Did Pope Francis recently say that atheists can get to heaven by "good works"? Or was he talking about something else entirely?
Color me annoyed.
The press has been going nuts about remarks concerning atheists that Pope Francis made at one of his daily homilies.
As usual, the press is hyping the remarks as if they are earthshaking, unprecedented, and in contrast to mean ol’ Pope Emeritus Benedict.
I know this will come as a shock, but . . . they’re getting the story wrong.
Here’s the story . . .
Daily Homilies
Let’s start with the context in which Pope Francis made the remarks: One of his homilies at daily Mass, celebrated in St. Martha’s House (where he lives).
Pope Francis is in the habit of saying daily Mass for the people at St. Martha’s House and invited guests, and when he does so he gives an off-the-cuff homily (rather than reading from a prepared text).
This is actually something new.
John Paul II and Benedict XVI did not do this. They did not celebrate daily Mass as publicly as Pope Francis, and they did not have daily homilies published in this way. Instead, they occasionally delivered prepared homilies at public Masses on special occasions, and only these were published. As a result, if you look at the Vatican web site, there are surprisingly few homilies listed in their sections!
As a result, the Vatican web people aren’t scaled up for this volume of homilies, and–MADDENINGLY–you can’t find complete texts of Pope Francis’s daily ones on the site.
They, apparently, aren’t running these homilies through “the usual process,” which involves transcribing what the pope says in off-the-cuff remarks, showing him the transcript so that he can revise it if needed, and then translating and publishing them.
As a result, we’re not getting complete transcripts of these homilies, only partial ones, such as those carried by Vatican Radio.
And that, right there, is a problem. It drives me nuts, because these homilies contain interesting information, but I hesitate to comment on anything for which I don’t have a complete text.
As they say, a text without a context is a pretext. Without seeing the full text, we run the risk of misunderstanding.
The Homily in Question
On Wednesday, Pope Francis gave a homily based on the Gospel reading of the day (Mark 9:38-40), in which the disciples have told a man to stop casting out demons in Jesus’ name because he doesn’t follow along with them.
The disciples, Pope Francis explains, “were a little intolerant,” closed off by the idea of possessing the truth, convinced that “those who do not have the truth, cannot do good.”
“This was wrong . . . Jesus broadens the horizon.” Pope Francis said, “The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.”
Pope Francis first applies this principle to non-Catholics in general, engaging in dialogue with an imaginary interlocutor:
“‘But, Father, this [person] is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. . . .
“Instead,” the Pope continued, “the Lord has created us in His image and likeness, and has given us this commandment in the depths of our heart: do good and do not do evil”:
“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone!
So far so good: Christ redeemed all of us, making it possible for every human to be saved.
What About Atheists?
Now we get to the subject of atheists, as the imaginary interlocutor asks:
“‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good.”
Here is where “the usual process” might be helpful in clarifying the pope’s thought. Everyone, when speaking off-the-cuff, encounters occasions where things could be further clarified, and this may be one of them.
We can be called children of God in several senses. One of them is merely be being created as rational beings made in God’s image. Another is by becoming Christian. Another sense (used in the Old Testament) is connected with righteous behavior. And there can be other senses as well.
Here Pope Francis may be envisioning a sense in which we can be called children of God because Christ redeemed us, even apart from embracing that redemption by becoming Christian.
This, however, was not what caught the press’s eye.
Pope Francis continued:
“And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.”
Nothing particularly controversial here.
But then comes this, as the imaginary interlocutor says:
“‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Where Is “There”?
The press latched onto this, taking the phrase “we will meet one another there” as a reference to heaven.
They then inferred that the pope was saying that if atheists merely “do good” then they will go to heaven.
This, in turn, alarmed some in the Protestant community, who thought that the pope was saying that atheists can get to heaven by “good works.”
We can deal with the possibility of salvation for atheists in another post, but first we need to ask a question . . .
Was Pope Francis Even Talking About Heaven?
If so, you wouldn’t know it from the transcript of what he said.
Let’s back up a bit. Remember, Pope Francis was just talking about the duty to do good:
“And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace.”
So if everyone does good, we have a path toward peace. That’s the goal.
“If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good.
Note the parallelism between the phrases. Pope Francis is talking about a path “toward peace” and wants us to “meet there” by doing our part and doing good so that we build “that culture of encounter” and “meet one another doing good.”
He’s not talking about heaven at all.
He’s talking about earth.
It’s in that context that he has the imaginary interlocutor say:
‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’
And he replies:
“But do good: we will meet one another there.”
What he’s saying is that even atheists need to do good on earth to build their part of the culture of encounter that promotes peace and allows people to “meet together” in harmony.
At least that’s what appears from a careful reading of the text.
Another translation, found in The Guardian (of all places), better conveys the idea:
“Even them, everyone,” the pope answered, according to Vatican Radio. “We all have the duty to do good,” he said.
“Just do good, and we’ll find a meeting point,” the pope said in a hypothetical reply to the hypothetical comment: “But I don’t believe. I’m an atheist.”
Text Without Context
Remember that saying I mentioned earlier, that a text without a context is a pretext for misunderstanding?
This is why.
This is exactly why.
And it is why I am so annoyed that we aren’t getting the full text of Pope Francis’s daily homilies.
Of course, even with the context we had at hand, which clearly suggests that Pope Francis wasn’t talking about meeting atheists in heaven but meeting with them in fraternity and peace here on earth, that didn’t stop the press from getting it wrong.
Does the Mayan calendar prove that something momentous will happen in December 2012?
Well, the Mayan apocalypse is almost here. We’re right up to 12/21/12, the day that New Agers across the planet have been waiting for.
Perhaps you know someone who is into the “2012 phenomenon”–or perhaps you’re curious what all the hubbub is about.
Here’s a story that will put things in perspective. . . .
The End Is Here?
On December 21, 2012, something momentous is going to happen.
The Mayan calendar says so.
Everybody knows it.
They’ve been talking about it on the late-night airwaves and on the Internet and in books for years.
But what’s going to happen?
Good question. . . .
You Can’t Hide Your Mayan Lies
The answer seems to depend on whom you ask.
According to some “experts” on the “2012 Phenomenon,” it will be a really good thing, the dawning of a new age in human consciousness and the next step in human evolution. Some say the planet Earth will cross the plane of the galaxy or align with the galactic core and new energies will be unleashed, transforming human consciousness. Also, aliens may show up and invite us to join a galactic brotherhood.
According to other 2012 “experts,” what will happen will be a really bad thing, such as the planet Earth colliding with a black hole and bringing about the end of the world. Or maybe it will be a comet we collide with. Or an asteroid. Or the lost planet Nibiru. Or, even without a collision, Earth’s poles will shift. Or there will be a devastating war. Any way you go, things will be bad.
Other “experts” think that it may be a mixture of good and bad, or that it has the potential to be one or the two, depending on how we respond.
