Theology – Page 15

PODCAST 018 Medjugorje Special

Here’s an episode of the Jimmy Akin podcast in which I cover the subject of Medjugorje.

You can use the player and download link at the bottom of this post to listen.

This post also contains links to useful resources on the Medjugorje question.

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SHOW NOTES:

JIMMY AKIN PODCAST EPISODE 018 (10/29/11)

* VINCE FROM ST. CHARLES, IL, ASKS ABOUT MEDJUGORJE.

1978 CDF Norms:
http://d-rium.blogspot.com/p/normae-s-congregationis.html

Diocese of Mostar statements:
http://www.cbismo.com/index.php?menuID=98

Međugorje: Secrets, Messages, Vocations, Prayers, Confessions, Commissions
http://www.cbismo.com/index.php?mod=vijest&vijest=101

2006 Homily:
http://www.cbismo.com/index.php?mod=vijest&vijest=71

Background on the “Herzegovinian Affair”:
http://medjugorjedocuments.blogspot.com/2010/11/1975-decree-romanis-pontificibus.html

2006 News Report:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0604177.htm

2009 Homily:
http://www.cbismo.com/index.php?mod=vijest&vijest=366

2010 Summary of developments:
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/new_medjugorje_commission/

2010 Commission Announcement:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/holy_see_confirms_formation_of_medjugorje_commission/

English translation of interview with Archbishop Amato regarding the Norms:
http://catholiclight.stblogs.org/archives/2010/03/medjugorje-comm.html

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Copyright © 2011 by Jimmy Akin

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Just How “Major” Was Monday’s Finance Document?

There was a lot of buzz leading up to the the note on world financial matters released by the Holy See on Monday.

One of the first references I saw to it was in a story with a headline something like “Major Vatican Document to Be Released Monday.” I clicked on the story and saw that the document in question was to be released by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. My eyebrows immediately went up, and I began pondering the sense in which the term “major” was being used.

I suspect that the person who wrote the headline was using the term in its ordinary sense, which would signify a document of great importance relative to others issued by the Holy See, on some kind of absolute or general scale. You know, the way a papal encyclical is a major document.

But I suspect that the person who wrote the headline was under a misimpression, because the document was not major in this way.

“Major” is a relative term, and while it might be accurate to say that the document was “major” by the lights of the PCJP, it was not major in the overall Vatican sweep of things. The mere fact that it’s being issued by the PCJP tells you that much.

That’s no slight to the PCJP. It is a dicastery (department) of the Holy See, with its own proper work and role. It’s just not a venue the pope uses to issue major documents, when “major” is read in terms of the Vatican as a whole.

Because of the controversial nature of the document, it attracted a great deal of comment in the press, with some loving and some loathing it. Others loved certain aspects of the document and loathed others. And there was a great deal of discussion regarding what kind of authority the document has.

George Weigel stated:

The truth of the matter is that “the Vatican” — whether that phrase is intended to mean the Pope, the Holy See, the Church’s teaching authority, or the Church’s central structures of governance — called for precisely nothing in this document. The document is a “Note” from a rather small office in the Roman Curia. The document’s specific recommendations do not necessarily reflect the settled views of the senior authorities of the Holy See; indeed, Fr. Federico Lombardi, the press spokesman for the Vatican, was noticeably circumspect in his comments on the document and its weight. As indeed he ought to have been. The document doesn’t speak for the Pope, it doesn’t speak for “the Vatican,” and it doesn’t speak for the Catholic Church.

Fr. John Zuhlsdorf wrote:

I can say this: Thanks be to God this “white paper” doesn’t form part of the Holy Father’s Ordinary Magisterium.

Every once in a while the Holy See’s smaller offices, Pontifical Councils and so forth, have to put out a paper to justify their budgets and remind everyone that they take up valuable space. These documents, which do not form part of the Holy Father’s Magisterium, can deal with critical issues like how to be a safe driver. The dicasteries keep busy by hosting seminars on how to play sport and so forth.

Mark Brumley states:

Even though Catholics are not obliged to accept the policy proposals of this “note,” many Catholics will nevertheless want to hear what the council says, and others are likely to be influenced by it, even though it does not represent “the Vatican’s position” (contrary to what some media accounts and some leftwing Catholics would lead you to believe).

Each of these gentlemen is correct in the assertion that the document does not represent the Church’s teaching authority or magisterium—at least the document as a whole does not. (It does contain quotations from other documents which do carry magisterial authority, and those passages carry the same authority as they had in their original context.)

This is stuff that people who make a close study of the Holy See and the way it operates are aware of, but the secular media doesn’t pay close enough attention to know, and they regularly misrepresent things. Because the media doesn’t know how to process these things, they haven’t done a good job informing the general public about them, and so the ordinary person gets misleading headlines like “Pope Calls for World Bank” or things like that.

So how do we know that gentlemen like Weigel, Zuhlsdorf and Brumley are correct?

What I’d like to do here is offer a few brief thoughts on the subject. First, in this post, let’s deal with the question of how “major” the document is or—per Weigel and Zuhlsdorf—what the status of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace is. In a second post, we’ll look at the question of whether documents like this represent the Magisterium of the Church.

First, let’s talk about the Roman Curia—the set of “dicasteries” or departments that includes the PCJP (the picture above is Pope Benedict addressing the Curia in 2009). The basic document governing the Curia is an apostolic constitution issued by John Paul II in 1988 called Pastor Bonus (Latin, “Good Shepherd”). This document provided the overall legal and organizational framework within which the Curia works today (though Pope Benedict has modified it a bit). According to the document:

Art. 1 — The Roman Curia is the complex of dicasteries and institutes which help the Roman Pontiff in the exercise of his supreme pastoral office for the good and service of the whole Church and of the particular Churches. It thus strengthens the unity of the faith and the communion of the people of God and promotes the mission proper to the Church in the world.

It then explains the concept of a dicastery and an institute more closely:

Art. 2 — § 1. By the word “dicasteries” are understood the Secretariat of State, Congregations, Tribunals, Councils and Offices, namely the Apostolic Camera, the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, and the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See. . . .

§ 3. Among the institutes of the Roman Curia are the Prefecture of the Papal Household and the Office for the Liturgical Celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff.

Another thing that Article 2 of Pastor Bonus explains is that:

§ 2. The dicasteries are juridically equal among themselves.

This means that they have an equality before the law, though it does not mean that they are all equal in duties or influence. The New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law notes:

While the dicasteries are technically juridically equal, they are not equal in importance or power. Normally no dicastery has any power over another; each responds directly to the pope regarding its activity (p. 479; on cc. 360-361).

