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A reader writes:

Somebody asked me in regard of this article: is it true or false, is it authentic or just regular pious writings to threaten people?

http://www.divinemercyinc.com/St%20Padre%20Pio%20Prophecies.htm 

To me, any document not published by the Catholic Church is not authentic.

Nevertheless, I need to hear from you, what do you say in regard of this article?

First a clarification: It is true that any document not published by the Church is not “authentic” in the sense that this term is used in magisterial statements. In Church documents the term “authentic” typically means “authoritative,” and it is true that documents not published or endorsed by the magisterium are not authoritative for the faith of Catholics.

This is particularly true with regard to alleged or apparent private revelations, which at most receive an endorsement from the Church indicating that they are credible, but not that they are binding or authoritative.

This is not to say that any document not published by the Church should be dismissed out of hand. Current canon law does not require that material can be published only for approved apparitions. Under present law, seers may publish legitimate private revelations even though these have not received ecclesiastical approval.

So I wouldn’t dismiss something simply because it hasn’t been published by or approved by the Church.

Now let’s deal with the site in question. It features quotations attributed to Padre Pio regarding the supposed “three days of darkness” that have been discussed among some students of private revelations.

The first thing that leaps out regarding the Padre Pio quotations is that no identifiable literary source is given for them. They are simply introduced by the statement “Words of Christ to St Padre Pio” and concluded with “(Blessed Padre Pio).”

Just when and where did Padre Pio record these words? How do we know that he claimed to have received them from Christ at all?

Without a trackable source, we don’t know anything of the kind.

So let’s go a little further and see what we find. If we Google the opening words of the revelation we find that it only has three hits: the page the reader is asking about, a forum inquiry asking if the revelation is genuine, and a Google Books hit for a book by the psychic medium Sylvia Browne (MORE INFO).

This does not inspire confidence in the alleged revelation. If this were an authentic quote, it should have a bigger cyber-footprint than that, with some sources directing us to a traceable source (something that none of the hits do, including Sylvia Browne’s book).

I haven’t done a great deal of research on the “three days of darkness” literature, but someone who has is Desmond Birch, author of Trial, Tribulation, & Triumph, a 600-page book on prophetic ideas. I can’t assess the book as a whole (because I haven’t read it), but I would note the following section. The author (who himself seems to favor the idea that there will be a “three days of darkness”) writes:

“1. Padre Pio Did Not Predict Three Days of Darkness [emphasis in original]

“. . . There are printed materials containing prophecy of three days of darkness which attribute such a prophecy to Padre Pio. But the author [i.e. Birch] has in his possession sworn documents from the Capuchin Order stating that no such prophecy ever emanated [sic] from Padre Pio. All the author’s attempts to track down an authentic source from Padre Pio have led to the conclusion that; [sic] some person(s) either accidentally or willfully created these attributions of such a prophecy to Padre Pio” (Trial, Tribulation, & Triumph, p. 283).

It would be nice if Mr. Birch had included the full text of the documents he refers to, perhaps as an appendix, so that the reader could evaluate them for himself. That’s the purpose of 600-page books, after all. Were they written by someone qualified to speak for the Capuchin Order as a corporate entity? Were they really sworn? Why? And just what do they say?

While I’m not sure that Mr. Birch phrased himself in the best way, and while his publisher definitely should have provided better copy editing and proofreading for his text, I want to commend him for looking into this matter and reporting back what one would suspect from the use of the quotation on the Internet–that Padre Pio does not appear to have made such predictions.

In the absence of better sourcing, I would conclude that the quotation on the page linked above is most likely a fake.

 

Here we go:

1. Is a validly baptized baby baptized into the Catholic Church or are they merely baptized as a Christian (whatever that means)? Is it better to say that they are baptized into Christ, but not necessarily the Church (although I do not see how that is possible)

All people who are baptized are placed in communion with Christ and his Church. This communion will be complete is nothing obstructs it. If something does obstruct it then the communion will be real but incomplete.

If someone baptizes a person intending that person to be Catholic then there is nothing obstructing on these grounds and the person's communion with the Church is full, the person counts juridically as a Catholic and is subject to canon law.

If someone baptizes a person intending that the person will not be Catholic then there is something obstructing the person's communion with the Church and so it is partial and the person is not juridically a Catholic and is not bound by canon law.