Still others aren’t predicting exactly what will happen, just that it will be big. Really big. They’re sure.
So what’s at the root of all these claims? Who were the Maya? What is their calendar? And what’s the truth about all this?
Let’s take a look . . . because the truth is out there.
Does the Mayan calendar prove that something momentous will happen in December 2012?
On December 21, 2012, something momentous is going to happen.
The Mayan calendar says so.
Everybody knows it.
They’ve been talking about it on the late-night airwaves and on the Internet and in books for years.
But what’s going to happen?
Good question. . . .
You Can’t Hide Your Mayan Lies
The answer seems to depend on whom you ask.
According to some “experts” on the “2012 Phenomenon,” it will be a really good thing, the dawning of a new age in human consciousness and the next step in human evolution. Some say the planet Earth will cross the plane of the galaxy or align with the galactic core and new energies will be unleashed, transforming human consciousness. Also, aliens may show up and invite us to join a galactic brotherhood.
According to other 2012 “experts,” what will happen will be a really bad thing, such as the planet Earth colliding with a black hole and bringing about the end of the world. Or maybe it will be a comet we collide with. Or an asteroid. Or the lost planet Nibiru. Or, even without a collision, Earth’s poles will shift. Or there will be a devastating war. Any way you go, things will be bad.
Other “experts” think that it may be a mixture of good and bad, or that it has the potential to be one or the two, depending on how we respond.
Still others aren’t predicting exactly what will happen, just that it will be big. Really big. They’re sure.
So what’s at the root of all these claims? Who were the Maya? What is their calendar? And what’s the truth about all this?
Let’s take a look . . . because the truth is out there.
Meet the Maya
The Maya were—and are—a group of people native to southern Mexico and in the nearby countries of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
(Properly speaking, the word Mayan is an adjective. The noun form, both singular and plural, is Maya, which can also be used adjectivally. Due to frequent misuse, this distinction may not be represented in non-specialized dictionaries.)
Theirs was one of the major civilizations in the Americas prior to contact with Europeans. The heyday of the Maya was A.D. 250 to 900, after which they went into decline.
But they never died out or lost their cultural identity, and today there are millions of people in Latin America who maintain connections with Maya culture, including—in some cases—speaking one of the Mayan languages.
The classical Maya civilization is of great interest to archaeologists. The remains of many Maya cities exist, and they tell us a lot about their inhabitants. They built palaces and pyramids and ball courts.
They also used a system of writing that has been largely deciphered. In this system, words and syllables are represented by glyphs that sometimes look like stylized versions of what they represent but can also look abstract, at least to the untrained eye.
The Maya also had a number system that included zero, a concept that didn’t become common in European mathematics for some centuries. Among the things they used their number system for was to keep track of time, which brings us to . . .
The “Mayan calendar”
Despite its popularity, the term “Mayan calendar” is misleading. For a start, it would properly be referred to as the “Maya calendar” (Mayan is a word scholars use to refer to the languages of the Maya people). Further, the Maya actually used more than one calendar.
The particular calendar connected with the 2012 date is known as the Long Count Calendar. It was also used by people other than the Maya.
To get an idea of how it works, suppose that you ran across a date in our own Gregorian calendar written like this: 2012/12/25. You would recognize this as referring to Christmas Day 2012. The date is written as a series of numbers with the largest unit (the year) written first, then a smaller unit (the month), and finally the smallest unit (the day).
This is also the way the Long Count Calendar works. It expresses dates as a series of numbers with the biggest units first, ending with the smallest unit—the day. But the larger units in the Long Count Calendar are not the months and years that we are used to.
The Long Count Calendar does begin with a familiar unit—the day—which is referred to by the word k’in, which means “sun.” But for units larger than the day it uses unfamiliar units based on the numbers 18 and 20.
The next larger unit—the winal—is made up of 20 days, giving us a period of almost 3 of our weeks, or two-thirds of a month.
If you put 18 winal together, it makes up a unit called a tun, which is 360 days (18 x 20), or just shy of a year.
Moving to the next larger unit, 20 tun make up a k’atun, which is 7,200 days (20 x 360), so a k’atun is just under 20 years.
Finally, 20 k’atun make up a unit that, today, is commonly called a b’ak’tun. Each of these is 144,000 days (20 x 7,200), making them a bit less than 400 years long. (More precisely, 394 years, 95 days.)
You can think of the units on the Long Count Calendar as being 1 day, a period of a bit less than 1 month, a period of almost 1 year, a period of almost 20 years, and a period of almost 400 years.
Dates on the Long Count Calendar are expressed by a series of numbers using these units. For example, the Gregorian date March 13, 2012, would be represented on the Long Count Calendar by the date 12.19.19.3.17, or:
12 b’ak’tun,
19 k’atun,
19 tun,
3 winal, and
17 k’in (days).
Every calendar needs a place to begin—a “start date.” In the case of the Gregorian calendar, that is January 1 of A.D. 1. We can use our calendar to express dates before this time, but this is the date our calendar uses to mark the starting point for the present era.
In the case of the Long Count Calendar, the date beginning the current era is 0.0.0.0.1, which corresponds to August 12, 3114 B.C. (plus or minus a day; scholarly opinions vary). Since that time nearly 13 b’ak’tun (cycles of 144,000 days) have passed—which brings us to what is happening this December.
Party like it’s 12.19.19.17.19
December 20 of this year has the Long Count date 12.19.19.17.19. This is the last day of the 13th b’ak’tun of the current Long Count era. The next day, the numbers roll over.
In a way, it’s like our December 31, 1999, was. The next day the numbers rolled over for the beginning of the year 2000.
That’s essentially what’s happening with the Long Count Calendar. On our December 21, the next b’ak’tun will begin, expressed by the date of 13.0.0.0.0.
Often you will hear this new period described as the 13th b’ak’tun, because the number “13” is at the front of the date, but this isn’t technically accurate. Long Count dates with “13” in the b’ak’tun place are part of the 14th b’ak’tun, the same way Gregorian dates in the 1900s are part of the 20th century.
So that’s it. That’s what’s happening with the “Mayan Calendar” in December. It’s having its own equivalent of December 31, 1999, and a rollover to the next set of numbers.
You can’t blame them . . . much
In a way, it’s natural to invest changes on the calendar with meaning. That’s the reason people in every culture, no matter what day they reckon as the beginning of the year, celebrate the new year with a party or a religious ceremony (or both).
When the arriving year is a special one—for example, the real or perceived beginning of a new decade, a new century, a new millennium, or a new b’ak’tun—the festivities are correspondingly greater.
Of course, the year 2000 wasn’t the actual beginning of the third millennium (that would be 2001), but as December 31, 1999, approached, it was perceived that way. Virtually no one in the Western world had experienced dates that didn’t start with a “19.” And there hadn’t been a year without a “1” on the front of it in 1,000 years. To suddenly start having years begin with a “2” was something to take note of.