The commentary then, in further passages, remarks on some of the differences in the influence and power of different dicasteries, noting that the Secretariat of State plays a central role and is especially close to the pope, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has an especially influential role among the congregations, etc.

In practice, it is not difficult to determine the relative influence of particular departments. They are, in fact, listed in Pastor Bonus itself in terms of their relative importance. Notice that Article 2 lists the Secretariat of State first, then the Congregations, then Tribunals, then Councils, and then Offices. This is the same order that you find if you go to the Roman Curia’s page on the Vatican web site. You’ll see exactly the same list of categories, in the same order (and further expanded and extended to include additional bodies).

This is the basic power structure within the Curia. While all departments may be juridically equal, those dicasteries that are higher up in the hierarchy have more influence in practical terms and those which are lower have less. The Secretariat of State has the most influence, followed by the Congregations. These include the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which has the most influence of all congregations (which is why it’s listed first in every such list; it doesn’t come in this order alphabetically in Latin; the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the Congregation for Clerics, and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments would all come before it alphabetically in Latin), then other dicasteries with portfolios sufficiently weighty to be given the status of Congregation. Afterwards there are the Tribunals, and then we get to the Councils, one of which is the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. And it’s not at the top of the Council list. It’s the fourth one down in another non-(Latin-)alphabetical list of Councils that gives at least something of an idea of the relative influence of each Council.

As the commentary quoted above notes, these departments do not normally exercise power over each other. For the most part, they function in dependently based on their own particular missions. There are, however, exceptions. The Secretariat of State plays a coordinating role among the dicasteries to some extent. When a question of doctrine is in dispute, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith gets called in. The Signatura (one of the Tribunals) may be called upon to settle certain disputes between dicasteries about which one is competent in a particular area. And the pope himself can always intervene and make other provisions. But the general level of authority is indicated by the hierarchy given in Pastor Bonus, and Councils are not at the top of it.

This is why Weigel refers to the latter as a “rather small office” in the Curia and why Zuhlsdorf refers to it as one of the Curia’s “smaller offices.” This isn’t true just in terms of staff size. It’s true in terms of their relative level of authority.

It’s also why I raised my eyebrows at the claim that a “major” document would be released by the PCJP. As a Council, it occupies a place (and not the first place) on the fourth tier of dicasteries, and it’s not the kind of department that is used to issue “major” documents in terms of the overall sweep of things at the Vatican. A given document may be major compared to documents the Justice and Peace council normally issues, but under ordinary circumstances they won’t be major compared to documents issued, say, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments—or the pope himself.

If one wants to accurately assess the import of a particular document, an important part of that assessment will be the nature of the one issuing the document.

That still doesn’t get us to the question of whether the document represents the teaching authority or Magisterium of the Church, though, so let’s talk about that next time.

PODCAST 017 Is Women’s Ordination a Heresy?

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JIMMY AKIN PODCAST EPISODE 017 (10/22/11)

* BEN ASKS ABOUT WOMEN’S ORDINATION AND HERESY

Canons relating to the Church’s Magisterium, including the definition of heresy: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P2H.HTM

Who must make the profession of faith: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P2R.HTM

Text of the profession of faith: http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfoath.htm

Doctrinal commentary on the profession of faith: http://www.ewtn.com/library/curia/cdfadtu.htm

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Supreme Court to Decide Issue of Women Priests?

That’s what could happen on a legal theory articulated by the Obama administration—and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were quick to pick up on the fact.

The case at hand involves a Lutheran minister, but the principles potentially apply to the issue of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church.

Specifically, the case involves a woman who served in a teaching capacity that her Lutheran body considers ministerial. Problems arose with her position because she suffers from narcolepsy, and she threatened to file a complaint with the state under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was then let go because the Lutheran body she works for holds that an in-house dispute resolution process should have been used rather than involving the state.

They apparently have a fairly strict interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, where St. Paul warns against lawsuits among believers, saying that such disputes should be settled within the Christian community rather than using the secular courts because of the scandal this creates. The Catholic Church recognizes the principles used in this passage but would apply them within a larger, natural law framework that would not result in an absolute prohibition. The scandal caused by Christians suing each other in secular court in a country like America today is not nearly the same as it would have been in St. Paul’s day, when Christians were a tiny minority. Operating in a “Scripture only” manner that does not have the same natural law heritage, however, it’s easy to see how a Lutheran group might take St. Paul as being more absolute than he is.

Whatever one may think of the group’s view regarding dispute resolution and going to court, it seems like this is precisely the kind of thing that the First Amendment would protect. The federal government should not be in the business of telling churches who they must or must not have as ministers. Such an intervention would violate the free exercise of religion.

Right?

Not according to the Obama administration.

FROM CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY/EWTN NEWS:

“The (Obama) administration has taken a very extreme position,” said Becket Fund Legal Counsel Luke Goodrich, who is leading the religious freedom group’s work on the Hosanna-Tabor case. He said the administration was “attacking the very existence of the ministerial exception,” such that “even the pastor of a church could sue the church for employment discrimination.”

“There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the outcome of this case,” Goodrich told CNA/EWTN News Oct. 3, “because the Supreme Court has not decided a case involving the autonomy of religious groups in many years.”

The Justice Department holds that the Lutherans cannot fire Perich for complaining to the government even if church teaching forbids it.

And it was this question – when might the government’s interest in preventing discrimination trump a religious group’s principles? – that prompted the justices to ask the attorney for the government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during Oct. 5 oral arguments why female priests could not be mandated by the government on similar grounds.

The justices were quick during oral arguments to apply the principles the Obama administration was proposing to the Catholic Church’s teaching that only baptized men can be validly ordained to the priesthood:

“The belief of the Catholic Church that priests should be male only – you do defer to that, even if the Lutherans say, look, our dispute resolution belief is just as important to a Lutheran as the all-male clergy is to a Catholic?” asked Chief Justice John Roberts, questioning Leodra Kruger, the U.S. solicitor general’s assistant who represented the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.

“Yes,” Kruger responded. “But that’s because the balance of relative public and private interests is different in each case.”

That right there should send chills up your spine. Whenever a public official starts talking about the relative balance of public and private “interests” the public (i.e., government) “interests” tend to win out in the end. It may take a generation, but once the precedent is set that it’s a question of how government vs. non-government “interests” get balanced, the government finds a way—based on changing mores and social standards or whatever—to impose its own interests as the expense of non-government entities.

“Do you believe, Miss Kruger, that a church has a right that’s grounded in the Free Exercise Clause and/or the Establishment Clause to institutional autonomy with respect to its employees?” asked Justice Elena Kagan.

“We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such,” the federal government’s attorney replied.

Kruger also said the ministerial exception to discrimination laws was not simply a part of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the “free exercise of religion.”

