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."

Foley Addresses Advertisers

A nice little story about Archbishop John Foley addressing a group of advertisers. Archbishop Foley is the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications and, as it happens, a REALLY funny guy. He came with on last year’s Catholic Answers Cruise to Alaska, and kept the attendees in stiches with his humorous reminiscences about his career in the Church. With the native talents to do stand-up comedy, he’s by far the least dry Church official I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.

His address to a group of advertisers put me in mind of a line from the 1967 film Bedazzled, in which Peter Cook (playing the devil) explains to Dudley More what a rut he’s been in of late:

There was a time when I used to get lots of ideas. . . . I thought up the Seven Deadly Sins in one afternoon. The only thing I’ve come up with recently is advertising.

Vatican Ambassador Reportedly Makes Mistake

A correspondent writes:

“The Guardian” reported that the papal nuncio to Spain, Msgr. Manuel Monteiro de Castro, suggest that that nation should recognize same sex unions although not as marriage!!! Is this true?

I checked out the original Guardian story, and it looks like it’s accurate in its main details (though it’s phrased in the hostile-to-Catholicism manner that is so blatant in British newspapers).

Still, one would want confirmation from more than one source, so I did some checking and found lots of similar stories, especially in homosexual news sources. However, they’re all dependant on The Guardian as a source, so we don’t have independent confirmation. I also check some Spanish news sources, but couldn’t find anything.

My guess is that the story may be accurate but still too new to have generated enough collateral stories for me to turn them up easily.

I suspect that the pope’s spokesman, Navarro-Valls, will get asked about this and we’ll have confirmation or disconfirmation soon. Also, if the guy really said what he’s reported as saying, there may be disciplinary action.

I’ll keep y’all updated as I learn more.

——-

UPDATE!

Thanks to a reader posting in the comments box below, I was able to find a Spanish-language story from Europa Press linked on Amy Welborn’s site. Here’s a quick translation:

The papal nuncio in Spain, Monsignor Manuel Monteiro de Castro, said today that the legalization of homosexual unions is totally against the doctrine of the Church. With this declaration he forestalled the matter declared by the Alsina Forum of diocesan priests of Gerona, which has been in favor of the legalization of unions of people of the same sex.

Shortly after attending the inauguration of the Plenary Assembly of the Episcopal Conference, Monsignor Monteiro told a group of journalists that “homosexual unions are totally contrary to the doctrine of the Church. Such position (the legalization of these unions) is clearly contrary to the position of the Church.”

Monsignor Monteiro insisted that the family is constituted by a man and a woman, as is recognized in the Codes of Civil Justice of Spain and the remaining countries of Europe. “Marriage–I emphasize–is between a man and a woman. It is good that other forms of cohabitation are are recognized, but they are not the same thing. That is to say, marriage is to be what it has always been known as marriage and the other forms [of union] are not to have this name.” However, the nuncio showed his esteem for these people (the homosexuals), which he said the hierarchy of the Church also tries to help in their spiritual life.

My Spanish is a bit rusty, and I had to render part of the last paragraph a little idiomatically in English, so if anyone can provide a better reading, e-mail me.

This story ambiguates the situation somewhat, as the opening section makes it sound as if the Monsignor was opposed to legal recognition for all homosexual unions. However, note that in the second paragraph the phrase “(the legalization of these unions)” is added by the Europa Press writer. The Monsignor may have been expressing moral opposition to the unions but not legal recognition for them. In the next paragraph the Monsignor is quoted as saying that “It is good that other forms of cohabitation are recognized” (if I have translated correctly) but that they are not the same as marriage.

The new text adds ambiguity, but unfortunately it still is not clear to me that he took a line opposing all legal recognition for homosexual unions. Let’s hope that he did and that this will swiftly be established.

Lay Homilists

A correspondent writes:

Even after the Pope’s re-affirmation about only ordained deacons and priests giving the homily, our female RCIA director gave the homily again last week – in full view of the priest. So I finally found the Canon she says allows her to do this, and it is Canon 766 which apparently allows this in special circumstances – which in our church that would be, or say, Sunday for instance (she gives the homily at least once a month). So how about it, can Canon 766 be legitimately used here? My reading of it is that the lay faithful can preach, but it should not take the place of the homily.