The numbers we use in our calendars have a real, subjective, psychological impact, and because of that there can be a tendency to attribute too much significance to them.
A thousand years ago, many people got worked up about the arrival of A.D. 1000 and whether it would bring the end of the world. And they weren’t the only ones to get excited about a numerically significant date. People around the world have been worked up about dates of numerological significance throughout human history, regardless of the calendar in use.
It’s a known phenomenon.
At this point, it’s so well known that we really should know better. How many prophetic dates have come and gone in our own lifetimes? Google “end of the world failed predictions” and you will get extensive lists of both recent and historical examples.
So why should we think this calendar-based prediction will be any different?
Are the Maya special?
One could argue that this time will be different because the Maya—or their calendar—is somehow special and that the changing of a b’ak’tun really does tie in to events that are significant for the whole world.
If so, the historical record should bear that out. The last time a b’ak’tun changed (12.0.0.0.0) was September 18, 1618, the one before that (11.0.0.0.0) was June 15, 1224, and the one before that (10.0.0.0.0) was March 13, 830.
Anything earth-shattering happen on any of those days?
They’re not exactly famous dates in history.
But maybe the changing of this b’ak’tun will be special. Maybe there’s something about the end of b’ak’tun 13 that’s different.
What might that be?
To our minds the date 13.0.0.0.0 might appear momentous because the number 13 is considered unlucky, but that’s a superstition in our culture, not the classical Maya culture.
For the classical Maya, a different reason might suggest itself: That was the duration of the last world. According to some Maya legends, the gods made three worlds before they made the one in which we live. The third world lasted for 13 b’ak’tun, and the new world was created on 13.0.0.0.0, or August 11, 3114 B.C., the day before 0.0.0.0.1.
You might reason: If the previous world lasted that long, maybe this one will, too, and so we should expect the end of the present fourth world and/or the beginning of the next and fifth world when 13.0.0.0.0 rolls around again.
You might reason that way. But you might not.
If you do, it’s mere speculation. In point of fact, we don’t have classical Mayan sources that treat the 2012 date in this way. They’re just not there.
The elephant in the room
The absence of classical Maya sources that attribute such significance to December 21, 2012, is the real giveaway. If you think about it, that’s the reason that the 2012 “experts” are so divided and uncertain about what’s supposed to happen.
If the Maya sources were clear, if they all said, “This is what will happen”—whether that be the end of the world, a global disaster, the transformation of mankind, contact with aliens, or anything else—then the plethora of claims about December 21 would never have arisen. The 2012 marketers would have a consistent message.
But they don’t. There is a prediction vacuum that advocates have filled by proposing numerous, contradictory scenarios.
That is itself a strong indicator of the unreliability of the claims.
Why should we believe any of the claims about 2012? They are so many and so contradictory, and they are not even based on actual claims by the ancient Maya.
Which leads to another question . . .
How would the Maya have known?
The Maya civilization was not technologically advanced. It was relatively sophisticated compared to many ancient cultures, but it wasn’t high-tech. How, then, would the Maya have been able to predict unusual occurrences hundreds of years in the future? How could they have known?
One proposal is that they were given knowledge of these events by someone who wastechnologically advanced. For example, aliens could have told them the date that they would return to Earth (that is, if the aliens were super-punctual and had their schedule planned to the day, hundreds of years in advance). But this does not fit the facts we have. Classical Maya sources do not describe aliens returning to Earth at 13.0.0.0.0.
It’s also not plausible given the way the Mayan calendar works. Consider a parallel: Suppose we were in contact with aliens today and they told us that they would return to earth March 4, 3013. How would we record this fact? We would simply note the date on our existing calendar.
What we would not do is create a new calendar, backdated to a start date several thousand years ago and timed to have an impressive rollover number on March 4, 3013.
That’s just not how people use calendars. They set up their calendars to run from a given start date and then mark events of significance going forward. And that’s how the Long Count Calendar works: It starts with the creation of the present world (according to the ancient Mayan view) and goes forward from there.
So whether aliens might have told the Maya when they would return or whether they told them anything else (e.g., a comet will smash into you on this date), it goes against logic to believe the Maya would have jiggered with their calendar to produce an impressive rollover number on that date. It’s far more likely they would have done what we would do: Note the date on the calendar in use.
What’s going to happen?
Christians look forward to the coming of Christ in glory at the end of time, but we should not expect it to happen on any particular day. In fact, we are warned not to try to calculate specific dates in God’s plan.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Since the Ascension Christ’s coming in glory has been imminent, even though ‘it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority’ (Acts 1:7; cf. Mk 13:32)” (CCC 673).
We don’t know when the end of the world will come, but we do know that we all will eventually meet our Maker. As a result, we should live with an attitude of hopeful expectation and remain close to God, in keeping with the biblical exhortations to remain “awake” (1 Thess. 5:6).
Now let me give you my own 2012 theory. Here’s what I think is going to happen as we approach the Mayan 13.0.0.0.0.
First, there will be more news stories about the approaching date. You’ll hear it talked about more on radio and television. Some people will be breathless with anticipation, others will be afraid, and many will roll their eyes and chuckle.
Then, as we get closer, you’ll start hearing some of the 2012 promoters starting to backpedal and hedge their bets, suggesting what might happen rather than declaring whatwill happen, saying that perhaps 2012 isn’t about a single day but a broader period of time, that maybe the changes will only start—and start small—on December 21. In general, there will be a trend among some promoters of lowering expectations and being more ambiguous.
Finally, when the day itself arrives, nothing big will happen. Oh, sure, there’s a fluke chance that something really noteworthy will take place, but the odds of anything world-transforming occurring on this day are the same as the odds of something world-transforming happening on any other day.
The next day, the 2012-ers will receive a significant amount of (mostly) gentle ribbing at the office and on television and radio.
A few days later we’ll have Christmas (remember, this is going to happen in the pre-Christmas rush), and the whole business will be quickly forgotten.
For the next 394 years.
What Now?
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My buddy Jon Sorensen is out visiting this weekend, so he’s not around to stop me from posting the beginning of his awesome article on how Jesus is not a knockoff of the Egyptian god Horus. (Take that, Bill Maher!)
Here goes . . .
Horus Manure: Debunking the Jesus/Horus Connection
Many atheists, neo-pagans, and other disbelievers of Christianity claim the story of Jesus Christ was borrowed from earlier mythologies. In recent years, a claim has been making the rounds that Jesus is based on the Egyptian god, Horus.
Who was Horus?
Horus is one of the oldest recorded deities in the ancient Egyptian religion. Often depicted as a falcon or a man with a falcon head, Horus was believed to be the god of the sun and of war. Initially he appeared as a local god, but over time the ancient Egyptians came to believe the reigning pharaoh was a manifestation of Horus (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, “Horus”).
What about Jesus?