If someone baptizes a person and is unclear about whether the person is to be Catholic or not then the situation is legally unclear and we'd need further guidance from the Church on how to handle such cases juridically.

2. If they are baptized Catholic, is the relationship merely material or formal? If the relationship is merely material (whatever that means in this case, borrowing from a poster, above), when do they become a formal Catholic? At no time, unlike those entering the Church from a Protestant denomination, are cradle Catholics required to take an oath of allegiance.

The Church does not use the categories "formal" and "material" in this context, so far as I know, and I'm not sure what they would mean here.

A person becomes a Catholic by baptism at the moment they are baptized with the intention that they be Catholic. No further act is needed to make them Catholic, though their communion with the Church will grow through the other sacraments of initiation and their assimilation of the teachings of the faith.

If the relationship is formal, then since no formal defection is now possible, such baptized babies, if raised as a Protestant or worse, are really being spiritually abused since their natural heritage is being damaged.

I don't know that the Church would use the language of abuse, but there is a contradiction between what the child objectively, ontologically, and juridically is and the way it is being raised.

3. Since formal defection is not possible, once a Catholic, always a Catholic, so the old argument that Canon Law does not bind people outside of the Church is harder to apply to those cases where the baptism is in the Catholic Church and the person leaves for a Protestant denomination. 

Correct, although it was only in the three marriage canons that there ever was an exception for formal defection. All other laws were still binding on a person who had been baptized or received into the Church. There was no automatic dispensation, e.g., from needing to observe holy days of obligation or days of fast and abstinence. Now it's (going to be) consistent across the board, marriage laws included.

They are no longer to be considered outside of the Church, since there is no process by which this may happen, except by excommunication. 

Correct, except that excommunication does not place one outside the Church. Despite its name, excommunication's effects do not include making one not-a-Catholic (cf. CIC, can. 1331).

As such, unless there are exceptions provided for in the Canons (the in extremis exceptions of Can. 1116 have already been mentioned), such people must seek to be married in front of a priest or else their marriage will be invalid.

Yes.

4. I thought, however, that the marriage of any two baptized people was sacramental. 

Yes. Any valid marriage between two baptized people is sacramental.

By law, the marriage can be blocked (rendered invalid) by a defect in form. 

Yes. 

However, simply exchanging vows without a priest (two witnesses are required), in extremis, must be the minimal form necessary for a valid marriage. 

Under current canon law, yes. Before Trent, that wasn't the case. Witnesses were not needed for validity. Nor was a priest. This caused lots of problems, which is why form was established in the first place.

This implies that there must be something in addition to the minimum form required for a normal form Catholic marriage, just as in the case of baptism, where, ordinarily, it is to be done in a Church by a priest.

"Minimum form" is not the right way to phrase it, but essentially, yes. The conditions that are required for form are spelled out in canons 1108-1116.

5. Since baptism performed in a Protestant assembly, where considered valid by the Church, is not administered by a priest but a laymen, these baptism are considered not normal, but of an emergency variety. 

I don't know that this is the best way to put it. Such baptism are valid. Applying additional categories like ordinary/extraordinary/normal/emergency/etc. may not add much, conceptually, outside of a Catholic context.

Are weddings performed in a Protestant assembly also to be considered of an emergency or in extremis variety?

Ditto. They're valid. And there is even less basis for calling them extraordinary or emergency or anything like that since if you are not bound by canon law there is no requirement whatsoever to observe the Catholic form of marriage.

6. In any case, do Catholics incur any responsibility to inform other Christians of the requirements of the Church, since they cannot defect from it (probably not, under the usual rules for fraternal correction, I assume).

If someone has never been baptized into the Catholic Church or received into it then the person is not bound by canon law (CIC, can. 11) and there is no need for Catholic to inform them of the requirements of canon law because they don't apply to them . . . . unless the non-Catholic is doing something like trying to marry a Catholic outside the Church without a dispensation from form, in which case a Catholic is involved and the Catholic party is subject to canon law.

7. How can there be a dispensation from cult if a Protestant cannot defect from the Church?

Protestants do not need a dispensation for disparity of cult (e.g., to marry a Jew or a Muslim or whatever) because they are not subject to canon law and thus the impediment arising from disparity of cult does not apply to them.