So according to the Obama administration a church does not have a First Amendment right to determine who its ministers will be.

Justice Scalia then pressed Kruger on the difference between ordinary “associations” – subject to a range of anti-discrimination laws – and religious ones.

“There is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly prohibits the government from mucking around in a labor organization,” said Justice Scalia, “but there, black on white in the text of the Constitution are special protections for religion. And you say that makes no difference?”

Kruger’s response included her explanation of what the government considers “the core of the ministerial exception as it was originally conceived … which is that there are certain relationships within a religious community that are so fundamental, so private and ecclesiastical in nature, that it will take an extraordinarily compelling governmental interest to (allow) just interference.”

Go, Antonin! This is the very reason we have freedom of religion protection in the First Amendment to begin with—to draw a bright line that the government must not cross.

But Justice Breyer pushed the federal government’s attorney to say how far she believed the protection extended.

“Suppose you have a religion and the central tenet is: ‘You have a problem with what we do, go to the synod; don’t go to court,’” he asked. “So would that not be protected by the First Amendment?”

“It’s not protected,” Kruger responded.

So, according to the Obama administration, the Obama administration gets to decide on the applicability of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 to an employment dispute?

The government attorney went on to attack Hosanna-Tabor’s use of the ministerial exception, which she said would mean “ that the hiring and firing decisions with respect to parochial school teachers and with respect to priests is categorically off limits” to federal regulators.

And this would be bad . . . how? Note in particular that she objected to the idea that “the hiring and firing decisions with respect to . . . priests is categorically off limits.” So the Obama administration thinks the government’s interference with the Church’s hiring and firing of priests should not be off limits?

“We think that that is a rule that is insufficiently attentive to the relative public and private interests at stake,” she said, citing “interests that this Court has repeatedly recognized are important in determining freedom of association claims.”

It was then that Breyer sprung the question of whether a woman might sue over her exclusion from the Catholic priesthood, on the same basis that Perich was suing over a religiously-grounded termination.

Kruger said the two situations were different – not categorically, but rather because “the private and public interests are very different in the two scenarios.”

“The government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace is simply not sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests, based on gender roles that are rooted in religious doctrine,” she said.

But, she said, the government does have a “compelling and indeed overriding interest in ensuring that individuals are not prevented from coming to the government with information about illegal conduct,” even if the church in question would prohibit its members from doing so on religious grounds.

I’m sorry. My spider sense is telling me that if the principle is established that these situations are not “categorically different” then it’s only a matter of time before the government, trying to pander to feminist constituencies, will decide that “the government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace” is “sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests.”

Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that this distinction between the Lutherans’ lawsuit prohibition on the one hand, and the Catholic Church’s male priesthood on the other, seemed arbitrary.

To quote President Obama, “Darn, tootin’!”

Kruger’s clearest articulation of the Obama administration’s position on religious freedom came in response to Justice Kagan’s question as to whether she was “willing to accept the ministerial exception for substantive discrimination claims, just not for retaliation claims.”

The government’s lawyer responded that “substantive discrimination” claims, such as those alleging sex discrimination, could also be legitimate grounds for a lawsuit against some religious institutions.

Yes. This generates lots of confidence that the Catholic Church will not be an institution that is tomorrow subject to lawsuits alleging sex discrimination regarding its hiring of priests.

The good news is that, based on the press account above, the justices seem skeptical of the Obama administration’s legal theory on this point—and a majority of the court are, in fact, Catholics of one stripe or another—but we’ll have to wait and see the outcome of the suit, won’t we?

In the end, the Church will not base its theology on the dictates of the U.S. Supreme Court, but if things go wrong now, they could go even more wrong in the future and harm the Church’s ability to live and promulgate its faith in America.

What do you think?

The Question of Prayer: Why Should I Pray?

The French essayist Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) was a cat fancier and is known to have a kitten named Blanche. Among Montaigne’s contributions to literature were a number of observations about cats—such as no matter how much they fight, there always seem to be plenty of kittens.

He also quipped: “When I play with my cat, how do I know that she is not passing time with me rather than I with her?”

If I am not mistaken, C. S. Lewis once remarked that while Montaigne may have descended to his cat’s level to play with her, she did not ascend to Montaingne’s level. In other words, the essayist may have become catlike in play, but the cat did not rise above her nature to become humanlike.

Something similar applies to us when we relate to God, only we are in the position of the kitten.

We may—by God’s grace—become godlike after a fashion. In fact, St. Peter remarks that through his grace we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). But there is still a sense in which we never rise above our fundamental finitude. However much God may elevate us, we never become the kind of infinite being that he is.

God himself declares in the Scriptures:

[M]y thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts [Isaiah 55:8-9].

Thus there is a gap between us. And it is a gap that, compared to the gap between Montaigne and his cat is . . . y’know . . . bigger.

That gap is there even when we are thinking about God—or when we are talking to him. That is, when we pray.

This underscores a question that eventually occurs to all of us: If God is infinitely above us . . . if he is omniscient or “all knowing” . . . then why exactly are we praying?

Doesn’t God know what we need already? Doesn’t he know already how much we care about what is happening to us and how much we need his help?

If he knows those things, and if he cares for us, why should we pray at all?

In the Gospels, Jesus seems at first glance to confirm this suspicion, when he warns against at least overly-lengthy, insincere prayers. He tells us:

[I]n praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him [Matthew 6:7-8].

Yet Jesus does not tell us not to pray. To the contrary, he goes on to give us the model Christian prayer, which we today call the “Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9-13), to use its opening words.

He is quite firm, though, on the point that God knows what we need even before we ask.

If that is so: Why pray at all?

The only conclusion we can draw is that prayer is not about informing God. It is not about giving him information. Because he is omniscient, he already has all the information that there is—about our needs and everything else.

It’s not like we could say, “Hey, God! I’m dying of cancer, here! Could you please help me out?” and then God say, “Thanks for letting me know! I was attending to something else! Here’s your healing!”

God already knows everything, so we cannot tell him anything he doesn’t already know.

Yet Jesus—as well as the whole biblical tradition—expects us to pray.

Why?

That’s the question we will be exploring in this series.

What are your thoughts?

DEBATE: Is Fr. Bourgeois Right on Women Priests?

At the time I did my previous post on Fr. Roy Bourgeois, I did not have access to the letter to his religious superiors in which he was said to make five argument for women priests. I would like to thank those who were able to find it and send me a link. It can be found in its entirety here.

In this post I would like to look at the arguments proposed by Fr. Bourgeois and see whether they are sound. I will offer each of his arguments, in his own words, and then respond to it so that this post takes the form of what you might call a literary debate.

Let us begin.

(1) As Catholics, we believe that we were created in the image and likeness of God and that men and women are equal before God. Excluding women from the priesthood implies that men are superior to women.

