Bringing Children to Mass

A reader writes:

I have a baptized daughter who is a few months old. My wife and I went home to my parents this weekend. They went to Church Saturday night as we were visiting other relatives. On Sunday morning my mom offered to watch our daughter while we went to Church. I agreed.

On the way to church I began to wonder if not brining my daughter to church was a sin. Was it? And how grave was it? I abstained from communion because I wasn’t sure.

I’m not clear from your answer whether you took your daughter to Mass Saturday or if it was just Sunday morning when you didn’t take her to Mass. Either way, it doesn’t matter, because a child that young is not required to attend Mass. The Code of Canon Law provides:

Can. 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.

The law regarding who has to go to Mass on Sunday (or Saturday evening; either satisfies the Sunday obligation) does not specify an age. It simply says:

Can.  1247 On Sundays and other holy days of
obligation, the faithful are obliged to participate in the Mass.

Moreover, they are to abstain from those works and
affairs which hinder the worship to be rendered to God, the joy proper to the
Lord’s day, or the suitable relaxation of mind and body.

Since there is no specification of age here, canon 11 means that children under 7 years of age (or people who lack the use of reason or people who are not baptized) are not bound to attend Mass.

It thus was not a sin to leave your daughter in the care of your mother.

Parents do have a moral obligation to ensure that as their children age, they get in the habit of going to Mass so that once the obligation kicks in at 7 years of age they’re used to it, but this is not an obligation that means they have to be there every single Sunday, and it certainly does not mean that children less than a year old have to be taken to Mass. Children that young are incapable of forming the habit of going to Mass.

The Declericalization of the Global South

Use ’em or lose ’em?

That’s a question facing Church leaders in many parts of the global south. The first ’em refers to lay people willing to take on roles traditionally performed (if at all) by priests. The second ’em refers to lay people in general.

Here’s the dynamic: Many Catholics in the developing world have little access to priests, but they are quite religious and want to be part of a Christian community, and there are all these helpful Pentecostals interested in showering them with attention and pastoral care.

For example (EXCERPT):

One Honduran woman, for example, told me a story about her sister-in-law who had been hospitalized with a form of cancer. She did not belong to a parish that had a resident priest, and the overworked hospital chaplain was only able to see her briefly and episodically. Meanwhile, a local Pentecostal community had members in her room every day, comforting her, bringing her flowers, and seeing to the needs of her family while she was away. It’s no mystery, this Honduran woman told me, why her sister-in-law considered joining that Pentecostal church. In the end, the family persuaded her to remain Catholic, but that’s not how these things often turn out.

That kind of situation may be responsible for why Pentecostalism–and Protestantism in general–is making such headway in Latin America. You just don’t need the kind of rigorous commitment and training on the part of Protestant ministers in that context that you do of priests. All they need to do is hang out their shingle, and with the help of others in their churches, you’ve got instant pastoral workers.

It’s entirely different in an environment where the priest is expected to do everything and it’s very hard to become a priest, requiring a lot of training and commitment on the part of candidates.

So if you want to compete (i.e., retain souls), you’re going to either need to radically up the number of priests–which would likely entail lowering standards for them–or shift many responsibilities from priests to lay people.

In the Sacramentum Caritatis, Pope Benedict spoke against lowering standards for priests, which would point in the direction of increased lay involvement in pastoral work.

Here in the global north, increasing lay involvement has often (not always) been used as a tool to try to strip the priesthood of its uniqueness, along with an associated liberal theological agenda.

But John Allen thinks that’s not the case in Latin America.

GET THE STORY.

Fr. Fessio Re-Hired

Just got word that, following a meeting with AMU faculty members who expressed concern about the future of the institution, Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ, was offered a position at AMU.

The new position is not provost but a triple position of theologian-in-residence, being a member of the theology faculty, and also head of the university’s abroad program.

Fr. Fessio has accepted.

Interestingly, he is also scheduled to be inducted into the Catholic education hall of fame.

Specific Confessions

A reader writes:

Can you invalidate a confession by not being specific enough in
confessing your sins?

In particular, if you say "I read something I shouldn’t have" instead
of "I read a book with sexual material that I knew might or would be an
occasion of sin," have you actually confessed the sin?

I have made several confessions like this, assuming it was okay, but
now I am suddenly not sure.

It is possible to invalidate a confession if one deliberately refuses to confess in adequate detail, however that does not apply in this case. I’ll explain why.

First, a word about what adequate detail is: We are expected–to the best of our reasonable ability–to confess our mortal sins in number (how many times you did it) and kind. Kind is where the question of specificity comes in, and the rule is that we are to confess specifically enough that anything that affects the species of the sin is mentioned.

To understand that, one needs to have a grasp of the difference between genus and species. Genus is the general category to which a sin belongs. Species is the variation that distinguishes one sin from others in the same general category.