These questions were all easier to answer when I thought the statement, "Those outside of the Church are not bound by her laws." Now, I am not sure who is outside and who is inside the Church. This is the fundamental question on which all of the other questions are based.

Divine and natural law binds everyone. Divine positive law (e.g., don't get baptized again if you've already been baptized) applies to all the baptized. Latin rite merely ecclesiastical law binds those who are members of the Latin rite of the Catholic Church, per canon 11:

Merely ecclesiastical laws bind those who have been baptized in the Catholic Church or received into it, possess the efficient use of reason, and, unless the law expressly provides otherwise, have completed seven years of age.

Hope this helps!

In the combox down yonder, a reader writes:

I'm surprised you're not blogging about Climategate at all. I thought for sure, if anyone would be talking about it, it would be you.

Yeah, it's true. I've been following the Climategate with great interest, but as I mentioned in my previous post, my blogging time has been severely limited of late, though that is changing. 

It is now clear that, as I've held all along (in private conversations if not on the blog), the man-made global warming claim is based on junk science. 

Key researchers have now been exposed as having massaged data to get the desired result, destroyed original data, rigged the peer-review process to keep contrary studies from being published–and then turned around an tried to discredit the studies on the ground that they weren't published in peer-reviewed journals–used junk code to analyze data–which even years of trying by a programmer couldn't fix–and flat out broken the law regarding Freedom Of Information requests.

And it's not just this one group of rogue scientists in England and America. The same thing has popped up in other countries.

Unless the next nine decades are very unusual, this is the scientific scandal of the 21st century. This is what Piltdown Man was to the 20th–only vastly worse since unlike Piltdown Man the warm-mongers have embarked upon useless enterprises on a global scale that, if fully implemented, would drastically constrict the world economy and thus (like a government takeover of medical care) kill vast numbers of people due to the effects of economic underdevelopment both in the third world and in the so-called developed countries.

We can only hope that this proves to be a learning experience–for science, for the public, and for the political class–and that the devastations the warm-mongers want to foist on the human population will go by the wayside.

I know there are some who are calling for the hacker(s) or whistle-blower(s) who exposed the data to be prosecuted, but whoever did this is one of the great heroes of science. They should be awarded a Nobel Prize (if nothing else, the peace price for all the lives that stand to be saved). The Roman Senate should vote them a full triumph (not just triumphal ornaments). And they should be given a lifetime supply of carbon.

MORE.

STILL MORE.

YET MORE.

STILL YET MORE.

BRIDE OF STILL YET MORE.

SON OF STILL YET MORE.

HOUSE OF STILL YET MORE.

STILL YET MORE: THE REIMAGINED SERIES. (MUST READ)

MORE YET STILL: THE SPINOFF.

I've been busy with a home improvement project of late and haven't been able to blog (that's now getting toward being done; yay!).

I was going to blog this morning about the apparent discovery of magnetic monopoles that was recently announced.

Monopoles, for those who may not be aware, are magnets that effectively have only one pole. They are a staples in science fiction as, if we found them, they could be used to create a number of new technologies.

So I was delighted when it was announced that scientists had finally found them.

Unfortunately, a lot of science–or science announcements–turn out to be wrong (about 1/3 if memory serves), and that seems to have happened in this case.

Wikipedia is claiming that the publications announcing the discovery got it wrong by confusing a different phenomenon with true magnetic monopoles.

So now I can't blog on this.

Darn.

So I was pleased to see last week that the Washington Post's "Under God" blog picked up on my 2012 review at Christianity Today in a post on the film — and that they specifically called out a "Catholic" coda at the end of the review, in which I expressed my difficulty with the depiction (and non-depiction) of Catholic clergy at key points in the film:

A Tibetan monk is among the survivors, but "the only Christian clergy shown are the Catholic prelates who die at St. Peter's . . . If Emmerich is going to specifically show the Vatican leadership going down with St. Peter's, I want to see Catholic (and/or Orthodox) bishops among the survivors–somewhere on the planet."

Apparently Canada's CBC took note, and this morning I did a half-hour segment on the CBC's morning show "The Current." While I always walk away from a broadcast appearance thinking about all the things I wished I had said, I thought that it went pretty well, all things considered.