No, canon 766 cannot be used in this way. Canon 766 reads:

Can. 766 Lay persons can be permitted to preach in a church or oratory, if necessity requires it in certain circumstances or it seems advantageous in particular cases, according to the prescripts of the conference of bishops and without prejudice to can. 767, §1.

Notice the last bit of that “without prejudice to can. 767, §1.” This means that 766 is non-operative when it comes to the matter specified in can. 767 §1. So what does that passage say?

Can. 767 §1. Among the forms of preaching, the homily, which is part of the liturgy itself and is reserved to a priest or deacon, is preeminent; in the homily the mysteries of faith and the norms of Christian life are to be explained from the sacred text during the course of the liturgical year.

You are therefore correct. Can. 766 permits lay preaching in limited circumstances, but not lay preaching of the homily.

This is underscored by Redemptionis Sacramentum, which states:

[64.] The homily, which is given in the course of the celebration of Holy Mass and is a part of the Liturgy itself, “should ordinarily be given by the Priest celebrant himself. He may entrust it to a concelebrating Priest or occasionally, according to circumstances, to a Deacon, but never to a layperson. In particular cases and for a just cause, the homily may even be given by a Bishop or a Priest who is present at the celebration but cannot concelebrate”.

[65.] It should be borne in mind that any previous norm that may have admitted non-ordained faithful to give the homily during the eucharistic celebration is to be considered abrogated by the norm of canon 767 §1. This practice is reprobated, so that it cannot be permitted to attain the force of custom.

[66.] The prohibition of the admission of laypersons to preach within the Mass applies also to seminarians, students of theological disciplines, and those who have assumed the function of those known as “pastoral assistants”; nor is there to be any exception for any other kind of layperson, or group, or community, or association.

[161.] As was already noted above, the homily on account of its importance and its nature is reserved to the Priest or Deacon during Mass. As regards other forms of preaching, if necessity demands it in particular circumstances, or if usefulness suggests it in special cases, lay members of Christ’s faithful may be allowed to preach in a church or in an oratory outside Mass in accordance with the norm of law. This may be done only on account of a scarcity of sacred ministers in certain places, in order to meet the need, and it may not be transformed from an exceptional measure into an ordinary practice, nor may it be understood as an authentic form of the advancement of the laity. All must remember besides that the faculty for giving such permission belongs to the local Ordinary, and this as regards individual instances; this permission is not the competence of anyone else, even if they are Priests or Deacons.

The Douay-Rheims

A reader writes:

At your suggestion (for which many thanks!) I have ordered a copy of Orchard’s 1953 Catholic Commentary; just now I feel rather like a kid before Christmas, eagerly awaiting the present. I noted in reading about it that he uses the Douay Rheims translation of the Bible. I’m curious; what is your take on this version, regarding the accuracy of the translation? I’m now reading the RSV, which I enjoy immensely as a nice blend of accessible (yet not gender-neutral) and dignified prose. Since joining the Church 5 years ago I’ve thought about purchasing a copy of DR, but I just haven’t got around to it. Now with Orchard’s Commentary on the way (and with my birthday coming up), I thought that this might be a nice time to purchase a copy. Any thoughts?

The Douay-Rheims is a fine translation, and if you like King James-era English, I’d definitely recommend it. It’s the one to have if that’s what you like.

It’s not perfect (and you should ignore claims that praise it to high heaven above all other translations–they are never made on its behalf by people proficient in the biblical languages), but it’s a good, basic, traditional translation.

If you’d like to learn more about it, here’s an online article about it. If you’d like to read some of it for yourself to get a flavor for what it’s like, the translation itself is also online.

When Worlds Collide!

antennae-colliding-galaxies--largeKnow what this is? It’s a picture of two galaxies colliding. They’re known as the “Antennae” colliding galaxies (I guess some astronomer thought they look like a bug’s antennae), about 63 million light years away in the constellation Corvus.

Righ now, they don’t look much like galaxies because they are tearing each other apart. That is one of the things that can happen when galaxies collide–if they’re evenly matched. But other things can happen when two galaxies interact if they aren’t so evenly matched. If one is much smaller than the other, it may get torn apart and absorbed by the larger galaxy. Or, if it hits it at the right angle, it may plunge through the larger galaxy, perhaps getting caught in its gravity, looping back, and plunging through several more times.