The skeptical claims being made about Jesus are not always the same. In some versions he was a persuasive teacher whose followers later attempted to deify him by adopting aspects of earlier god-figures, while in others he is merely an amalgamation of myths and never really existed at all. Both versions attempt to provide evidence that the Gospel accounts of the life of Christ are rip-offs.
In the 2008 documentary film Religulous (whose name is a combination of religion andridiculous), erstwhile comedian and political commentator Bill Maher confronts an unprepared Christian with this claim. Here is part of their interaction.
Bill Maher: But the Jesus story wasn’t original. Christian man: How so? Maher: Written in 1280 B.C., the Book of the Dead describes a God, Horus. Horus is the son of the god Osiris, born to a virgin mother. He was baptized in a river by Anup the Baptizer who was later beheaded. Like Jesus, Horus was tempted while alone in the desert, healed the sick, the blind, cast out demons, and walked on water. He raised Asar from the dead. “Asar” translates to “Lazarus.” Oh, yeah, he also had twelve disciples. Yes, Horus was crucified first, and after three days, two women announced Horus, the savior of humanity, had been resurrected.
Maher is only repeating things that are and believed by many people today. Similar claims are made in movies such as Zeitgeist and Religulous and in pseudo-academic books such as Christ in Egypt: The Jesus-Horus Connection and Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth.
Often Christians are not prepared for this type of encounter, and some are even swayed by this line of argumentation. Maher’s tirade provides a good summary of the claims, so let’s deconstruct it, one line at a time.
Headlined, “The Crime of Circumcision,” it deals with a ruling issued by a judge in Germany that prohibits Jews from circumcizing their baby boys:
A district judge in Cologne, Germany, recently ruled that ritual circumcision is a crime, violating “the fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity,” which outweighs other parental and religious rights. “This change runs counter to the interests of the child,” the court concluded, “who can decide his religious affiliation himself later in life.”
Circumcision is a rite central to the Jewish faith and is, in fact, the rite by which a male becomes part of the Jewish community.
The circumcision of infants is also expressly commanded by Jewish law, which requires the circumcision of baby boys on the eighth day after birth.
Unsurprisingly, the decision is being condemened by religious folks:
German religious figures from all the Abrahamic faiths criticized the Cologne ruling, with particular outrage expressed by Jewish leaders. Dieter Graumann, head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, called it “outrageous and insensitive” and warned that a general application of the decision would “coldbloodedly force Judaism into illegality.”
I’m well known for holding the position that abortion is the black hole political issue of our time. Given the number of people it kills every year, it outmasses virtually every other issue in play.
But it’s possible that other, equally important issues can arise.
One of those, for me, is the core doctrine of the Christian faith: the nature of God.
Don’t want to take my word for that? How about the Catechism of the Catholic Church’s:
Christians are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: not in their names,55 for there is only one God, the almighty Father, his only Son and the Holy Spirit: the Most Holy Trinity.
The mystery of the Most Holy Trinity is the central mystery of Christian faith and life. It is the mystery of God in himself. It is therefore the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them. It is the most fundamental and essential teaching in the “hierarchy of the truths of faith”.56 The whole history of salvation is identical with the history of the way and the means by which the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, reveals himself to men “and reconciles and unites with himself those who turn away from sin” [CCC 233-234].
How might this doctrine become a political issue?
In various races, we might be asked to vote for candidates who are Mormon.
While they may be very nice people and may even share many values with Christians, Mormons are not Christians. They do not have valid baptism because they are polytheists. That is, they believe in multiple gods. This so affects their understanding of the baptismal formula that it renders their administration of baptism invalid and prevents them from becoming Christians when they attempt to administer the sacrament.
Unlike other polytheists (e.g., Hindus, Shintoists), Mormons claim to be Christian.
Casting a vote for a Mormon candidate thus means casting one’s vote for a polytheist who present himself to the world as a Christian.
I can see situations in which that might be a morally legitimate option. For example, if one lived in Utah, where the only viable candidates in many races are Mormon, it could be morally legitimate to vote for a pro-life Mormon over a pro-abortion Mormon.
But matters seem different when we are talking about national races, such as the presidency.
To elect a Mormon to the American presidency would, to my mind, be a disaster.
It would not only spur Mormon recruitment efforts in numerous ways, it would mainstreamize the religion in a way that would deeply confuse the American public about the central doctrine of the Christian faith. It would give the public the idea that Mormons are Christian (an all-too-frequent misunderstanding as it is) and that polytheism is somehow compatible with Christianity.
In other words, it would deal a huge blow to the American public’s already shaky understanding of what Christianity is.
That means it would massively compromise a fundamental value on the scale of the abortion issue.
Faced with the choice of voting for a pro-life polytheist-claiming-to-be-Christian or a pro-abortion whatever, I might well choose to simply sit out that race and refrain from voting for either candidate, because voting either way would mean doing massive damage to America.
Note that I’m not in principle opposed to voting for polytheists. I could see, for example, voting for a pro-life Hindu over a pro-abortion monotheist. But a Hindu does not claim to be a Christian and thus does not risk confusing people about the core doctrine of Christianity the way Mormonism does.
I am also aware that the U.S. Constitution says that there shall not be religious tests for public office. Specifically, Article VI:3 of the document says:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
This has nothing to do with what I’m talking about.
What the passage means is that the government cannot bar a candidate for running from office based on his religion. I’m not proposing that it do so. It in no way means that the voters must disregard a candidate’s religion when deciding how to cast their votes. Voters are free to decide how they will vote based on any criteria they like, and they can and at times should take the religious beliefs of a candidate into account.
When a candidate’s election (or even nomination) would do grave damage to the American public’s understanding of what Christianity is, a value so important is in play that I personally don’t see how I could vote for such a person.
There has been some talk recently about a new book by Cambridge University professor Colin Humphreys that proposes the Last Supper was held on Wednesday of Holy Week (GET IT HERE), rather than on Thursday as it has been traditionally commemorated. I haven’t had a chance to review his arguments yet, but there is room for discussion here. In fact, in his recent, second volume of Jesus of Nazareth (GET IT HERE!), Pope Benedict wrestles with the subject of the Last Supper without coming to a definite conclusion.
Regardless of when precisely the Last Supper took place in Holy Week, one thing both the Cambridge professor and the pontiff are agreed upon is that the Crucifixion took place on Friday. There are, however, people who dispute this.
In some Protestant churches, especially Fundamentalist ones, every year at Easter time there are sermons explaining that Jesus didn’t really die on a Friday but on a Wednesday. This claim is based on Matthew 12:40, where Jesus states that “as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
“If Jesus rose from the dead on Saturday night,” the argument goes, “then he couldn’t have been crucified and died on Friday afternoon, because there aren’t three days in there. There’s only one, so we need to back up his death from Friday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon.” This is often accompanied by the claim that Easter is based on a pagan holiday; the “moving” of Jesus death to Good Friday is explained as the result of some unspecified pagan cause.
