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."

Frances Quisling Is RightNot Wrong About Something!

Okay, Frances Quisling is still an Evil Abortion Queen, but she has come out on the right side of the nasty NARAL ad against Judge Roberts:

Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn’t be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don’t like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Others in the pro-baby killing camp have also objected to NARAL’s video thuggery.

GET THE STORY.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: NARAL WITHDRAWS THE AD!

Frances Quisling Is RightNot Wrong About Something!

Okay, Frances Quisling is still an Evil Abortion Queen, but she has come out on the right side of the nasty NARAL ad against Judge Roberts:

Frances Kissling, the longtime president of Catholics for a Free Choice, said she was "deeply upset and offended" by the advertisement, which she called "far too intemperate and far too personal."

Ms. Kissling, who initiated the conversation with a reporter, said the ad "does step over the line into the kind of personal character attack we shouldn’t be engaging in."

She added: "As a pro-choice person, I don’t like being placed on the defensive by my leaders. Naral should pull it and move on."

Others in the pro-baby killing camp have also objected to NARAL’s video thuggery.

GET THE STORY.

PRE-PUBLICATION UPDATE: NARAL WITHDRAWS THE AD!

Ex-Priest Communion Questions

Down yonder, a reader writes:

a) Could my wife, who is Catholic (I’m not) "legally" take communion at a church where the minister is a former Catholic priest?

She couldn’t as a matter of course. The Code of Canon Law provides:

Whenever necessity requires it or true spiritual advantage suggests it, and provided that danger of error or of indifferentism is avoided, the Christian faithful for whom it is physically or morally impossible to approach a Catholic minister are permitted to receive the sacraments of penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick from non-Catholic ministers in whose Churches these sacraments are valid (Canon 844 §2).

The first highlighted blue condition would prevent this from happening in most circumstances since your wife presumably has access to a Catholic minister on a regular basis most of the time.

What about the second blue condition, though? Would it allow your wife to do so if she didn’t have access to a Catholic minister (and there was spiritual advantage and there was no danger of error or indifferentism)?

It would not seem so, at least not the way the canon is drafted.

The canon seems to focus not just on the validity of the sacrament but on the church in which it is celebrated. The canon could have said "if the minister is validly ordained" (or something along these lines), but it doesn’t. It invokes the church of which the minister is a part. The minister having valid ordination by virtue of being a former Catholic priest, then, may not be enough. He may need to be part of a church that, as a general rule, has valid holy orders (like the Eastern Orthodox churches, the other eastern non-Catholic churches, or the Charismatic Episcopal Church).

If so, it may be because the legislator didn’t want to put the faithful in the position of having to decide the ordinational history of individual ministers and whether they are valid.

On the other hand, it might be that the legislator simply failed ot attend to this possibility and that, if Rome were to issue an authentic interpretation on this point (i.e., an official clarification of the law), it might say that as long as the sacraments will be valid then that’s enough.

There would seem to be at least one circumstance in which one likely could receive Communion from an ex-Catholic priest in a church which has not preserved holy orders. That circumstance would be danger of death. This circumstance is so grave that the Church’s law makes special provision for the faithful in danger of dying to be able to participate in the sacraments of the Eucharist and confession even if they ordinarily would not be able to otherwise. This suggests that, at least if someone is liable to die, they could receive these two sacraments from an ex-Catholic priest even if he could not normally give them to the person.

We’re in an area where the law is ambiguous and can be read different ways. However, if someone is about to die, I’m certainly not going to tell him, "Sorry, you can’t be absolved because this ex-Catholic priest isn’t part of a church that has valid holy orders as a matter of course." On the contrary, I’d encourage him to go to confession with all possible speed. The same would be true for his reception of Communion as Viaticum to prepare him to meet his Maker.

b) Since non-Catholics are barred (and rightfully so, I believe) from taking part in the Real Presence within a Catholic mass, should a non-Catholic trying to be respectful of Catholicism not take a Protestant communion when administered by a former Catholic priest?

Canon law doesn’t address this subject since it doesn’t pertain to non-Catholics except in certain circumstances. That means that the matter would need to be settled via moral theology. To make the matter simpler, let’s assume that the priest in question has the right intent and is using the right form and matter for the Eucharist so that his consecration of it will be valid.

The question then becomes what the Protestant’s own beliefs are regarding Communion: Does the he (the Protestant considering receiving Communion) believe in the Real Presence or not?

If he does not then for him to receive Communion administered by a former Catholic priest would result in a person who does not believe in the Real Presence receiving Our Lord in holy Communion.

