What are celibacy, chastity, and continence? 9 things to know and share

clerical collarThere is a great deal of confusion about what celibacy, chastity, and continence are.

Each one of these concepts is subject to common misunderstandings, but the differences between them are easy to sort out.

A reader from the Asian country of Myanmar writes:

Please, may I ask your help to explain the similarities and differences between celibacy and chastity, especially in the context of consecrated life, among diocesan clergy, and in married life.

I’d be happy to help! I’ll also throw in the related concept of continence.

Here are 9 things to know and share . . .

 

1) Formal vs. Informal Speech

People often think that celibacy means not having sex, or having a commitment to not have sex.

This understanding is so common that you will find dictionary definitions for celibacy like “abstention from sexual intercourse.”

People often have the same idea about chastity, and so you can find dictionary definitions for chastity like “the state of not having sex with anyone : the quality or state of being chaste.”

These are informal ways of speaking that use these words the way they are popularly understood.

In this piece, though, we are going to look at what these terms mean when they are being used in a formal, Catholic context.

 

2) What is continence?

Continence refers to what people think celibacy and chastity refer to—that is, not having sex.

The term also has other meanings, but in a formal, Catholic context, it means not using the sexual faculty.

That includes not just ordinary, regular sexual acts, but all sexual acts. If you are refraining from any and all sexual acts, you are being continent.

It comes from the Latin word continentia, which means “a holding back.” By the late 1300s, this had come to mean refraining from sex.

More recently (in the 20th century), it has come to refer from holding back other bodily functions as well.

 

3) What is celibacy?

Celibacy is the state of not being married.

People associate it with the priesthood because, in the Latin rite of the Church, the norm is for priests to be unmarried—to be celibate.

However, properly speaking, anyone who is unmarried can also be said to be celibate.

It comes from the Latin word caelibatus, which simply means “the state of being unmarried.”

 

4) What is chastity?

KEEP READING.

Is a Clash Brewing Between Two Cardinals over Divorce and Remarriage? 12 things to know and share

cardinalrodriguezRecently one of the most prominent cardinals in the world made remarks regarding the head of the Vatican’s doctrinal office that could be taken as insulting.

The issue was receiving Communion following divorce and civil remarriage.

This kind of situation is a very rare event. We don’t normally see cardinals seeming to publicly take apparent swipes at each other.

The two involved in this case are Cardinal Rodriguez and soon-to-be Cardinal Muller.

Here are 12 things to know and share . . .

 

1) Who is Cardinal Rodriguez?

His full name is Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga.

He is the Cardinal Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

He is also the coordinator of the group of eight cardinals that Pope Francis has gathered to help advise him on reforming the Roman Curia.

This makes him one of the most prominent cardinals in the world.

 

2) Who is (soon-to-be) Cardinal Muller?

His full name is Gerhard Ludwig Muller.

He is currently an Archbishop, and he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF). He was subsequently confirmed in office by Pope Francis.

Recently, as expected, it was announced that he would be created a cardinal by Pope Francis on February 22.

Once that happens, he will also be one of the most prominent cardinals in the world.

 

3) What is the background to this situation?

For some time there have been calls—particularly in Germany—for a change in the Church’s discipline regarding Communion for those Catholics who have been divorced and civilly remarried.

Apart from extremely unusual circumstances, the Church requires Catholics to observe the Catholic form of marriage or get a dispensation from it, in order to be validly married.

For a Catholic to go to city hall and get married will not result in a valid marriage.

Consequently, the Church does not recognize the marriages of Catholics who have done this, and it must consequently regard them as living in a state of sexual sin (unless they are living as brother and sister).

This means that they are ineligible to receive Communion.

What should happen is this: Catholics who have obtained a civil divorce and who wish to remarry should pursue the annulment process to determine whether their original marriage was valid. If it is found to have been invalid, then they are free to remarry, provided they observe the Catholic form of marriage.

The annulment process exists because Christ was very firm on the permanence of marriage: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” He went so far as to say that those who divorce and remarry commit ongoing adultery against their first spouse.

Adultery is a grave sin, and so it makes one ineligible for Communion.

In response to calls for a change of the Church’s discipline on this point, Archbishop Muller published an article—first in a German-language publication and later in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, defending and explaining the Church’s position.

You can read it online in English, here.

 

4) How did Cardinal Rodriguez get involved?

He was being interviewed by the German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.

You can read the full interview in German here.

During the course of the discussion, the interviewer alluded to Archbishop Muller’s article.

It was at this point that Cardinal Rodriguez made the remarks that raised eyebrows.