None of this is true. Easter is not based on a pagan holiday but on a Jewish one: Passover. Easter originated as the first Sunday following Passover, when Jesus was crucified.
Neither is the name Easter derived from the pagan goddess Ishtar. Ishtar was a Mesopotamian goddess who was worshiped over in Iraq, centuries before Christ, not in Medieval England where the English language was born.
In two languages—English and German—the name for Easter may be connected with a Germanic goddess of spring, but this is unclear since her name (Eostre) had already become the name of a whole month on the calendar and there may have been no more pagan significance to the name to Medieval Christians than terms like “Wednesday” (Odin’s Day) or “Thursday” (Thor’s Day) or “January” (Janus’s Month) or “March” (Mars’s Month) have to us. The Medieval English Christian scholar the Venerable Bede, for example, is reported to have observed that pagan feasts for Eostre had died out by his time, even though the name of the month remained, and Christians were now celebrating the resurrection of Christ as a paschal feast in the manner of other Christian countries.
Which brings up an interesting point: Only a speaker of English or German (where the holiday is called Ostern) would even think the holiday has a pagan origin.
In virtually every other language, the name of Easter is derived from the Jewish word Pesach or “Passover.” Thus in Greek the term for Easter is Pascha; in Latin the term is also Pascha. From there it passed into the Romance languages, and so in Spanish it is Pascua, in Italian Pasqua, in French Paques, and in Portugese Pascoa. It also passed into the non-Romance languages, such as the Germanic languages Dutch, where it is Pasen, and Danish, where it is Paaske.
Also, because of the way Christianity spread (from Jerusalem, then around the Mediterranean basin, arriving in far-flung places like England and Germany later on), Christians had long been celebrating Easter—under Passover-derived names—long before English or German came into existence. If, in a couple of countries, new languages happened to use words that had pre-Christian etymologies for the day then that in no way shows that it has pagan roots. Its roots are well known and predate these languages. The holiday was celebrated all over the Christian world long before the names were attached to it in England and Germany.
If Easter is free of pagan origins, so is Jesus’ crucifixion on Friday. The premise of the “three days and three nights” argument — that Jesus rose from the dead on what we would call Saturday night — might well be true. In Jesus’ day, the Jews reckoned the day as beginning at sunset.
When Scripture indicates that Jesus rose on the first day of the week, therefore, it means that he rose on the day that began at sunset on Saturday and lasted until sunset on Sunday. Since we are told his tomb was found empty “after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week” (Matt. 28:1), he must have risen between sunset Saturday and dawn Sunday. Whether this was before or after midnight Scripture does not say. He might have risen either Saturday night or Sunday morning before dawn, though, for purposes of determining when he was crucified, it doesn’t matter.
In the Bible, parts of time units were frequently counted as wholes. Thus a king might be said to have reigned for two years, even if he reigned for only 14 months. In the same way, a day and a night does not mean a period of 24 hours. It can refer to any portion of a day coupled with any portion of a night. The expression “three days and three nights” could be used as simply a slightly hyperbolic way of referring to “three days.”
As Protestant Bible scholar R. T. France notes: “Three days and three nights was a Jewish idiom to a period covering only two nights” (Matthew, 213).
Similarly, D. A. Carson, another highly esteemed conservative Protestant Bible scholar, explains: “In rabbinical thought a day and a night make an onah, and a part of an onah is as the whole. . . . Thus according to Jewish tradition, ‘three days and three nights’ need mean no more than ‘three days’ or the combination of any part of three separate days” (Expositor’s Bible Commentary, 8:296).
If Jesus was crucified and died Friday afternoon, that would be the first day; at sundown on Friday the second day would begin; then at sundown on Saturday the third day would begin. So Jesus was indeed “raised on the third day” (Matthew 20:19).
Scripture repeatedly tells us that Jesus was crucified on “the day of preparation,” which was the first-century Jewish way of referring to Friday, the day of preparation for the Sabbath. This is why the women were not able to anoint his body before he was buried — because Jesus was hurriedly buried late in the afternoon, just as the Sabbath was beginning. The women thus had to rest until the Sabbath was over (Luke 23:56).
We are also told that the Jewish leaders asked Pilate to order the legs of the crucifixion victims broken so they would die faster (from asphyxiation due to an inability to push themselves up on their crosses and take a breath), “in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath” (John 19:31).
Some advocates of a Wednesday crucifixion concede that Jesus was crucified on the day before a Sabbath, but deny that this was the regular, weekly Sabbath. In later times, the phrase “day of preparation” came to be used to refer to the day before Passover and, this argument goes, Passover counted as a Sabbath in the sense that it was a day of rest, even though it usually did not fall on the weekly Sabbath. Thus Jesus was crucified on the day before Passover and had to be buried hurriedly on that account.
But this explanation will not do. For a start, I am unaware of anything in biblical or post-biblical Jewish tradition that regards Passover as a “sabbath.” Indeed, later rabbinic tradition held that if Passover fell on a Saturday that it overrode the Sabbath laws (so you could do the work needed to kill and eat the Passover lamb, e.g.). However that may be, in the first century, “the day of preparation” referred to Friday, not the day before Passover. Further, we know from Scripture that the Sabbath following Jesus’ crucifixion was the regular, weekly Sabbath, the seventh day of the week: “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher” (Matt. 28:1).
We can thus reconstruct the chronology of the crucifixion, death and Resurrection of Christ as follows:
Friday, the Day of Preparation: Jesus is crucified with two thieves. From noon to three in the afternoon, a darkness covers the land (Matthew 27:45). Then, “[s]ince it was the Day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from remaining on the cross on the Sabbath … the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away” (John 19:31). Then Joseph of Arimathea obtains Jesus’ body and buries it: “It was Preparation Day [that is, the day before the Sabbath]. So as evening approached, Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body” (Mark 15:42-43, NIV).
Saturday, the Sabbath: “On the Sabbath they [the women] rested according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56b). Also on this day, “that is, after the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate” and asked for a guard to be placed on the tomb (Matthew 27:62).
Sunday, the first day of the week: “Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher” and found that Jesus had risen from the dead (Matthew 28:1).
The time of Christ’s death is indeed Good Friday, not a hypothetical Crucifixion Wednesday.
Pope Benedict’s remarks concerning Jewish individuals in his recent book Jesus of Nazareth (vol. 2) (GET IT HERE! GET IT HERE!) have attracted considerable attention.
For example, the book contains a passage which some have interpreted as saying that the Church should not seek to convert Jewish individuals. It is not at all clear to me that this is what the Pope is saying. The passage is complex and bears more than one interpretation. So let’s dive in and see what we can make of it.