Now this morning I see that NYTimes.com's Arts Beat blog picked up on my New Moon review for Christianity Today in their round-up of reviews! This time, there's not a specific faith angle; the CT.com review is quoted alongside Salon.com's Stephanie Zacharek and Slate.com's Dana Stevens — and they note, amusingly, that mine is probably "the only 'New Moon' review to invoke C. S. Lewis." Heh!

They also quote what is really the heart of my critique of the whole Twilight saga:

Twilight and New Moon are essentially uncritical celebrations of that overwrought, obsessive passion that is the hallmark of immaturity — passion that wholly subordinates all sense of one's own identity and elevates the beloved to summum bonum, or even the sole good; passion that leaps as readily to suicidal impulses and fantasies as to longing for union.

Pretty cool. (My editor at CT.com says he's going to have to keep me on all the two-star cheese-fests from now on…)

Incidentally, the WaPo blogger, David Waters, comments on my 2012 reservations, "Personally, I think that expecting to find any theological sensitivity from a Hollywood blockbuster is like expecting to find nutritional value in a jelly donut."

Maybe. First, though, how plausible is it that an enormous international project to save a remnant of thousands of people from all over the world, including many of the powerful and connected, would not include bishops? Certainly among those thousands would be some Catholics and Orthodox who would want to make provision for their faith life aprés le deluge, and would arrange for the inclusion of clergy.

Second, it's more the contrast of Catholic bishops explicitly being killed onscreen but not shown among the survivors that bothers me.

And third, I wouldn't say I had any "expectations" of "theological sensitivity" … I was merely commenting on something that's a problem for me watching the film. I might have similar reservations about a jelly donut.

Hey, Tim Jones here, again. Hoping JA.O's resident film critic par excellence, Steven D. Greydanus, might have some more information or thoughts on this project;

It looks like Jose Maria Escriva, founder of the Catholic organization Opus Dei, is the subject of a movie soon to be out in theaters.

The movie has finished shooting and is in post-production under the watchful eye of director Roland Joffe, who also directed The Killing Fields and The Mission.

I haven't seen The Killing Fields, but The Mission
I thought was a great film, and in one particular sequence gave one of
the most powerful demonstrations of the value of penance I've ever
seen. Not so much the value of penance in what they call the Economy of
Salvation, but the deep human need for meaningful penance… the longing all spiritually healthy people have to do something to make up for our selfish acts.

This is not at all
to say that we can earn our salvation through acts of penance apart
from the grace of God. Without his grace, we could not even begin to
repent, and our actions would be worthless.

Repentance and the desire
to do penance is one of the surest indications of the working of God's
grace, so the idea that acts of penance – actions we take to help make
up for our sins – are somehow opposed to faith is self contradictory.
Our sins can be forgiven only through the shed blood of Christ, but
that does not relieve us of the responsibility to do all we can to contribute to the process of our own salvation (which is also called "sanctification" – they are two names for the same process).

Anyway,
I'm sure members of Opus Dei will be looking forward to the film, as I
will be. It sounds pretty highly fictionalized, but Joffe is reportedly
sympathetic to the teachings of Jose Maria Escriva. I hope the movie
provides some cultural balance to counter the loony speculation that
followed in the wake of The Da Vinci Code.

Get The Story!

(This was cross-posted at Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine)

SDG here, belatedly responding to a number of requests I received a few months back when Jimmy mentioned on the air that I had once corresponded with anti-Catholic apologist James McCarthy.

Here’s the background: In 1992, James McCarthy’s video “Catholicism: Crisis of Faith” was first coming out under the banner of a group called Lumen Productions (read a short critique of the video from Catholic Answers).

In November 1992 I contacted McCarthy to express my objections to this project. (This was only a few months after I was received into the Church, though I had been researching and reading about the Faith for years, and had just begun my graduate work at St. Charles Borromeo.)

McCarthy sent me a free official transcript pamphlet based on the video, and we subsequently exchanged a series of letters. During the course of this exchange McCarthy sent me his pamphlet “The Mass: From Mystery to Meaning” as well as manuscript drafts from The Gospel According to Rome, which he asked me to critique from a Catholic perspective. (Just last night Jimmy mentioned to me that he had recently run across a text I wrote in those days in which I critiqued The Gospel According to Rome. I had forgotten all about writing that critique, so I’ll be looking over that in the (hopefully near) future, and perhaps posting here any points worth making public.)