That’s bad.

St. Paul specifically warned against that happening in 1 Corinthians 11:29-30. Unfortunately, those who need to refrain in this circumstance are unlikely to do so.

On the other hand, if the Protestant does believe in the Real Presence then the situation would result in a believer in the Real Presence receiving Our Lord in holy Communion.

In principle, that’s okay. If the Protestant is in a state of grace, is reverent, etc., then he would be a worthy recipient of Communion and so could receive.

If he wanted to refrain anyway, for example to avoid endorsing the fact that the priest had defected from the Catholic Church, then that would be amazingly decent of him, though it would be too much to ask or expect of a typical Protestant. I can only imagine someone already on well his way to becoming Catholic being likely to do that.

Hope this helps, and God bless!

 

RESCATE Back On

So WYD officials have announced that the Argintinian band RESCATE will be performing at World Youth Day after all. According to them, they’ve investigated and the allegations against RESCATE were false. They say the cancellation of the band’s participation in the event was due to internal confusion among WYD organizers.

RESCATE, for its part, has issued a statement seeking to clarify matters.

In their clarification to WYD, RESCATE stated, “From Spain, where we are on tour at the time, we write with heavy hearts to communicate to you our deep consternation over the comments about certain phrases we used that were construed to seem to be against the Pope Benedict XVI”.

“We feel that the declarations that RESCATE is accused of making referring to the Pope, during an interview in Chile and that have been published in different websites, have been taken out of context”.

“It was never our intention to disqualify or ridicule the Pope, nor discredit his authority as the maximum authority of the Roman Catholic Church nor underestimate his influence as a world leader, and therefore we humbly request your forgiveness if we have unintentionally offended anyone in any way.”

“We respect Benedict XVI as the maximum spiritual leader of the Catholic Church, we have not meant to offend his person or office in any way. We are praying for him, that he will be greatly used by God everyday of his life and especially on this World Youth Day where so many young people will be gathered together awaiting his words,” the statement concludes.

GET THE STORY.

For my money, as someone who has been repeatedly misquoted by the press in an attempt to whip up controversy, if someone comes out and says that they were misquoted, that they don’t support the sentiments the press conveyed, and that they’re sorry that they became an occasion of offense then we owe them the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof at that point is on those would say that the press got ir right.

More Pro-Abort Slime

NARAL is currently seeking to run an ad (which CNN has approved!) against Judge Roberts’ nomination to the Supreme Court.

Take it away, FactCheck.Org! (a non-partisan group):


NARAL Falsely Accuses Supreme Court Nominee Roberts

Attack ad says he supported an abortion-clinic bomber and excused violence. In fact, Roberts called clinic bombers “criminals” who should be prosecuted fully.

An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama .

The ad is false.

GET THE STORY.

An Issue Of Capital Importance

A reader writes:

how is it determined in texts when to capitalize letters and when not to, particularly in languages that have no distinction between capital and lower-case, and also when the writer does not use a captial (for example, I have seen Aquinas write the latin equivalent to "Catholic" with a little "c")?

There’s not a universal rule on this, but I can tell you what the general practice is.

First, though, lemme clarify for folks who may not be familiar with the issue: English and other languages that use the Latin alphabet (and variants on it) have both UPPER CASE and lower case letters. This ain’t the way it was originally, though.

The first alphabets did not have a distinction between upper case ("majuscule") and lower case ("minuscule") letters. They were written entirely in upper case letters. This applied to (among other languages) Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin.

This means that the Bible–all of it–was originally written in capital letters. The lower case letters you see in a modern Greek Bible came later and were subbed in by scribes and printers. The original manuscripts were all majuscules.

Over time (around the A.D. 600s), Greek developed a lower case alphabet. So did Latin. Other languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic) did not and still use only one kind of letter, traditionally referred to as "upper case" or "capital" letters, though this term is anachronistic as there is no alternative to this kind of letter in these languages.

Folks using Greek and Latin-derived alphabets got in the habit of mixing upper and lower case letters, typically using upper case letters (since they’re bigger) for the more important words. The habit of capitalizing certain words fell out from this.

Now. . . . If you’re translating a text that was originally written in all capital letters then there is only one thing to do when rendering it for folks used to reading lower case texts with an occasional capitalized words: Follow the rules of the receptor language. In other words, if you’re translating, say, a Hebrew text into English, you follow English rules about capitalization. That means that you capitalize the first words of sentences, proper nouns, acronyms, and possibly a few additional words (mostly or religious origin), depending on the rules that the publisher goes by.