It is true that men and women are created in the image and likeness of God. It is also true that there are many senses in which men and women are equal before him. They are equally dependent on his grace. They have equal access to salvation. He loves them equally. He has endowed them with equal dignity. He had endowed them with equal responsibility and will hold them equally accountable. And in a generic and ultimate perspective they may validly be said to be equal before him.

This does not mean that they are homogenous in all respects, however. It is clear that there are differences between the sexes that are rooted in nature and that are not simply the product of nurture. Though the feminist movement has long tried to portray many gender differences traditionally regarded as innate as being merely the product of culture, numerous recent scientific studies, as well as common sense and the common experience of mankind, have shown that they are, in fact, innate. Even many in the feminist movement now admit this.

Some innate gender differences are virtually too obvious to be rationally denied by anyone. To begin with overt physical differences, men are, on average, taller and weigh more than women. They are physically stronger, particularly in the upper body. They grow facial hair. Women are on average smaller and lighter. They have less physical strength, particularly in the upper body. And they grow functional breasts. Moving to somewhat less obvious but still statistically demonstrable sex differences, women have longer life spans (which, to my mind, means they get the long end of the stick in an extremely important way that I am personally envious of). Women also have greater verbal intelligence. Men have greater spatial intelligence. There are also emotional differences. Women tend to be more nurturing. Men tend to be more willing to assume greater risk.

While many of these differences are statistical in nature (i.e., they are true of the genders on average, though they may not be true of a specific man or a specific woman; thus some women are taller than some men, some men live longer than some women), there are some sex differences that are absolute. For example: Only men can be fathers; only women can be mothers. There are no male mothers and no female fathers—not in the literal sense of these terms.

The fact that there are innate sex differences in humans means that one cannot reduce the question of ordination to the priesthood to the question of equality before God. While the sexes do have equality before God (certainly in the general and ultimate sense), the specific differences between them mean that they are—statistically or absolutely—more suited to certain roles. Statistically, men are better protectors by virtue of their strength and risk tolerance; women are better providers of childcare by virtue of their nurturing capacity and ability to nurse. Absolutely: Men are better fathers; women are better mothers.

The Catholic Church proposes that God has chosen to only authorize the ordination of men to the priesthood. Why he may have chosen this is a matter of speculative theology on which the Church has not pronounced (certainly not definitively). It may be that the priesthood displays a form of fatherhood that makes the male gender absolutely suited for it in a way women are not. It may be that the male gender displays certain characteristics that, statistically rather than absolutely, make men better suited to the priesthood and God has chosen them due to this fact. These are matters of theological speculation, however.

What is clear is that one cannot simplistically posit male/female equality as an argument that women should be ordained to the priesthood. Equality before God does not mean absolute identicality between the sexes, and if it does not mean that then it does not mean possessing identical functions in all situations—ecclesiastical or otherwise. It thus does not follow that saying God has chosen only men for the priesthood implies that men are superior—any more than it implies that God has chosen certain men for the priesthood means that these men are superior to other men. We each have our own gifts and callings, and these are not identical.

Thus this argument is inadequate. It does not prove what it attempts to.

(2) Catholic priests say that the call to be a priest is a gift and comes from God. How can we, as men, say: “Our call from God is authentic, but your call, as women, is not”? Who are we to reject God’s call of women to the priesthood? I believe our Creator who is the Source of life and called forth the sun and stars is certainly capable of calling women to be priests.

In my previous post I responded to Fr. Bourgeois’ statement regarding God as the one “who is the Source of life and called forth the sun and stars” being able to call women to the priesthood. As I pointed out there, this is fatuous grandstanding. We all acknowledge that God is omnipotent and can do whatever he chooses. But asserting that he is able to make a particular choice does not provide evidence that he has made a particular choice. As we noted then, God can make pink unicorns with sparkly eyes and rainbow manes, but if you want to claim that he has done this, you need to produce evidence for the claim, not merely assert God’s ability to do it.

Turning to the first part of Bourgeois’ second argument, it is clear that this is overly facile reasoning. This will be clear if we simply change the context of the argument, from being why men rather than women should be ordained to the priesthood to why certain men rather than other men should be ordained. Making the necessary substitutions, what would we make of an argument that says:

How can we, as certain men, say: “Our call from God is authentic, but your call, as other men, is not”? Who are we to reject God’s call of other men to the priesthood?

Unless we are prepared to accept that God has called all men without exception to the priesthood then we must be prepared to accept that he has called some and not others. Given that some men are manifestly not qualified to serve in this role (e.g., pedophiles—just to name an obvious and incontrovertible example), it would appear that his choice is rational. But if God may rationally choose between one group and another in whom he calls to priestly ministry then one cannot rely on an argument of the form Bourgeois has presented. It may identify women as a particular class and ask how it is that God might not choose them for the priesthood, just as he does not choose many men (myself included), but the appeal to pity that Bourgeois proposes (“How can we, as X, say that our call is authentic but yours, as Y, is not?”—in other words: “Have pity on Y; they are no different than we as X”) does not provide any reasons why women should be regarded as a class indistinguishable from men—or from called men. Once again, Bourgeois has failed to provide evidence for why these two groups should be treated as the same in terms of ordination.

It also should be noted that his reference to the priesthood being a divine gift actually undermines his case since, as we saw in my previous post, the gratuity of a divine gift implies that no one has a right to the priesthood and thus no one can claim injustice if they are not called to it.

(3) We are told that women cannot be priests because Jesus chose only men as apostles. As we know, Jesus did not ordain anyone. Jesus also chose a woman, Mary Magdalene, to be the first witness to His resurrection, which is at the core of our faith. Mary Magdalene became known as “the apostle to the apostles.”

Here Bourgeois finally engages the Church’s actual position regarding women’s ordination. As we saw in my previous post (and please do check it out for more detail), the Church recognizes that Christ chose only men to be his apostles and feels bound to follow this decision of her Lord and God today in the selection of ordained ministers.

Bourgeois offers three rejoinders to this argument, each of which is quite weak:

a) “As we know, Jesus did not ordain anyone.”

We know nothing of the kind. If by “ordination” you mean “sacramental laying on of hands for purposes of placing one in the priesthood” then we have no mention one way or another of whether Jesus did this. As the gospels themselves record (John 21:25), Jesus did many things that are not recorded in them. One of them might have been such an ordination-by-laying-on-of-hands ceremony.