The beginning of the discussion (which is not usually quoted by people commenting on the text) is this. Starting on p. 44 of the book, Pope Benedict writes:
At this point we encounter once again the connection between the Gospel tradition and the basic elements of Pauline theology. If Jesus says in the eschatological discourse that the Gospel must first be proclaimed to the Gentiles and only then can the end come, we find exactly the same thing in Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “A hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in, and so all Israel will be saved” (11:25–26).
The full number of the Gentiles and all Israel: In this formula we see the universalism of the divine salvific will. For our purposes, though, the important point is that Paul, too, recognizes an age of the Gentiles, which is the present and which must be fulfilled if God’s plan is to attain its goal.
So Pope Benedict is contemplating the two-stages of phases of history that precede the end of the world. First, there are what Our Lord refers to as “the times of the gentiles,” in which the Gospel is preached to all nations and the gentiles are given the chance to convert, and then the second stage in which the partial hardness that has come upon Israel is removed and so “all Israel will be saved”—a reference to a corporate conversion of the Jewish people at the end of history.
Note how this viewpoint differs from two rival viewpoints: First, it differs from the “Jews don’t need Jesus, they have their own covenant” perspective. This idea, which has been trendy is some Catholic circles of late, is manifestly contrary to the teaching of the New Testament and to the historic teaching of the Church’s Magisterium. It also is not what Pope Benedict is advocating here. He is not saying that Jews don’t need Jesus or that they don’t need to become Christians. He is saying that they will corporately convert to Christ, but not until the end of time. Prior to that point, individual Jews may become Christians—as with the apostles and the very first Christians and with other converts from Judaism down through history. But the full, corporate conversion of Israel (which even then might not involve every single individual without exception) is something to be found only at the end of the world.
Secondly, the viewpoint that the Pope is articulating is different than the “Jews don’t matter anymore; they don’t have any special relationship with God or mission; their role has been completely supplanted by the Church and they have no further special significance.” Again, this position is contrary to the New Testament, which ascribes an ongoing special place for the Jewish people in God’s plan (as illustrated by the end of the world being contingent on their corporate conversion), and it is not the viewpoint that Pope Benedict is articulating. He recognizes, as we will see him say even more explicitly in a moment, that the Jewish people has a special and ongoing mission.
He then speaks of the early Church’s attitude toward this two-phase understanding of Christian history (the preaching of the Gospel to the gentiles, followed by the corporate conversion of Israel):
The fact that the early Church was unable to assess the chronological duration of these kairoí (“times”) of the Gentiles and that it was generally assumed they would be fairly short is ultimately a secondary consideration.
The essential point is that these times were both asserted and foretold and that, above all else and prior to any calculation of their duration, they had to be understood and were understood by the disciples in terms of a mission: to accomplish now what had been proclaimed and demanded — by bringing the Gospel to all peoples.
The restlessness with which Paul journeyed to the nations, so as to bring the message to all and, if possible, to fulfill the mission within his own lifetime — this restlessness can only be explained if one is aware of the historical and eschatological significance of his exclamation: “Necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor 9:16).
In this sense, the urgency of evangelization in the apostolic era was predicated not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history: If the world was to arrive at its destiny, the Gospel had to be brought to all nations. At many stages in history, this sense of urgency has been markedly attenuated, but it has always revived, generating new dynamism for evangelization.
What the Pope says in the last paragraph is quite interesting. The idea that individuals in the apostolic age were motivated to evangelize “not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history,” is quite interesting.
It is certainly true that the early evangelists, including Paul, were motivated by the fact that Christ had indicated the Gospel must be preached to all the nations and that this plays a role in God’s plan of the ages. If it’s part of God’s plan and Christ said to do it, that’s reason to get to work evangelizing! And the first evangelists certainly understood that.
It’s questionable, however, how much they also saw “the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation” as playing a role. Certainly later in Church history the theological tides shifted very strongly in favor of the idea that concrete knowledge (and acceptance) of the Gospel is necessary for salvation. In our own day the tides have shifted back a bit, with the Magisterium indicating (especially from the mid 20th century onwards) that an explicit knowledge of the Gospel is not an absolute necessity and that people can, if they otherwise cooperate with God’s grace, come to salvation if they are in innocent ignorance of the Gospel.
Similar themes are found in the writings of the Church Fathers, who hold that some gentiles prior to the time of Christ could be saved if they lived according to the Logos or “Reason” of God, though they lacked knowledge of his word in the Scriptures.
In the apostolic age, it would be fair to assume that something of this idea was present as well. In the early chapters of Romans, Paul alludes to some gentiles potentially being excused by their consciences on the day of judgment because they followed the law of God written on their hearts, even though they didn’t have knowledge of the Mosaic Law.
On the other hand, Paul also uses language that suggests knowledge and acceptance of the Gospel is quite important for salvation, saying that he preaches the Gospel so vigorously, in part, to provoke some of his Jewish brethren to envy of the grace God is working among the gentiles and thus, via their conversion, “save some of them” (i.e., Jews end up accepting the Gospel). On other occasions, he spoke of those who reject the Gospel as considering themselves “not worthy of salvation.”
Given the strong connection made between accepting the Gospel and salvation in the New Testament, it is hard to simply set aside the salvation motive as a significant part of the impetus toward preaching the Gospel in the first century.
I don’t know that the Pope is doing that. In the English translation, his language (“not so much”) suggests at least something of a downplaying of the salvation motive, but it does not rule it out altogether. (Also, this is precisely the kind of exegetical point on which he indicated people are free to contradict him. “How much did the salvation motive play a role in first century evangelization according to the New Testament?” is an exegetical question, not a dogmatic one.)
Now Pope Benedict takes up the question of Israel’s ongoing mission:
In this regard, the question of Israel’s mission has always been present in the background. We realize today with horror how many misunderstandings with grave consequences have weighed down our history. Yet a new reflection can acknowledge that the beginnings of a correct understanding have always been there, waiting to be rediscovered, however deep the shadows.
Here is something we need to note very carefully, because this is the hinge that takes us into the passage about evangelizing Jewish people. The subject at hand is not (certainly not primarily) the evangelization of Jews. It is the recognition of Israel’s unique role in history. Christians have, the Holy Father indicates, often failed to recognize that role and this has resulted in many horrific “misunderstandings with grave consequences [that] have weighted down our history.” Despite that, he indicates “the beginnings of a correct understanding” of Israel’s role “have always been there, waiting to be rediscovered, however deep in the shadows.”
Pope Benedict is thus about to cite an example designed to show how—even at a much different stage in Church history—there was nevertheless a shadowy, partial understanding of Israel’s unique role. That is the Pope’s primary point:
Here I should like to recall the advice given by Bernard of Clairvaux to his pupil Pope Eugene III on this matter. He reminds the Pope that his duty of care extends not only to Christians, but: “You also have obligations toward unbelievers, whether Jew, Greek, or Gentile” (De Consideratione III/1, 2). Then he immediately corrects himself and observes more accurately: “Granted, with regard to the Jews, time excuses you; for them a determined point in time has been fixed, which cannot be anticipated. The full number of the Gentiles must come in first. But what do you say about these Gentiles? … Why did it seem good to the Fathers … to suspend the word of faith while unbelief was obdurate? Why do we suppose the word that runs swiftly stopped short?” (De Consideratione III/1, 3).
