagree with the claim that one should never seek it. If someone asked me, I would explain the cautions that St. Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 14 regarding over-preoccupation with this gift, but saying that it should never be sought is simply not supportable. Consequently, I did not inject this into the discussion either.

I would think it
would be important to let people know that if they think they have this
Grace, they need to speak with their confessor so that he may determine
the nature of the "gift." For the welfare and safety of people’s souls,
they should not be made to think so lightly of such a huge burden.

Here is something that I agree with. The gift of tongues should not be treated lightly–that’s one of the things St. Paul is cautioning his readers against–and if one thinks that one is experiencing it, it is reasonable to seek the opinion of one’s confessor or others of sound judgment to try and determine if the experience is genuine.

I regret that I had to disagree with so much of what you wrote, but I’m glad that I could end on a note of agreement.

Ex-Priest Gets Married

A reader writes:

Recently a (catholic) parish priest left the church  in our town  rather
abruptly. About a year later, the community learned why.  He has since left
the priesthood and married a teacher who was teaching in that same catholic
school.  There have been a lot of questions concerning him .

What does the church teach, as far as a priest leaving the priesthood to
marry, and what can we say in response to some of the negativity regarding
this issue?

It depends on the situation.

The Church regards it as a tragedy when a priest leaves the ministry but it recognizes that there are cases in which it is pastorally prudent to allow this to happen. As a result, the Church has a procedure known as laicization by which a priest can be returned to functioning in the Church as if he were a layman.

This means (among other things) that he can no longer celebrate the sacraments apart from emergency circumstances (e.g., hearing the confession of a dying man). There also are restrictions on the kind of public role he can play in parish life (the Chruch doesn’t want such individuals to have too high a profile because of the confusion it can cause the faithful). Laicized priests may, however, be able to marry.

On the other hand, some priests simply abandon their ministry and do not pursue laicization. Some of these then attempt marriage in a civil ceremony, which results in an invalid marriage because the sacrament of holy orders creates an impediment to marriage that must be dispensed if the marriage is to be valid. This applies even if the priest formally defects from the Church. The only way a priest can validly contrat marriage is if he is laicized first.

I’m not sure how to advise you regarding the "negativity" issue. The fact that this gentleman left the priesthood and in a short space of time married a woman who taught at the local Catholic school suggests that there was at least an inappropriate emotional relationship between the two (and possibly more than that) before he left the priesthood. It wasn’t simply that he concluded that he did not have a vocation. There was some kind of malfeasance on his part when he was still conducting his ministry–and that’s assuming that he did pursue laicization and is validly married to her now. (Given what you say, he may not be.)

There is an element of scandal here (in the sense of setting a bad example that may lead others into sin) and a sense of betrayal on the part of those who the priest and the teacher served, and it is natural for people to be negative toward a situation like this.

Excessive negativity, though, is likely to be a passing phenomenon, and I would probably counsel patience regarding it. It is likely to pass with time.

Eucharistic Bread Recipe

demptionA reader writes:

Attached is a "bread recipe" a local parish uses to bake its own Eucharistic bread.  They’ve established a group of people within their Worship commission to bake this weekly and have it ready for weekend Masses.  I’ve attached the recipe for you to look at.  Is it legitimate?  Hopefully you can shed some light on the issue.  Thank you very much.

Bread Baking Recipe

Since the recipe calls for the use of salt, baking powder, honey, and oil, it is clearly illicit (not in conformity with the law). The Code of Canon Law provides:

Canon 924 ยง2.

The bread must be only wheat and recently made
so that there is no danger of spoiling.

The instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum further specifies:

[48.] 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. It is a grave abuse to introduce other substances, such as fruit or sugar or honey, into the bread for confecting the Eucharist. Hosts should obviously be made by those who are not only distinguished by their integrity, but also skilled in making them and furnished with suitable tools.

I would talk to the bishop about the problem if you can’t get it rectified on the parish level.

Yesterday’s News

The NYT has announced that it’s cutting 500 jobs from its different operations (which are more diverse than just the paper you think of). This amounts to 4% of its overall labor force.

Why?

Because they have fewer readers and fewer profits and so can sustain fewer workers.

Over at Powerline John Hinderaker offers this:

As life-long newspaper junkies, we take no pleasure in the
industry’s current crisis. Apart from anything else, we web-based
commenators need newspapers to produce the raw material for our
commentary. But my sympathy for the Times, the Globe, the Chronicle, et
al. is tempered by the knowledge that there is a path to solvency,
which I think would likely succeed, but that they would never consider:
stop being so liberal. Wouldn’t you think that with newspapers nearly
everywhere sliding inexorably downhill, just one might consider whether
its readers–or former readers–were trying to tell it something? Like,
we’re not interested in supporting far-left nonsense?