 

5) What did Cardinal Rodriguez say?

KEEP READING.

The Weekly Francis – 19 January 2014

Pope Francis is having his "Inaugural Mass"? What's happens in this Mass, and why is it important?This version of The Weekly Francis covers material released in the last week from 10 September 2013 to 18 January 2014.

Angelus

General Audiences

Homilies

Letters

Messages

Speeches

Daily Homilies (fervorinos)

Papal Tweets

How many of your favorite New Testament books were popular among the early Christians?

BodmerPapyrusObviously, taken as a whole, the books of the New Testament were quite popular. They were Scripture, after all!

But how popular were they individually?

People today have favorite books in the Bible–ones they go to all the time, and ones they only rarely look at.

This is a phenomenon that affects both the books of the Old and the New Testament, and it’s possible to get a sense of how popular particular books were in particular time periods.

One way of doing that–before the Bible was bound as a single volume–is by seeing how many copies there are of individual books.

In Larry W. Hurtado’s outstanding study, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, he offer a listing of how many early (2nd-3rd century) manuscripts we have pieces of from the books of the New Testament.

This gives us an approximate idea (but only an approximate idea) of which books were more popular than others in this time period, because the Christians in these centuries had to have copies make of single books or a few books together, and the more popular they were, more copies would be made, and the more likely the manuscripts would be to survive to today.

Recently there have been rumors of a number of new early manuscripts being found, but these have not been verified as yet. If they are verified these might alter the following counts slightly, but they would not offer the overall picture much.

Here’s the count both by canonical frequency and order:

By Frequency:

  • John (16)
  • Matthew (12)
  • Luke (7)
  • Acts (7)
  • Revelation (5)
  • Romans (4)
  • Hebrews (4)
  • Ephesians (3)
  • 1 Thessalonians (3)
  • James (3)
  • 1 Corinthians (2)
  • Philippians (2)
  • 2 Thessalonians (2)
  • Jude (2)
  • Mark (1)
  • 2 Corinthians (1)
  • Galatians (1)
  • Colossians (1)
  • Titus (1)
  • Philemon (1)
  • 1 Peter (1)
  • 2 Peter (1)
  • 1 John (1?)
  • 2 John (1)
  • 1 Timothy (0)
  • 2 Timothy (0)
  • 3 John (0)

By Canonical Order:

  • Matthew (12)
  • Mark (1)
  • Luke (7)
  • John (16)
  • Acts (7)
  • Romans (4)
  • 1 Corinthians (2)
  • 2 Corinthians (1)
  • Galatians (1)
  • Ephesians (3)
  • Philippians (2)
  • Colossians (1)
  • 1 Thessalonians (3)
  • 2 Thessalonians (2)
  • 1 Timothy (0)
  • 2 Timothy (0)
  • Titus (1)
  • Philemon (1)
  • Hebrews (4)
  • James (3)
  • 1 Peter (1)
  • 2 Peter (1)
  • 1 John (1?)
  • 2 John (1)
  • 3 John (0)
  • Jude (2)
  • Revelation (5)

As you’d expect, the Gospels and Acts are the most popular books of all–with the exception of Mark, which was startlingly less popular (most likely because it’s short and does not contain much unique information; it’s virtually all found in Matthew and Luke; also, it’s literary style is lesser).

After the Gospels and Acts, Revelation is the next most popular (everybody wants to know about the Apocalypse!). This is interesting in part because the canonicity of Revelation was doubted by some for a time, but it’s subject matter is compelling.

After that we find Paul’s epistles, which tend to be more popular than the Catholic epistles, and the longer works tend to be more popular than the shorter ones (which you might predict since a shorter work is, by its nature, less informative than a longer one).

The fact that Hebrews has as many early manuscripts as Romans is surprising, partly because its canonicity was questioned by some. The high Christology it contains, however, might have boosted how popular it was (it also is a longer work).

James is also quite popular–moreso than the other Catholic epistles.

All of this has to be taken with some nuance, because what survived may not be fully representative of what was popular. Also, discovering even a few new manuscripts would change the rankings of some of these books.

But it’s still helpful for developing a general picture of what was popular.

And that picture significantly coincides with what most Christians today consider the most popular books.

So which of your favorites rank high–or don’t? Let me know in the comment box!

Did Pope Francis Endorse Breast Feeding in the Sistine Chapel? 5 things to know and share

pope-francis-baptizes-a-babyThe Interwebz are ablaze with the story that Pope Francis encouraged breastfeeding—and in the Sistine Chapel of all places!