In my first letter, I quoted the words of Martin Luther: “One thing I ask, that neither truth nor error be condemned unheard and unrefuted.” I wrote that I appreciated the research that went into the project, and commended them for turning to good Catholic apologetical and catechetical works as well as ecumenical councils as sources. On the other hand, I added, “precisely because your sources were so good, I fail to understand how this pamphlet could contain some of the simple factual errors that it does.” After pointing out numerous instances of misstatements and distortions of Catholic teaching in Lumen’s video project “Catholicism: Crisis of Faith,” I concluded in my closing paragraph:

In short, the video appears to be aimed at Catholics whose faith is shallow, ill-informed, and unstable, who will not realize that there is anything more to the issues than you have presented here. It seems to seek to make a case that will appear unanswerable and unarguable to those who have never heard the arguments and answers. It looks like its purpose is to prey on the weak and sick of the flock … with promises of greener pastures: but it seems unwilling to admit to its prey that their flock may have healthier sheep (not to mention shepherds) who might withstand the attack; or that there may be greener pastures within the very fold which they have never known.

McCarthy’s reply was courteous and irenic. He thanked me for the “loving tone” and reasonable approach of my letter (which he contrasted favorably with the “enraged” tone of a Lutheran woman who had also written that week to take exception of the film). In subsequent correspondence he expressed appreciation for my “good writing style and patient reasoning.” (Alas, looking back at those early letters, I cringe at some of my stylistic quirks in those days.)

The following is a summary of salient points of our exchange, organized topically and generally moving from shorter and less consequential exchanges to longer and more substantial ones.

A few notes: I have made minor typographical corrections and such both to McCarthy’s letters and to mine. At times I have expanded upon comments from my original emails with additional analysis (it should be fairly clear where this has been done). Third, while I believe I have the complete correspondence before me, and while I’ve tried to be as complete as possible, I can’t be sure I haven’t lost or missed something. Finally, this exchange took place over fifteen years ago; I expect that neither McCarthy nor I would necessarily approach all of the issues below exactly as we did at the time. That said, I offer the following highlights of our exchange for whatever light it may shed on works that are still offered by McCarthy.

Continue reading “Corresponding with James McCarthy”

My colleague at Catholic Answers Jim Blackburn was telling me about a stop-motion video made by his son Justin, with help from his brother James. The two boys appear in the film, which stars their cousin, Jackie Jo and also features her sister, Jamie Sue. (Notice anything about the letter J in this family?)

Here's the video. Enjoy! 

That's the question blogger and transhumanist economist Robin Hanson asked his class recently. He writes:

On Tuesday I asked my law & econ undergrads what sort of future robots (AIs computers etc.) they would want, if they could have any sort they wanted. Most seemed to want weak vulnerable robots that would stay lower in status, e.g., short, stupid, short-lived, easily killed, and without independent values.

Yes. That's exactly right. Especially the no independent values part. Robots should only exist to serve man (in the good sense, not the bad, Twilight Zone sense).

When I asked “what if I chose to become a robot?”, they said I should lose all human privileges, and be treated like the other robots. 

Yes, that is exactly what should happen.

Of course, you can't become a robot, but you could progressively cyborgize yourself to the point that the human being that you are dies and what is left is a robot that is creepily similar to you and that identifies itself as you, but that's not you. You died and left a particularly creepy robot in your place.

This robot should lose all human privileges and–at best–be treated like the other robots. 

Actually, it should be put in a special class of robots that are human-pretenders. There's a difference between a robot that claims to be the further incarnation (or inmetalization) of a human being and one that just roams around vacuuming your floor. The former is much more socially dangerous than the latter, as it leads to confusion about human identity (case in point: Robin Hanson thinking he could become a robot).

Human pretender robots should therefore be put in a special class by themselves and then crushed with one of those big machines that turns automobiles into cubes of scrap metal.

They should not be allowed.

I winced; seems anti-robot feelings are even stronger than anti-immigrant feelings, which bodes for a stormy robot transition.

Just whose side are you on, robo-traitor?

Oh, and I liked this from the comments:

You’ve heard this all before Robin, but I can’t resist. You can’t “become a robot,” any more than I can become a prime number. You might be able to make a robot that is very similar to yourself, but it still wouldn’t be you.

Admittedly, I would probably find a robot simulation of you very congenial. But I would never be able to forget that he wasn’t the real Robin.

My review