But no. They would rather go broke than abandon their reason for
being, which is, with only a handful of exceptions, promoting the
Democratic Party.

Would moderating their hard-left politics help stop the financial
bleeding? It’s hard to say for sure. But don’t you think that if they
were motivated mainly be economics, just one of our major liberal
papers might try it? [SOURCE.]

I agree that stopping being so liberal would help the situation of the major newspapers, and that they’d try it if they were motivated by purely economic considerations, but I don’t think it would fix the situation.

Why?

‘Cause I think newspapers are losing their market for reasons independent of the fact that their political ideology is driving readers away.

Personally, I have no interest in reading newspapers. None. I don’t need any more paper piling up around my house, thankyew. I don’t need burglars knowing that I’m not at home because my sloppy, distracted paperboy keeps throwing papers when I’m out of town. I don’t need anything that the papers have to offer.

Not when I can get it all online.

I can get my news online, read comics online, print coupons online, check movie times online, go to eBay instead of the classifieds. Anything! I can get all of my newspaper-type business done online far faster, cheaper, and more conveniently.

It’s the same reason I don’t watch TV news (except for rare exceptions for major national events like after 9/11 or a presidential election).

If I can get my standard information needs fulfilled online–for free–anytime I want them, then why should I even bother with television, much less something as klunky as a newspaper.

As more people are brought up in the fourth age of human communications, it will be harder and harder for newspapers to have a go of it.

I suspect that they will always exist. There will be a few big ones, probably on the model of USA Today, and there will be lots of little, tiny, local papers, like the weeklies that exist principally to run classified ads and that do a few stories on the side.

But I suspect that within a generation the middle level of papers will simply be gone.

They’ll be yesterday’s news.

What will emerge in their places, I’m not sure. Blogs will be a big part of the picture, but not all of it. Probably the broadcast media will have web sites that provide news, on the model of FOXnews.com or CNN.com.

I’m dubious, though, whether anybody will be able to put together a for-pay online newspaper, not when you have newsgatherers like the broadcast networks wanting to involve people with their web sites so that they can involve them with their TV channels.

The quality of news coverage may suffer, at least for a while.

Ultimately, though, the Internet will serve as a net knowledge gain for society, not a net knowledge loss.

That’s what the fourth age is all about.

Patristic Recommends

A reader writes:

I’ve been studying Catholic teaching and am considering becoming a Roman Catholic.  My question is: what resources ought one actually read the early fathers in?  The snippets on Catholic.com  are helpful but I am seeking a broad base understanding.

There are several different resources that I could recommend. It depends on what you are looking for.

The main problem is that the writings of the Chruch Fathers are so voluminous that one person could spend years reading them. If you’re actually up for that, the most easily available set is a 38-volume set produced in the 19th century that, since it is public domain, is now online at a number of locations, such as www.newadvent.org.

Even this set, though, is not complete. There are other works of the Fathers not found in it. (And, as one Baptist pastor who later became Catholic noted to me, it sometimes excludes some of the more Catholic-leaning works since the editors were Protestant.)

If you’re looking for a broad summary but not the texts themselves then there is a 4-volume set called Patrology by Johannes Quaesten.

What I’d really recommend if you’re looking for a summary, though, is the 1-volume setbook Ealy Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly. Kelly is a Protestant, but he’s very good about admitting how Catholic the early Fathers were.

If you’re looking for texts (shorter than the 38-volume set) rather than summaries then I’d have to main recommendations.

The first is a 3-volume set called Faith of the Early Fathers by William Jurgens. It is like the excerpts on Catholic.Com except that it isn’t organized by topic. Instead, it proceeds in historical order from Father to Father, giving passages that the different Fathers said on particular subjects. The passages also (often) are longer than the ones on Catholic.Com and will give you a broader selection of what the Fathers were saying on different topics, as well as more of the context.

If you want whole documents but aren’t up for a long set, I’d recommend Early Christian Writings, edited by Maxwell Staniforth. This is a 1-volume edition of writings from the first and second centuries. It was very helpful to me when I was becoming Catholic, though it suffers from two problems: (1) It only covers a very small handful of documents compared to those that are out there (which is why it can offer whole documents while remaining 1 volume long) and (2) the period it covers is so early that the Church hadn’t yet had a chance to thoroughly reflect on what had been given to it by Christ and the apostles and so there are a lot of imprecise and, at times, even bizzare things. You won’t get as many of the crisply formulated expressions of theology that you will from later ages. Still, it’s quite valuable and contains things like Clement’s and Ignatius’s letters, as well as the Didache.

Following up with any of these recommendations will give you clues about what you may want to investigate next. For example, if you do some reading in Quaesten or Jurgens or Kelly then you’ll learn about documents that you may want to look up and read in more detail in the 38-volume set.

Hope this helps, and God bless!