So Bernard of Clarivaux at one point alluded to the two-phase understanding of Christian history, with the set time of Israel’s conversion being confined to the unknowable future. This the Pope documents his major theme (it’s what started out this section, remember?) has been understood in Christian history, and thus there has been at least some recognition of Israel’s unique and ongoing mission, whatever crimes and misunderstandings concerning the Jewish people have also accompanied it.
St. Bernard also seems to suggest that Pope Eugene has an excuse not to evangelize Jews as vigorously as gentiles because their corporate conversion is still future, and Pope Benedict appears to give support to this view, saying that this observation of St. Bernard’s is more accurate than his initial summary. The Holy Father then cites Hildegard Brem (a German nun of our own day):
Hildegard Brem comments on this passage as follows: “In the light of Romans 11:25, the Church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews, since she must wait for the time fixed for this by God, ‘until the full number of the Gentiles come in’ (Rom 11:25). On the contrary, the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering (cf. Ep 363) . . .” (quoted in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Winkler, I, p. 834).
This passage, at least as it is translated in English, contains the strongest statement in the entire passage concerning evangelizing Jews. What does it mean? Romans 11:25 is one of the base texts that undergirds the two-phrase conception of Christian history that the pope has been discussing. It is where St. Paul says:
Lest you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brethren: a hardening has come upon part of Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles come in.
In light of this, what does it mean to say that “the Church must not concern herself with the conversion of the Jews”? It could mean any number of things.
I think it would be reasonable to say that the Church should not worry or be concerned or upset if the Jewish people do not corporately convert in our own age. It would also be reasonable to say on the basis of Romans 11:25 to say that the Church should not expect the corporate conversion of the Jewish people in an age prior to the end. If any of these are the kind of “concern” the Church shouldn’t have then the statement is quite reasonable.
On the other hand, if what is meant is that the Church should not share the Gospel with Jewish people prior to the end then the statement is highly problematic. One reason is that we won’t know when the end has arrived until it really does arrive. At any point prior to the Second Coming we could be facing a situation that looks like the end but really isn’t. If this is the criterion the Church would never share the Gospel with the Jewish people.
Further, this understanding would be flatly in contradiction with that of the apostles and other New Testament authors who were themselves evangelized Jews!
And it’s not as if acceptance of the Gospel has nothing to do with salvation. Even if we recognize the possibility of salvation for the innocently unaware, the Church has repeatedly stressed that this is no reason to slack off in our efforts to evangelize! What’s good for the Jew is good for the gentile in this regard, for we all deal with the same merciful God, and if his mercy to the innocently unaware is reason to slack off evangelizing Jews then it’s reason to slack off evangelizing gentiles, too. (Which we know not to be the case.)
It also rubs against the grain of St. Paul’s characterization of the Jewish people in Romans 11 as olive shoots from a cultivated olive tree, whereas gentile believers represent wild olive shoots that have been grafted on to the cultivated tree. The tree nevertheless remains a cultivated one, and St. Paul comments that on account of this Jewish people who embrace the faith will be all the more readily grated onto “their own tree.”
In this light, suggestions that the Church ought not to evangelize Jewish people have (rightly) provoked comments from Jewish Christians like, “How dare you suggest that the fullness of my own faith not be shared with me! How dare you suggest that I as a Jew shouldn’t be taught about my own Messiah and all of his teachings! Your proposal would effectively disinherit me from the fullness of my own heritage!”
Most fundamentally, though, any suggestion that the Church should not evangelize Jewish people because of the hardness that has come upon Israel would contradict Romans 11:25 itself. It doesn’t say that Israel has become completely hard. It says that a hardness has come upon it “in part.” But only in part. Thus St. Paul makes the point that God has not rejected the Jewish people and that he himself is a Jew. The fact that Israel has been hardened in part toward the Gospel does not change the fact that part of it has not been hardened and is receptive to the Gospel.
The Church thus has an obligation to preach the Gospel to all mankind, including the part of Israel that has not been hardened.
Any total non-proclamation-of-the-Gospel-to-Jewish-people view is thus a non-starter.
What about a middle position?
Could one say, “Well, we know that Israel is partly hardened and partly not, so we should put some efforts into evangelizing Jewish people but not apply as much of our efforts there as elsewhere, with nations that do not display this hardening in the present age?”
Economics is the study of the use of limited resources that have alternative uses, and since there are a limited amount of evangelistic resources at our disposal and since they could be used to evangelize other peoples, so evangelization is subject to the laws of economics as much as any other field. This means we must make choices about who to evangelize and when. We even see decisions of that nature being made in the New Testament itself, as when Paul has a dream of a man from Macedonia and turns to evangelize there rather than in Asia Minor. One could argue that the two-stages of Christian history as they have been revealed to us constitute a similar revelation with implications for where we should spend the bulk of our evangelistic resources.
But there are only a few million Jews in the world, and there are over a billion Catholics. We’re not going to save that much of our evangelistic energy by adopting a limited evangelization policy for the Jewish people.
There is also something repugnant about the idea of hindering Christ’s own people, as a matter of policy, from learning about him. Certainly this was contrary to St. Paul’s practice, which was to preach to the Jewish community first and then to the gentiles.
So there is considerable ambiguity on this point. I don’t know what Hildegard Brem meant. If she meant we must not evangelize Jewish people or that we should be unconcerned about that subject then I think she is wrong. If she means that we should adopt a policy of minimal evangelization toward them, I am quite uncomfortable with the proposal. If she means that we should make reasonable efforts at evangelization but not be concerned that these will not bear full fruit until the end then I am entirely in agreement.
I know that, in view of the history of anti-Semitism, many Europeans (even moreso than Americans) are quite uncomfortable with the idea of evangelizing Jewish individuals. This discomfort is all the more acutely felt among many in Germany, for whom the Holocaust can be a powerful source of guilt and shame, even if they were not personally involved and even if they personally resisted it. This may play a role in coloring some statements regarding the question of evangelizing Jewish people, and sometimes these statements can be poorly phrased. That could be playing a role here with Hildegard Brem’s. I don’t know. I don’t know her or her work (or what is said in the original German!) well enough to assess that.
But what about Pope Benedict’s use of her work here?
He seems to cite her to build on the previous remarks of St. Bernard concerning the Jews’ unique role in history. Presumably he views what Brem says as elaborating more fully the general theme established with the quotations from St. Bernard. That includes Brem’s ambiguous statement regarding the Church not needing to be “concerned” with “the conversion of the Jews” (not the same thing as the evangelization of the Jews). It also includes Brem’s statement that “the Jews themselves are a living homily to which the Church must draw attention, since they call to mind the Lord’s suffering.”