What did he say? And what did he mean?

Here are 5 things to know and share . . .

 

1) When did Pope Francis make his remarks?

It was Sunday, January 12, the commemoration of the Baptism of the Lord.

He was in the Sistine Chapel, where he baptized 32 babies.

It is customary for Popes to perform baptisms on this day.

We’ve talked about that before.

He took the occasion to give a brief homily.

It’s online in Italian here, but the full English translation is not up yet.

 

2) What did he say?

According to a Vatican Radio story:

The Holy Father concluded his homily with a special word of affection for the newly baptized children.

“Today the choir sings,” he said, “but the most beautiful choir is [the choir] of children” making noise.

He continued, “Some are crying, because they are uncomfortable, or because they are hungry. If they are hungry, mothers, give them something to eat… they are the central figures, the protagonists [of this celebration].”

It was with this “awareness of being the transmitters of faith” that Pope Francis continued on to the ceremony of Baptism.

 

3) Wait. He didn’t mention breastfeeding. Is this story being distorted?

KEEP READING.

What did the Gospel writers know?

four-gospelsSome biblical scholars are too quick to say that, because a particular Gospel doesn’t include a given story or saying of Jesus, the Evangelist who wrote it must not have known about it.

Really?

What would cause a person to think this?

 

The Infodump Hypothesis

One thing that might motivate such a view is the idea that the Gospels represent total infodumps of everything that a particular Evangelist knew about Jesus.

But if that were the case then they wouldn’t ready the way that they do.

They hang together as narratives and display too much literary artistry for that.

If they were frantic attempts to record everything the author knew about Jesus, there would be too many stray, half-formed things that don’t fit into their literary structures.

They also would be much longer than they are.

 

TMI

There would have simply been Too Much Information about Jesus for the Evangelists to put in the Gospels.

They had to make choices.

This would particularly be the case if Matthew and John were, indeed, eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry. They would have known lots about Jesus—far more than could be fit into a small book like a Gospel. Such authors would be forced to omit things they know about Jesus.

Even non-eyewitness authors (like Luke and, at least for the most part, Mark) were in contact with eyewitnesses and had access to lots of information about him.

The oral preaching of Jesus that preceded the writing of the Gospels was extensive, and the original eyewitnesses were still there and able to be implored: “Tell me more about Jesus!”

It is inescapable that the Evangelists would have known things about Jesus, either from their own experience of his ministry, from speaking with eyewitnesses, or from information that was in common circulation about him, that they did not put in the Gospels.

 

The Agrapha of Jesus

We even have examples of what may be authentic sayings of Jesus that weren’t recorded in the Gospels. They are known as “agrapha” (Greek, “unwritten ones”), and they are for the most part found in the writings of the Church Fathers, who attributed them to Jesus despite their not being in the Gospels.

KEEP READING.

The Aramaic Apocalypse and the Anunciation

4q246-manuscriptThere is a document in the Dead Sea Scrolls known as the Aramaic Apocalypse (4Q246).

You can read the full (surviving) text here, along with some commentary.

The parts that I would like to call attention to are these:

He will be called the Son of God, and they will call him the Son of the Most High, like a shooting star [Col. 2, Line 1].

Their kingdom will be an eternal kingdom, and their paths will be righteous [Col. 2, Line 5]

Any of that sound familiar?

How about:

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there will be no end” [Luke 1:31-33]

It’s no surprise, then, that many scholars view the Aramaic Apocalypse as referring to a messianic figure.

An additional piece of evidence is that it compares the Son of God/Son of the Most High to a shooting star. The symbol of a star was also connected with the Messiah.

The interesting thing to me is that it’s another illustration about how ideas found in Christianity (such as the identification of the Messiah with the Son of God) were already found elsewhere in first century Palestinian Judaism.

They may not have understood that the Messiah would be the Son of God in the same sense that Christians came to, but the linkage was already there.

Did Pope Francis baptize a baby whose parents aren’t married? 12 things to know and share

francis_baptismPress reports are claiming that Pope Francis recently baptized the child whose parents were not married in the eyes of the Church.

Since many priests in America have refused to baptize such children, it raised some eyebrows.

What are the real facts in this case?

Here are 12 things to know and share . . .

 

1) What was the occasion of the baptism?

Every year the pope baptizes people on the commemoration of Christ’s baptism.

This takes place in the Sistine Chapel at St. Peter’s basilica.

This is an entirely normal practice.

For example, here’s a piece about Pope Benedict baptizing twenty babies on the Baptism of Our Lord in 2013.

 

2) What happened in this case?