If such a ceremony never occurred, however, this deals only with the means by which Jesus conducted ordination (the placing of an individual in a specific ordo or order of ministerial service). He most definitely did ordain, through hands or another means, his apostles to service as priests. This is, in fact, an infallibly defined dogma. The Council of Trent defines that by telling the apostles to “do this [the Eucharist] in memory of me” he thereby commissioned them to function as priests. This commission entails an ordination, whether it was performed that minute by his words alone or subsequently by the imposition of his hands.

b) “Jesus also chose a woman, Mary Magdalene, to be the first witness to His resurrection, which is at the core of our faith.”

It is noteworthy that Mary Magdalene was one of the first witnesses (not the first, as Bourgeois says, but one of a group) to Christ’s resurrection. This has notable apologetic value since women were not then considered to be trustworthy witnesses in court, yet the gospels record women as the first witnesses—contrary to what one would make up if one were fabricating the accounts. The extent to which Jesus “chose” Mary Magdalene and the other women (as opposed to allowing the action of their own free wills in this situation) is more open to discusion. However, no one has historically seen the role of Mary Magdalene as an indication that she served ordained ministry as a priest. Bourgeois is simply grasping at straws.

c) “Mary Magdalene became known as ‘the apostle to the apostles.’”

To the extent this terminology has been used for Mary Magdalene, it has always been understood in an analogous way. It has never been seriously entertained that Mary Magdalene was a literal apostle or an ordained priest. Women today may serve such analogous roles without implying literal ordination or a right thereto.

(4) A 1976 report by the PontificalBiblical Commission, the Vatican’s top Scripture scholars, concluded that there is no valid case to be made against the ordination of women from the Scriptures. In the Episcopal, Methodist, Lutheran, United Church of Christ, Presbyterian and other Christian churches, God’s call of women to the priesthood is affirmed and women are ordained. Why not in the Catholic church?

As we saw in my previous post, Bourgois is misrepresenting the document he mentions. A look at the full text of his letter only strengthens this appraisal. First, the Pontifical Biblical Commission does not represent “the Vatican’s top Scripture scholars.” It represents a number of biblical scholars, periodically chosen an rotated, who have a notable degree of esteem by the Holy See, but it does not, at any given moment, represent “the best of the best.” Second, the 1976 document in question was not an official document of the PBC. It was a draft document that was leaked to the press without authorization. It has no official status. Third, it did not conclude that “there is no valid case to be made against the ordination of women from the Scriptures.” Instead, it concluded that some scholars think there is such a case to be made from Scripture alone, some think that there is not, and that the drafters of the document in question think the question is hard to settle from Scripture alone. Bourgeois is thus grossly misrepresenting both the nature and the conclusions of the draft document.

Regarding the statement that women are ordained to the priesthood in various Protestant denominations, several responses may be in order:

a) If we wish to play a numbers game, the Protestant denominations in question represent less than a quarter of global Christendom. Why should the choices of such a minority be determinative for the majority?

b) Bourgeois seems to be misinformed regarding the practice of these groups. Most of them do not recognize the priesthood—or certainly not a sacramental priesthood—at all. So why should they be determinative of a question that involves an apples-to-oranges comparison?

c) They are non-Catholic groups and, whatever merits they may have, they cannot be regarded from a Catholic perspective as being guided by God in the same way that the Catholic Church is. Why should their ordination practices trump that of the Catholic Church, which is—from a Catholic perspective—fully guided by God in these matters?

As to Bourgeois’ query, “Why not in the Catholic church?” see the rest of this post and the previous one.

(5) The Holy Scriptures remind us in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither male nor female. In Christ Jesus you are one.” Furthermore, the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on The Church in the Modern World states: “Every type of discrimination … based on sex. .. is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God’s intent.”

Here Bourgeois demonstrably misrepresents both St. Paul and the Second Vatican Council.

While St. Paul may be fairly characterized as stressing the equality of men and women regarding their access to salvation, Christ’s love for them, etc., this cannot be construed as an endorsement of them playing identical roles in Church. This is made extremely clear from some of the things St. Paul says elsewhere in his writings, such as:

I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty [1 Tim 2:12-15].

This passage has significant implications for the ability for women to assume the priesthood.

Even if one (wrongly to my mind) questions the Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy, the book is still part of inspired Scripture and cannot simply be set aside.

In any event, Paul’s other writings contain multiple references to men and women functioning differently in church, however equal they may be from the ultimate perspective before God. One cannot represent Paul’s “one in Christ” statement as an endorsement of women’s ordination.

Neither can one represent Vatican II’s condemnation of discrimination as such. Had the Council meant to endorse women’s ordination, it would have done so. The rejection of unjust discrimination—which is what we are talking about—does not entail the rejection of sexual differences or roles. It is not possible to give a serious reading to Vatican II and take it as endorsing women’s ordination.

The arguments used by Fr. Bourgeois thus come up lacking. If he proposes that the Church change its theology (which it can’t do, given that this is an infallible teaching) then the burden of proof is on him, and he has not presented any arguments that survive even a cursory examination.

Let us keep him, and all those he misleads, in prayer.

The Last Supper, Good Friday, And Transubstantiation

A reader writes:

Hello Mr. Akin,

I am a recent convert to the Catholic Church (this Easter will make two years). Your and Mark Shea's writings have helped me tremendously in better understanding our Faith. However, I have asked a certain question several times and have never been given a satisfactory answer. I hope you can help.

My question is: How does one explain transubstantiation at the Last Supper? If Jesus had not yet sacrificed His human nature, how could he offer his body and blood to the Apostles in the form of bread and wine?

The basic answer is that it is not necessary for Jesus to have sacrificed himself on the Cross in order for transubstantiation to occur.

In transubstantiation, two things happen: (1) The substances (i.e., the ultimate, underlying realities) of bread and wine cease to exist, leaving only the properties detectable by our senses and (2) the substance of Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity become present.

For neither of these things to happen does Christ have to have offered himself on the Cross. God created all matter out of nothing (Latin, ex nihilo), and he can similarly cause it to return to nothing (ad nihilo = where we get "annihiliate").

Similarly, God can make any object he wants present at any location he wants, including multiple locations simultaneously. This phenomenon, known as multilocation, is possible for Christ and for anything else God chooses.

Some years ago when I was first studying Christian apologetics, I established a principle for myself which went like this: If I'm trying to explain a miracle, and I can think of at least one way to accomplish it in comprehensible scientific terms, then God knows at least that way to accomplish it (and probably many more ways as well).

Consequently, offering a scientifically possible way of accomplishing a miracle shows that it is indeed possible and, with God's omnipotence, it will be infinitely easy for him since he does not expend resources in causing things to happen. Thus it is as easy for God as anything else. Once it's been shown that something is logically possible, it is not problem for God to do it, being neither easier nor harder than anything else for him. He may not use the way I've thought of, but he's able to do it.