This statement would not be described as “politically correct” from an interfaith standpoint. Brem is speaking from a uniquely Christian standpoint that would not be shared by non-Christian Jews. She appears to mean that the Church should call attention to the Jewish people because of their special role in God’s plan of the ages. This makes them “a living homily” (what Isaiah called “a light to the nations”), and the sufferings they have endured through history call to mind the sufferings that Christ also endured. She thus seems to suggest a form of historical, mystical identification between the suffering nation of Israel and the suffering Messiah who is its eschatological head. Thus through the innocent sufferings of Israel—both the nation and its Messiah—God brings about his plan for the world.
Or maybe she means something else. The quote is brief, and we do not have much context.
However that may be, the statement that the Church should not be “concerned” with Israel’s “conversion,” coupled with her distinctly Christian take on Israel’s role in history, do not add up to anything like a clear statement that the Church should refrain from sharing the Gospel with Jewish people or even that it should limit it as a matter of deliberate policy.
A more sensible approach would be to say that we should preach the Gospel always, in and out of season, to all, including Our Lord’s own people, and leave the results up to God, knowing that the corporate conversion of Israel is something that will only happen at the end of time.
We also shouldn’t prejudge the idea that we are not at the end of time. We might be. We also might not be. The Catechism stresses that the Second Coming is unpredictable as to its time. If God wanted, it could happen with amazing suddenness (that would affect the interpretation of some prophecies, but the nature of prophecy is such that its correct interpretation is often only determinable in hindsight).
In view of the ambiguity of Brem’s statement, I think we need to be cautious in what we attribute to Pope Benedict.
I also think it is significant that he chose to quote her rather than speak in his own voice. One of the things characteristic of his writing is he often borrows what others have said when he wishes to propose an idea without imposing it. He knows that people will take what he says in his own voice as if he is speaking with papal authority even when, as in this book set, he has said everyone is free to contradict him and that it is not a matter of magisterial teaching.
So even if Brem is saying something more than what I think can reasonably be concluded from Romans 11:25, I think Pope Benedict is likely proposing it for consideration rather than imposing it as a matter of obligatory belief.
I also would cite to final pieces of evidence regarding Pope Benedict’s handling of this subject.
First, he drops the discussion of the conversion of Israel and what concern the Church should have for it. He concludes by returning to the general theme of the two-stage understanding of Christian history—the same theme he began with—and the fact that the gospel must first be preached to the nations. He concludes:
The prophecy of the time of the Gentiles and the corresponding mission is a core element of Jesus’ eschatological message. The special mission to evangelize the Gentiles, which Paul received from the risen Lord, is firmly anchored in the message given by Jesus to his disciples before his Passion. The time of the Gentiles — “the time of the Church” — which, as we have seen, is proclaimed in all the Gospels, constitutes an essential element of Jesus’ eschatological message.
Finally, this is the same pope who in 2008 re-wrote the Good Friday prayer for the Jewish people that is part of the extraordinary form of the Mass. That prayer, as he personally re-wrote it, reads:
Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Savior of all men. (Let us pray. Kneel. Rise.) Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
He wrote this knowing that it would not please many in the Jewish community, who would have preferred no prayer at all or at least a more muted one.
Whatever else may be the case, it does not seem to me that Pope Benedict is opposed to reasonable efforts to share the Gospel with Our Lord’s own people.
The long-awaited second volume of Pope Benedict’s work Jesus of Nazareth is about to come out. (You can pre-order it here!).
This was the book he had started before his election to the papacy and which, in spite of the burdens of his office, he determined to press on with.
Because he’s now pope, the book is attracting vastly more attention than if he had become a private theologian at the end of John Paul II’s reign, and as with everything pope—the press is determined to make the most of it, even when they don’t have the facts quite right.
For once, however, they at least seem to be using their powers of exaggeration and sensationalism on the side of good.
The message they’re getting out is that in the book Pope Benedict says that the Jewish people cannot be blamed for the death of Christ.
In other words, they are not to be charged with the blood libel of being “Christ-killers”—as they have so often and unfairly labeled by anti-Semites.
So that’s good that the press is getting the word out about that! Like I said: Press using its powers for good (for once) in a religion story. Huzzah! Or, as they say in Hebrew, Mazal Tov!
But it being, y’know, the press, they’re not likely to dot all their i’s and cross all their t’s.
For example, you probably won’t get from many stories the fact that this book is not an act of the pope’s magisterium. It’s not an official Church document. In fact, in the introduction to volume 1 of the series, Pope Benedict expressly made this point and even went so far as to say explicitly that:
“This work is not an absolute act of magisterial teaching, but merely an expression of my personal research into the face of the Lord. Therefore, everyone is free to contradict me.”
This is why I love, love, love Pope Benedict. He is a man of enormous humility and, despite the fact that he is the one person on earth able to speak with divine infallibility on his own (as opposed to in concert with other bishops), he wants to make absolutely clear to the public what is his own opinion versus what is Church teaching, and to expressly give permission to people to contradict him on the former.
Wow!
Gotta love this man! That is intellectual humility.
The fact that most press stories won’t cover this is a minor matter, though. Another relatively minor matter, though perhaps a somewhat weightier one, is that most press stories also won’t make it clear that this isn’t exactly news.
Certainly, it is news-worthy, and I’m glad they’re covering it. But there is a danger that some stories might leave people with the impression that this is a new development. It’s not. For example, back in 1965 the Second Vatican Council stated that:
True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone [Nostra Aetate 4].
Unlike Pope Benedict’s statement in his book, this is a declaration by an ecumenical council, it is a statement on the part of the Church’s magisterium, and one with great weight.
In fact, in the excerpts released thus far Pope Benedict doesn’t quite say what the press is making him out as saying, though he certainly agrees with the idea. (He certainly agrees with the statement from Nostra Aetate, and the idea it expresses lurks behind what he does say, which I’ll get into in my next post.)
Still, given the real existence of anti-Semitism in the world and its historical linkage to Christianity—and given some of the tensions that have occurred with the Jewish community during Pope Benedict’s reign—it is always good to have an occasion in the press to remind people of the fact that the Jewish people cannot be slimed as Christ-killers the way they have been in the past—and that the Church fundamentally rejects this characterization.
So for now we can rejoice that a positive message is being sent for once, even if some i’s are dotless and t’s are crossless.
To borrow a line from Chesterton, anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Sending the message that the Jewish people cannot be slimed as Christ-killers is a message worth sending!
), rather than on Thursday as it has been traditionally commemorated. I haven’t had a chance to review his arguments yet, but there is room for discussion here. In fact, in his recent, second volume of Jesus of Nazareth (
), Pope Benedict wrestles with the subject of the Last Supper without coming to a definite conclusion.
) have attracted considerable attention.
).