According to Fr. Z’s translation of an Italian news story in La Stampa:

Among the baptized – according to the report in the daily “Il Tirreno” – there is also Giulia [i.e., Julia], caught of a couple married civilly but not in church.

And this is certainly a novelty.  Not for Bergoglio, who as a priest, bishop and cardinal baptized babies of teen mothers or unmarried couples many times.

Giulia’s parents, last 25 September, had made their request to the Pope directly at the end of the Wednesday general audience.

“We were on the ‘sagrato’ (the ‘porch’ in front of the Basilica)”, Ivan Scardia recounted, the father of the baby, “when he passed by and we asked him if he could baptize our second child.  He told us to get in touch with his collaborators and then they contacted us.”

When the time came to send in the documents there was a glitch: “We were married at city hall.  But this problem was also overcome,” Giulia’s father said.

 

3) Why would this mean that the parents weren’t married in the Church’s eyes?

If someone is a Catholic then, apart from certain unusual circumstances, they are obliged to observe the Church’s form of marriage or get a dispensation from this form.

Otherwise, their marriages will not be valid.

Dispensations are sometimes granted, such as when a Catholic marries a non-Catholic and they wish to have a non-Catholic ceremony.

When two Catholics are marrying each other, however, such dispensations are not granted.

City halls, even in Italy, do not observe the Catholic form of marriage, and so for two Catholics to just head to city hall and attempt marriage would result in an invalid marriage from the Church’s perspective.

 

4) How reliable is this report?

KEEP READING.

Internal Struggles Common to All

There is a famous (among philosphers) passage in Plato where there is a particularly good illustration of the kind of struggles we often fight with ourselves–the same kind we read about in the New Testament in passages like “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” and St. Paul’s description of his internal struggles in Romans 7:13-25.

I wanted to keep track of the passage in Plato for use in the future, because it shows that these struggles are common to all humans, even the pagan Greeks.

I hadn’t read it since grad school, so I looked it up where it is.

It’s found in Book 4 of The Republic, where Socrates is talking with Glaucon, where we read:

SOCRATES: Well, I said, there is a story which I remember to have heard, and in which I put faith. The story is, that Leontius, the son of Aglaion, coming up one day from the Piraeus, under the north wall on the outside, observed some dead bodies lying on the ground at the place of execution. He felt a desire to see them, and also a dread and abhorrence of them; for a time he struggled and covered his eyes, but at length the desire got the better of him; and forcing them open, he ran up to the dead bodies, saying [to his eyes], “Look, ye wretches, take your fill of the fair sight.”

GLAUCON: I have heard the story myself, he said.

SOCRATES: The moral of the tale is, that anger at times goes to war with desire, as though they were two distinct things [SOURCE].

You can see why this is such a vivid illustration–both wanting and not wanting to look at dead bodies.

Creepy!

But exactly the kind of thing that we all find ourselves faced with on occasion.

Pope Francis on Evangelization

microphonePope Francis recently released a major new document on evangelization—how to share the gospel of Jesus with others.

In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Jimmy discusses the document and the implications it has.

In this episode, Jimmy discusses the issues:

  • Is Pope Francis the most misunderstood pope in recent history?
  • Is the press malicious or just incompetent?
  • Does the Pope hate capitalism?
  • How should we understand Pope Francis’s treatment of Islam?
  • What level of authority does an apostolic exhortation have?
  • How did Pope Francis write this document?
  • Are there translation problems in this document?
  • What is the major thrust of the document? Should we evangelize “without words”?
  • Does Pope Francis understand his pontificate as being “to the world” in addition to “to Catholics”?
  • What are the priorities of Pope Francis’s pontificate?
  • What to make of the interview with an atheist journalist that was taken down from the Vatican web site?
  • What level of authority do press interviews with the pope have?
  • Should the Vatican web site publish papal press interviews?
  • What is the Acta Apostolicae Sedis?
  • Will Pope Francis do major specific things in his pontificate? Is he an innovator or an implementer?
  • What to make of Pope Francis washing the feet of a Muslim girl on Holy Thursday?
  • Does Pope Francis hate the Traditional Latin Mass?
  • Why shouldn’t we read our own preferences into what the pope says and does?
  • Will the rule on women’s foot washing be changed? Should we be upset about this?
  • What gravity should we attribute to rubrics in the liturgy, and how does it relate to the doctrines in the hierarchy of truths?
  • How to understand John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis in relation to each other?

(Original Airdate: December 9, 2013)

YOU CAN CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE.

Or use the player below at JimmyAkin.com . . .

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