I can think of several ways to make an object appear at more than one place at a time. Folding Einsteinian spacetime is just one way. There are others also. In fact, some quantum phenomena at least appear to involve particles being in more than one place at a time, so there may be a second way there.

It's also worth mentioning that there are historic reports of saints bilocating (appearing in two places at once). So the phenomena may not be limited to Jesus or subatomic particles. It may be something God does in different ways on a more frequent basis.

In any event, making something appear in more than one place at a time is clearly within the ability of God's omnipotence to bring about. Unless he for some reason determines that Christ must be offered on the Cross before he will do it in Christ's case then he can do it for Jesus whenever he wants.

The evidence of Jesus' words at the Last Supper strongly suggests that God has not determined that Jesus must be sacrificed before he can multilocate, and thus there is no barrier–at the Last Supper–to either component of transubstantiation happening.

Thus in 1968 in the Credo of the People of God, Pope Paul VI proclaimed:

24. We believe that the Mass, celebrated by the priest representing the person of Christ by virtue of the power received through the Sacrament of Orders, and offered by him in the name of Christ and the members of His Mystical Body, is the sacrifice of Calvary rendered sacramentally present on our altars. We believe that as the bread and wine consecrated by the Lord at the Last Supper were changed into His body and His blood which were to be offered for us on the cross, likewise the bread and wine consecrated by the priest are changed into the body and blood of Christ enthroned gloriously in heaven, and we believe that the mysterious presence of the Lord, under what continues to appear to our senses as before, is a true, real and substantial presence.

The magisterium thus holds that at the Last Supper the elements became the body and blood of Christ prior to the sacrifice of the Cross (the blue highlight) and that today they become the body and blood of Christ "enthroned gloriously in heaven," which is the state in which he has existed subsequent to the sacrifice of the Cross.

Note also that Pope Paul is careful to say that the sacrifice of the Cross is made sacramentally present on the altar.

Trent elaborates this more fully (session 22, chapter 2), explaining that the sacrifices are the same in that they have the same victim (the same thing is being offered to God–i.e., Christ himself), that the primary sacrificing priest is the same (again, Christ himself, working now through the agency of earthly priests), and that the fruits of the sacrifice (our salvation) are the same, with only the manner of offering being different–Calvary involving a bloody sacrifice and the Eucharist involving an unbloody one. This is the meaning of what the Church says when it says that the sacrifice of Calvary is made sacramentally present on the altar.

Some have proposed a view in which spacetime gets bent (or something) in such a way that Good Friday in A.D. 33 (or whenever) is timewarped onto the altar. While I'm about as theologically timewarp friendly as one could want (cf. my above comments on multilocation), this view ultimately is not supported by the magisterial sources.

Instead, as the Credo of the People of God makes clear, the idea is that at the Last Supper Christ became present under the elements as he was then but in a way that looked forward to the sacrifice of the Cross and today he becomes present under the elements as he is now (enthroned gloriously in heaven) but in a way that looks back to the sacrifice of the Cross and that makes it sacramentally present in the way described above.

Hope this helps!

Vatican Preparing Action on Biblical Inerrancy: Prayers Needed!

You may remember that back in 2008 the Holy See held a session of the synod of bishops devoted to the theme “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.” The synod of bishops is a gathering of bishops from around the world, shy of a full ecumenical council, who gather in Rome to reflect on a particular topic and then deliver their recommendations to the pope. In 2008 they were called to reflect on the word of God, as contained in Scripture and Tradition.

Among the topics that they dealt with, at least in brief, was the inerrancy of Scripture. This has been a fractious subject in the last several decades, with many people claiming that Scripture is not, in fact, inerrant or free from error.

This debate has been facilitated by the fact that the Second Vatican Council’s constitution Dei Verbum contains a passage (see section 11) that is ambiguous on the subject. At first glance it might appear to restrict the scope of inerrancy only to truths having to do with our salvation. On other subjects, the Bible might be chocked full of errors.

But a closer reading reveals that it contains principles which would seem to be incompatible with that interpretation. According to Dei Verbum, the human authors of Scripture recorded everything that the Holy Spirit wished them to and no more. Consequently, whatever is asserted by the Scriptures is asserted by the Holy Spirit. Since the Holy Spirit is omniscient, infallible, and all holy, any assertions made by him are true.

Even if one allows maximal room for non-literal readings of various passages Scripture, it seems that Scripture contains at least some assertions that are not directly related to our salvation—for example, that Andrew was the brother of Peter according to some accepted first century usage of the term “brother.” But if Scripture makes assertions that aren’t directly related to our salvation, and if those are asserted by the Holy Spirit and therefore guaranteed to be true, then one can’t reduce Scripture’s inerrancy to just truths connected with our salvation.

A good bit more about the debate over this passage can be said, but the bottom line is that it is not as clear as it should be and is basically a compromise text worked out at the council between parties on different sides of the debate. (The behind-the-scenes history of it is quite interesting; it’s recorded in then Father Joseph Ratzinger’s contribution to the Vorgrimler commentaries on Vatican II, but these are very hard to come by).

When the 2008 synod of bishops came around, I was quite concerned how this topic would be handled, because while the synod is a function of the magisterium and thus is guided by the Holy Spirit, we do not have a guarantee of its infallibility. Consequently, though human weakness, the synod could conceivably have muddled the waters on this question even further or, God forbid, said something false regarding biblical inerrancy.

I was heartened, therefore, when the final list of propositions they submitted to the pope contained the following:

Inspiration and Truth in the Bible

The synod proposes that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarify the concepts of inspiration and truth of the Bible, as well as the relationship between them, so as to better understand the teaching of Dei Verbum 11. In particular, we need to emphasize the originality of the Catholic Biblical hermeneutics in this area.

There were also press accounts at the time suggesting that the answer from the CDF would likely come back along solidly inerrantist lines, acknowledging that Scripture must be understood according to its ancient cultural context and that many things in it are not intended to be read literally, but when it does assert something as a matter of fact, that assertion is true.

So I was relieved. And I’ve been waiting to see what would happen.

Well, the CDF apparently decided, before preparing a potential document of its own, to consult with the Pontifical Biblical Commission. This is a group of biblical scholars that the Holy See appoints to advise the CDF on Bible-related questions. The president of the PBC is the prefect of the CDF (currently Cardinal Joseph Levada), who oversees its operations.

The CDF thus apparently asked the PBC to produce a document reflecting on the “inspiration and truth of the Bible.” This document will presumably inform whatever action the CDF may choose to take in addition.

And so for the last couple of years the PBC has been working on a document dealing with this subject.

HERE’S A MESSAGE POPE BENEDICT GAVE THEM IN 2009 DEALING WITH THE TOPIC.

So why am I telling you about this now?