Now, we live in a big galaxy, as galaxies go. It’s one of the largest galaxies on the block. Together with the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies, the Milky Way is one of the three largest members of the Local Group (which consists of about 35 galaxies).

The fact our galaxy is so big makes it relatively safe from destructive collisions with other galaxies, but the thought of the Milky Way colliding with other galaxies is still rather scary. But guess what–It’s happened before!

The brightest globular cluster we can see in the Milky Way–known as Omega Centauri–now appears to be the remnant of a galaxy the Milky Way ate for breakfast.

Another galaxy–known as the Sagittarius dwarf–has it hit the Milky Way a number of times and is due to do so again in, oh, the next hundred million years. We’ve already been stripping stars off of it, and it’s likely to end up getting absorbed by us, too.

But we found out last year that the Milky Way is gobbling up another galaxy RIGHT NOW! It’s known as the Canis Major dwarf, and it’s the closest galaxy to us–about 25,000 light years away from the solar system, which makes it closer to us than we are to the center of our galaxy (27,000 ly away). Soon its inhabitants (if any) will be fellow Milky Way-ians . . . just like us.

Message to inhabitants of the Canis Major dwarf: “Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.”

Praying For What Won't Happen

A reader writes:

If your interpretation of Jesus’ statement about Judas is correct [here], then doesn’t that mean that certain parts of the Catechism should be changed, namely §1058 and §1821?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray “that no one should be lost” if we know that one person already is lost?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray that “all men” be saved, if we know, on the basis of your gloss, that one of them is damned?

This question has two aspects: One, taking the question at face value, has application specifically to praying that people won’t be damend. This, however, leads to a second aspect which is broader in scope.

Dealing with the first aspect first, I’d say the following:

1. Prayers of this sort can be taken either distributively or collectively. When taken distributively, they are made on behalf of each person as an individual–i.e., may this person not be damned. Taken collectively, they are made on behalf of all individuals as a whole–i.e., may nobody at all in the human race be damned.

The thing is, prayers can be made distributively for the human race that it would make no sense to take collectively. For example, we might pray distributively for each individual in the human race that he not get sick, though we know with certaintity that some people will in fact get sick. We can wish the good of health for each individual. Nevertheless, it is clear (from the fact that some people do get sick) that God does not choose to give this gift to everyone without exception, so it would make no sense for us to make the prayer in a collective sense.

2. Another axis along which questions of this nature have to be parsed is whether they have to do with the future or the past. We can pray that nobody in the future suffer from a particular evil without implying that we are asking the same for all the people who have lived (and suffered from it) in the past.

3. For the prayers you mention from the Catechism not to make sense, they would have to be taken (a) collectively and (b) for all people, past and present. This is one of only several possible combinations, so we already can see that the prayers can make sense on the thesis I’m advancing.

4. In fact, there are reasons to think that the Church does not intend the prayers in the sense described in point #3:

a. The passages both reference Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:4 that God desires all men to be saved. They represent the Church’s appropriation of this desire of God’s in its own prayer life. Yet (i) we know that, though he doesn’t wish it, God is willing to let people choose hell, as Scripture and the Catechism both state, (ii) St. Paul certainly believed that some people end up in hell, as illustrated by numerous passages in his writings, and (iii) we still have Jesus’ statement that is most plausibly read as stating Judas’ damnation.

b. John Paul II, who approved the Catechism, is on record (e.g., in his book Crossing the Treshhold of Hope) stating that people are in hell, and

c. It certainly cannot be maintained that the world body of bishops, who collaborated on the Catechism, are all von Balthasarians with regard to this question.

Thus we have reason to read the prayers in question in another light, more consonant with Scripture and Tradition, that the Church is praying for the salvation of every human individually, not that hell to be empty.

The second and larger issue is one we have alluded to in dealing with the first: It is the question of praying for things that won’t happen. There are all kinds of prayers in the Church for things that simply aren’t going to happen–e.g., that there be an end to poverty, hunger, sickness, war, and any other evil you might want to name. To really imagine a world where all these are granted prior to the Second Coming would be to engage in unrealistic utopian hopes at best and to participate in the deception of the Antichrist at worst (see CCC 675-677). The world simply won’t be perfected in that way in this age, and the man who tells us that it can be will be the biggest, evilest snakeoil salesman of history.