The reason that this is the only thing to do is that the original text doesn’t contain any capitalization information that you could go by. It’s all upper case letters, with no words capitalized distinctly. The only alternative would be to render EVERY LETTER OF YOUR TRANSLATION IN CAPITAL LETTERS, WHICH IS HARD ON THE EYES AFTER A WHILE AND WHICH IN SOME CONTEXTS IS TAKEN TO INDICATE SHOUTING.

But what if your source text is one that contains a mix of lower and upper case letters, with some words capitalized. What do you do then?

If the languages are close enough in the rules they follow then you might make the decision to capitalize a word wherever the source text does. You might get away with that, for example, translating an Italian text into English.

But this strategy gets problematic if the rules the other language uses for capitalization are too different from English. For instance, German (I am given to understand) capitalizes basically every noun in a sentence. That will really annoy Your typical English Speaker after a While, don’t You think? I mean, Nobody wants to see that many capital Letters in a single Sentence. It gets irritating to have to switch Your Mind back and forth between upper Case and lower Case Emphasis when You aren’t used to doing It.

So the rule defaults back to obeying the conventions of the language that you’re translating into (English in this case).

What those rules are can be complex in and of itself. For one thing, the rules change over time. A hundred years ago English speakers capitalized many more words than they do now (for example, pronouns that have God as their referent). Today, most publishers don’t do that, though there is still a mix of conventions that different publishers will follow.

This affects other languages, too. I’ve seen some Latin documents that had words like "Catholic" in lower-case, but other, later documents that had it upper case.

But that’s the thing about languge: It’s always changing.

Valid Protestant Eucharists

A piece back I noted that Protestant churches"apart from very exceptional circumstances, do not have the Real Presence when they celebrate the Lord’s Supper.”

Following which, a reader wrotes:

What are these circumstances?

The big problem keeping most Protestant Eucharists from being valid is the absence of a valid, sacramental priesthood in Protestant circles due to the fact that at the time of the Reformation all of the Protestant denominations failed to preserve the sacrament of holy orders, either altogether or in a valid form.

In rare cases, however, a Protestant minister may have a valid priestly ordination. There are basically two ways this can happen:

  1. He was ordained as a priest in a non-Protestant church, such as the Catholic Church or one of the Eastern Orthodox churches. Sometimes priests of these churches may become Protestant, in which case their priestly ordination remains valid.
  2. The Protestant denomination itself may have acquired valid holy orders, as appears to be the case with the Charistmatic Episcopal Church, which obtained holy orders from a Brazilian schismatic group that split off from the Catholic Church.

Thus there may be lone individual ministers (as in case 1) in Protestant churches who have the power to consecrate the Eucharist or, in at least one case, an entire Protestant denomination that has it.

In addition to this basic requirement, the usual conditions of using the proper matter and form and having the proper intent also must be fulfilled for a valid consecration of the Eucharist.

This Is That?

To a vastly greater degree than any other creature on earth, man is a symbolic being. Our capacity for symbolic thought–the ability to conceptualize the idea that a symbol stands for a reality or "This is that"–is vastly superior to that of any other creatures on the planet. It is what allows us to accumulate knowledge from one generation to another, to develop culture, learn science, etc., etc., etc.

But it doesn’t come on us all at once. We aren’t born with our capacity for symbolic thought all warmed up and ready to cook. It takes a while for us to learn different forms of symbolism, language being one of the first. Visual symbols can take a little longer.

If you have a really young child their visual symbol processing software ain’t all online yet.

This, of course,

MAKES ‘EM REALLY FUN TO TRY SYMBOL-BASED EXPERIMENTS ON.

Among the interesting things scientists who do this are learning are things that have to do with what are the best educational strategies for young children:

A very popular style of book contains a variety of manipulative features designed to encourage children to interact directly with the book itself–flaps that can be lifted to reveal pictures, levers that can be pulled to animate images, and so forth.

Graduate student Cynthia Chiong and I reasoned that these manipulative features might distract children from information presented in the book. Accordingly, we recently used different types of books to teach letters to 30-month-old children. One was a simple, old-fashioned alphabet book, with each letter clearly printed in simple black type accompanied by an appropriate picture–the traditional "A is for apple, B is for boy" type of book. Another book had a variety of manipulative features. The children who had been taught with the plain book subsequently recognized more letters than did those taught with the more complicated book. Presumably, the children could more readily focus their attention with the plain 2-D book, whereas with the other one their attention was drawn to the 3-D activities. Less may be more when it comes to educational books for young children.