Because a few days ago, the following came across the wire from Vatican Information Service:

VATICAN CITY, 14 APR 2011 (VIS) – The Pontifical Biblical Commission will hold its annual plenary session [that is, their big annual meeting where all the members of the commission fly to Rome for a face-to-face] from 2 to 6 May in the Domus Sanctae Marthae (Vatican City), under the presidency of Cardinal William Joseph Levada. Fr. Klemens Stock, S.J., secretary general, shall direct the work of the assembly.

According to a communique issued today, “during the meeting the members will continue their reflections on the theme ‘Inspiration and truth in the Bible’. In the first phase of study the Commission will attempt to examine how the themes of inspiration and truth appear in the Sacred Scriptures. Subsequently, on the basis of their individual competences, each Member shall present a report which shall then be discussed collectively in the Assembly”.

So they’re gearing up for this year’s big session on the topic, and they could use our prayers.

Because the PBC (these days) is an advisory body, it is not part of the magisterium, and its documents do not represent official Church teaching. Nevertheless they are important and influential and if they get botched it can create a worse problem than existed before.

If Vatican II, which was not just an exercise of the magisterium but an extraordinary exercise, and therefore even more under the protection of the Holy Spirit, could produce a problematically worded passage on the subject of inerrancy, how much more are prayers needed for a non-magisterial advisory body.

It may be some time—years even—before we see what the PBC comes up with (if we ever see it), but the issue of biblical inerrancy is an important one.

I therefore invite you to join me in praying that the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and the pope are all guided to provide an accurate and clear statement that recognizes both the many human and literary aspects to the Bible but also the fullness of the divine truth that it conveys without error, so that the faith of scholars and the simple alike may be strengthened with regard to the Scripture God gave us through the Holy Spirit.

Dino Deaths & Original Sin

A reader writes:

I've got my brain in a crunch. If death, disease, pain and suffering entered the world because of the first sin, then how would one best reconcile the deaths of all the Dinosaurs and other preceding animal throughout time up until the point that God first breathed life into Man and then Mankind committed the first sin? I've been comfortable pointing to the first sin as the reason for all the death and pain in the world, but I stumped myself with this question.

The standard way of reconciling this would be to say that human death entered the world when our first parents committed original sin.

In other words, God gave man access to the tree of life that would have enabled him to live forever. He didn't give access to it (so far as we know) to dinosaurs or, in fact, any other creatures besides mankind.

Thus when the fall occurs in Genesis 3, God drives Adam and Eve from the garden so that they won't have access to the tree of life and live forever. That suggests–though it does not prove–that the tree of life represented a special offer of immortality to mankind as long as they refrained from sin.

Why? Because it apparently didn't grow anywhere except in the garden. Otherwise, Adam and Eve could have simply eaten from a tree of life growing down the road somewhere, and there would be no point in expelling them.

This suggests that the tree of life was a unique offer to man as long as he remained in spiritual harmony with God, and when he sinned, the offer was lost.

Other species, presumably, never had the offer in the first place.

One note: The Church today would likely interpret the tree of life in a symbolic rather than literal fashion as that is what it does with the other tree–the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. According to the Catechism,

How to read the account of the fall

390 The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of human history is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

396 God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. the prohibition against eating "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die." The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.

One is still free to interpret the two trees literally, but the common teaching of the Church, as expressed in the Catechism, would seem to take them symbolically, the one representing the opportunity for immortality in union with God and the other representing the moral limits that man must respect or fall out of harmony with God.

This moral probation was presumably unique to man, who is uniquely a moral agent in the terrestrial sphere.

Thus:

310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better. But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.

Marriage, Sex, New Heaven, New Earth

A reader writes:

If the new earth is a restoration of the original Creation plan by God and God affirmed marriage or the role of a spouse in Gen 2:18, how do you deal with the Mark 12:25 passage of people will neither marry nor be given in marriage? Is marriage and procreation a result of sin to be burned away in the refinement of passing over? Was it intended to be a temporary blessing only viable for the first stage of existence not long term?

These are very good questions. I think the key to understanding them involves Our Lord's statement in the gospels that we will be like the angels of heaven, neither marrying nor giving in marriage, and St. Paul's statement in Romans 7 that death ends marriage, so that spouses who remarry after being widowed are not committing adultery. These statements directly address the situation of death and the next age, and so they provide the framework within which to understand the Genesis mandate to procreate.

Undergirding both Genesis, the Gospels, the Epistles, and the whole rest of the Bible is a moral vision that understands sex and procreation–for humans–to be something that must occur within marriage. The affirmation that we will not be married in the next world thus implies the absence of sex and procreation, making us like "the angels of heaven" in that regard.

If that is our reference point then it sheds light on the original Genesis mandate, as well as on God's intent in the renewal of the world–the appearance of the New Heaven and the New Earth.

If life in the next age is as Jesus describes it then it would seem that the renewal of the world is not meant to be simply a restoration of his original plan for creation. It is similar in many ways to a restoration of the original plan (e.g., an environment in which man lives in harmony with God, in which there is no sin; Revelation even depicts the New Jerusalem as being planted with the tree of life from the Garden of Eden).

But it appears to go beyond a simple restoration. If it were the latter then it might well involve an ongoing place for human marriage, sex, and procreation.

Or maybe not. It also could be that the original plan was to have these play a role only for a time–until a certain number of humans were in existence–and then they would pass away.

One strand in the history of theology is the idea that God created our first parents in a probationary state. They were subject to a moral test ("Thou shalt not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil"), and had they passed this test then they would have been confirmed in holiness rather than losing it.

One could hypothesize that, had the human race stayed faithful to God, it one day would have been granted the kind of glorified state that does away with the need for marriage and procreation.

Presumably there would have been some limit to the number of humans needed. Unless God were to radically restructure the world, the earth–or even the whole physical universe–could not contain an infinite supply of them.

What would that maximum number be? We don't know. We are in a realm of pure speculation. However, one speculation that has found a place in the history of theology is that the total number of humans God wished to create is equal to a third of the number of angels.

Why? Because in Revelation 12 the dragon (the devil) is depicted sweeping away a third of the stars in the sky. This has been commonly interpreted (though it is not certain) as a reference to the fall of angels, and if a third of the angels fell then it could make sense for God to create that many humans as new, rational beings to take their place.

Only humans are not the same as angels. We may both be rational beings,but humans incorporate matter in a way angels don't, and angels appear much more powerful than us (as well as being different in other ways–like that non-procreation business, for example).

If humans are meant (and again, this is pure speculation) as a repair effort for God's original plan for the angels then it would seem God often repairs things in a way that go beyond the original plan–just like the New Heaven and New Earth seem to go beyond God's original plan for the present world.