Thus when prayers of this sort are made (and, personally, I find myself uncomfortable with this style of prayer), they always have to be made with the recognition that God is not going to banish all such evils from the world, and therefore they must be made with an unstated qualifier like “to the extent that it is Thy will, Lord.”

If they are not taken with some such qualifier then they constitute praying for something that one knows God will not grant, which is foolish or presumptuous, depending on the level of knowledge the person praying has.

Praying For What Won’t Happen

A reader writes:

If your interpretation of Jesus’ statement about Judas is correct [here], then doesn’t that mean that certain parts of the Catechism should be changed, namely §1058 and §1821?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray “that no one should be lost” if we know that one person already is lost?

Wouldn’t it be illogical to pray that “all men” be saved, if we know, on the basis of your gloss, that one of them is damned?

This question has two aspects: One, taking the question at face value, has application specifically to praying that people won’t be damend. This, however, leads to a second aspect which is broader in scope.

Dealing with the first aspect first, I’d say the following:

1. Prayers of this sort can be taken either distributively or collectively. When taken distributively, they are made on behalf of each person as an individual–i.e., may this person not be damned. Taken collectively, they are made on behalf of all individuals as a whole–i.e., may nobody at all in the human race be damned.

The thing is, prayers can be made distributively for the human race that it would make no sense to take collectively. For example, we might pray distributively for each individual in the human race that he not get sick, though we know with certaintity that some people will in fact get sick. We can wish the good of health for each individual. Nevertheless, it is clear (from the fact that some people do get sick) that God does not choose to give this gift to everyone without exception, so it would make no sense for us to make the prayer in a collective sense.

2. Another axis along which questions of this nature have to be parsed is whether they have to do with the future or the past. We can pray that nobody in the future suffer from a particular evil without implying that we are asking the same for all the people who have lived (and suffered from it) in the past.

3. For the prayers you mention from the Catechism not to make sense, they would have to be taken (a) collectively and (b) for all people, past and present. This is one of only several possible combinations, so we already can see that the prayers can make sense on the thesis I’m advancing.

4. In fact, there are reasons to think that the Church does not intend the prayers in the sense described in point #3:

a. The passages both reference Paul’s statement in 1 Tim. 2:4 that God desires all men to be saved. They represent the Church’s appropriation of this desire of God’s in its own prayer life. Yet (i) we know that, though he doesn’t wish it, God is willing to let people choose hell, as Scripture and the Catechism both state, (ii) St. Paul certainly believed that some people end up in hell, as illustrated by numerous passages in his writings, and (iii) we still have Jesus’ statement that is most plausibly read as stating Judas’ damnation.

b. John Paul II, who approved the Catechism, is on record (e.g., in his book Crossing the Treshhold of Hope) stating that people are in hell, and

c. It certainly cannot be maintained that the world body of bishops, who collaborated on the Catechism, are all von Balthasarians with regard to this question.

Thus we have reason to read the prayers in question in another light, more consonant with Scripture and Tradition, that the Church is praying for the salvation of every human individually, not that hell to be empty.

The second and larger issue is one we have alluded to in dealing with the first: It is the question of praying for things that won’t happen. There are all kinds of prayers in the Church for things that simply aren’t going to happen–e.g., that there be an end to poverty, hunger, sickness, war, and any other evil you might want to name. To really imagine a world where all these are granted prior to the Second Coming would be to engage in unrealistic utopian hopes at best and to participate in the deception of the Antichrist at worst (see CCC 675-677). The world simply won’t be perfected in that way in this age, and the man who tells us that it can be will be the biggest, evilest snakeoil salesman of history.

Thus when prayers of this sort are made (and, personally, I find myself uncomfortable with this style of prayer), they always have to be made with the recognition that God is not going to banish all such evils from the world, and therefore they must be made with an unstated qualifier like “to the extent that it is Thy will, Lord.”

If they are not taken with some such qualifier then they constitute praying for something that one knows God will not grant, which is foolish or presumptuous, depending on the level of knowledge the person praying has.