It thus may be that marriage and procreation may have been intended–even in the original plan for this world–to be of finite duration and later to be superceded. Or it may be that God's restoration plan involves an upgrade to the human condition that is different than what the original plan called for.

Either way, it appears from Our Lord's statement that God has deemed there will be enough humans in the next world that there won't be a need for more (at least by marriage and sexual procreation).

Though we can't be sure of all the details, this seems linked to the fact that we will be immortal (meaning incapable of being killed or dying, in this sense of the term) in the next life. Thus there will not be an ongoing need to replace humans who have died.

An additional way that the next world appears to be different than what the original plan involves the role of Christ. Had man never fallen then it is possible Christ would never have become incarnate as a human, never died on the Cross, and never incorporated us as Christians into his mystical body, the Church.

One strand of theology has proposed that he might have become incarnate anyway, but this is speculative. At least it would not seem that there was a need for him to do so if mankind were not in need of redemption.

Because the incarnation and death of Christ seem to be motivated by our need of redemption, and because our being incorporated into his mystical body is based on us becoming partakers in the redemption he supplied, it seems that God has become more intimately involved in the universe, and we more intimately involved in him, than might have been the case had we never fallen.

The fall thus may have opened up a door to a new and more glorious situation between the Creator, the created world, as us as his creatures. For this reason St. Augustine, and later a line in the liturgy for Easter Vigil, refers to the fall of man–paradoxically and ironically–as a felix culpa or "blessed fault." On this view it was a fault that brought about a more blessed state of affairs than what would have been the case otherwise.

Or so we may speculate.

To pick up one last thread from the initial question, it by no means appears that marriage, sex, and procreation were a product of sin. Marriage is created, and procreation is implied, all the way back in Genesis 1, which does not envision the fall at all. The fall does not come along until Genesis 3, and sex is at no point implied to be a moral violation. In Genesis 2, God may make a rule against eating the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he does not make a rule against Adam and Eve having sex and procreating children. Indeed, he seems to expect them to.

This still leaves us with questions, of course, about what the end of marriage and procreation will mean for us.

The reader continues:

I have a hard time believing that the procreation will stop in the New Earth or that God does not delight in the fulfillment of Gen 1:28 of his children. Or that when Jesus comes again it marks the immediate end of the relationships with my wife. I know in my head that heaven and new Earth the Church becomes the bride and Jesus the bridegroom fulfilling the original plan, but did not Adam have a special relationship with Eve as much as they both had with God?

It does indeed please God that his children be fruitful and multiply–per Genesis 1:28–but presumably only to a point. Unless the does some really interesting things (which actually would be awesome cool) then the physical world will only hold a finite number of humans, and so procreation would not seem to go on indefinitely. The question is when, and Jesus seems to indicate it will not continue in the next world.

In terms of our own personal experience, St. Paul builds on what Jesus says by indicating our marriages are brought to an end with death. Otherwise it would be adultery for widows and widowers to remarry, which St. Paul indicates it is not.

This leaves us with an existential question regarding our own spouses. How could it be that we could cease to have a special relationship with them? How could it be that sex simply stop? Wouldn't that interfere with the joy of heaven?

As the reader writes, Adam and Eve had a special relationship with each other as well as with God. Surely this special relationship would find a place in the next life.

The answer, I think, is that it does. We will still have special relationships with those who have been close to us in this life, including our spouses. Death will not end that. In fact, in the purified, glorified state that we will then exist in, these relationships will actually be more intimate and the ties between us more powerful than they were in this life.

In the glorified state we will be able to love each other more purely, more intensely than we ever could in this life–and without distraction or weakness or contrary temptation. We won't be our irritable, flawed, exasperating, flawed selves. We will be both more loving and more lovable.

And so we should not face the prospect of the next world as a life without love but as a life with more and more intense and more pure love than we have ever known in this world.

It is to be a life without sex, and this confuses us as in this life the sexual act seems incredibly powerful, but we must recognize that the sexual act offers only a glimmer of the love and intimacy of heaven. It is not heaven itself. Heaven is the real good toward which sex–and all earthly goods–point.

The situation was once addressed by C. S. Lewis. In one of his writings he considered the difficulty that we will not have sex in heaven and how that seems like a diminution rather than an increase of joy. He acknowledged this and compared it to the situation of a little boy and his perception of joy. The boy might think that the greatest joy is eating chocolates, and he might have a hard time understanding how a married couple having sex might have a higher joy that didn't involve eating chocolates at the same time. In this way, adults in the present life may recognize sex as a supreme form of joy and have trouble understanding how in the next life there could be an even higher joy that does not involve sex.

What we do know, again per St. Paul, is that the things we must forego (either in this life or the next) do not compare to the weight of glory that will be revealed to us. If the next life does not involve sex, that's okay. God's got something better in store. And something so much better that it will make sex seem like a pale shadow. It will be the thing that sex and all earthly goods ultimately pointed toward–and thus something that dwarfs them with the power of its reality.

Finally, the reader addresses a particular point of practical living in this life:

I am fully cognizant that I may at times place my relationship with my wife more at the forefront in my mind than my relationship to God. I can only hope that by serving or honoring her that I am serving Him at the same time.

I think this is exactly the right way to look at it. God created us with finite mental resources. This includes a finite amount of attention that we can devote to things and a correspondingly finite amount of emotional energy with can devote to them.

Because of these limitations, we are in a situation to which the science of economic applies–economics being the study of how to manage limited resources that have alterantive uses. We've only got so much intellectual and emotional wherewithal, and we can spend it on different things. So how does God want us to spend it?

We know that he must be our ultimate reference point. He is of infinite value, and anything in this universe that has value is only a reflection of him, the source from which all value–all good things–comes. This is what is meant by the command to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.

But he does not expect us to devote all our intellectual and emotional resources to him directly. Otherwise there would be no room left over for the command to love our neighbor as ourself.

Or even loving ourself!

God does not even expect cloistered monks and nuns to think exclusively of him 24/7. That kind of singlemindedness is simply not possible. And anyone who tried it would not only fail but starve to death in the attempt.

We therefore see that God wants us to devote our direct attention to things other than himself, to created realities, including our own personal needs and those of the humans around us–most especially our families and friends, the ones we are closest to.

By serving them, we serve God. As long as we have in the back of our minds the fact that God is the source of all goodness and that we wish to serve him by acknowledging and caring for the created goods he has made, we approach life with a fundamental orientation toward God.

It is thus okay–and even mandated by God–for our relationship with our spouse to sometimes occupy the front place in our mind. The virtual intention (as theologians call it) to serve God by serving others suffices to bring this relationship into alignment with God.

And so we do, indeed, server God by serving others, including our loved ones, who he wishes us to care for in a special way.