For example, saying "I committed a sexual sin" would cover only the genus of the act but does not address the species of sexual sin that has been committed. One would thus need to say "I committed adultery" or "I committed fornication" or "I committed a homosexual act" or "I committed masturbation" or "I committed incest" or whatever the case may be. Adultery, fornication, homosexual acts, masturbation, incest, etc., are all the various species of sexual sin.

Now, because of the shame involved in confessing many of these things, penitents often use circumlocutions to convey the idea while blunting the sense of shame that is involved. For example, they may say, "I had impure thoughts" rather than "I wilfully engaged in sexual fantasies about someone I’m not married to." "Impure thoughts" is code for what they did, and priests understand what it means. Technically, your thoughts could be impure in all sorts of way not involving sex (i.e., they could be tainted, and thus not pure, by any kind of sin you wilfully entertained), but priests know people mean they entertained improper sexual thoughts when they say this.

The important thing is not the words that are used but that the priest understands the species of the sin that is being confessed. As long as he understands–or as long as you reasonably believe that he understands–then you have confessed adequately.

If you said something like "I read something I shouldn’t have" then priests are quite likely (given a knowledge of penitents and how often sex comes up in confession) that you were confessing deliberate exposure to materials that could produce sexual temptation. If someone says that they read something they shouldn’t have, and they’re too embarassed to say why they shouldn’t have read it, sex is going to be the first thing that suggests itself. Unless a priest knew that you were in the habit of reading things likely to produce grave temptations of some other nature, a normal priest is going to assume that you’re talking about sex.

If he has doubts about what you’re confessing then he should ask for a clarification, and in these cases it seems that the priests you confessed to didn’t ask, indicating that they understood your meaning.

It thus seems to me that "I read something I shouldn’t have" is basically the same kind of thing as "I need to confess impure thoughts." Neither is an explicit statement, but both are going to be understood by a confessor.

Even if they weren’t, though, you would not have invalidated the confession because you believed that you were adequately confessing. You therefore were not deliberately holding anything back that you knew you needed to confess. As long as that’s the case, your confession is formally integral (to use a bit of technical jargon that means you intended to make a complete confession, or one complete enough for validity) and the absolution will be valid.

20

By Their Lives of Judas You Shall Know Them

CNS is reporting:

Curiosity about the New Testament figure of Judas and a feeling that his reputation as the worst sinner in history "isn’t fair, isn’t right" led British novelist Jeffrey Archer to attempt a new version of the story.

Archer, presenting "The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot" at a March 20 press conference in Rome, said he is a practicing Anglican who wanted his new book to be backed up by solid biblical scholarship.

So he convinced Father Francis J. Moloney, provincial of the Salesians in Australia and a former president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, to collaborate.

Now, I don’t have a problem with someone writing a book called "The Gospel According to Judas" or writing novels about Judas or about Judas’s perceptions of Christ. I don’t even have a problem with someone who wants to present Judas as something other than the worst sinner in history–something that the Church doesn’t teach that he was. One could hold that Judas had diminished culpability for his sins and that someone else in history had a higher degree of culpability.

But I do have a problem with this:

Archer’s main thesis is that Judas tried to prevent Jesus’ arrest and execution by enlisting the help of a scribe to get Jesus out of Jerusalem and back to Galilee where the Romans supposedly would ignore him.

In the end, the scribe betrays Judas, which means Judas unwittingly betrays Jesus.

Both Archer and Father Moloney doubt that Judas committed suicide, a story recounted only in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

The Benjamin Iscariot in Archer’s title is Judas’ fictitious son, who — years after the death of Jesus — finds his father living in an ascetic community near the Dead Sea. His father reluctantly gives his version of what happened to Jesus and the son writes it down.

I’m sorry, but this is unacceptable on two grounds. First, it flatly contradicts the biblical accounts of Judas’ death. It would be one thing if the author made it clear that he was not writing about our universe and that he was dealing with a parallel Judas and what happened to him, but that’s not the case. The author and Fr. Moloney both cast doubt on the inspired text as it applies to our universe. This is an unacceptable misrepresentation of the facts of history. It’s not a case of them proposing a novel or unexpected way to harmonize the accounts of Judas’s death; it’s them flatly rejecting the biblical accounts.

Second, the author has fallen into the perennial trap of trying to exonerate Judas. That’s not the same thing as portraying him in a way that nuances his character and motives. It’s not the same thing as just saying "He may not have been the worst sinner in history." It’s flatly rejecting the betrayal that Judas performed. On this account, Judas didn’t betray Jesus; he was himself betrayed.

Sorry, but that’s not going to cut it. Not if we’re being asked to entertain what might have been the case with the Judas in our universe.

I don’t know what it is with authors (and filmmakers) who want to rehabilitate Judas in this fashion.

But I suspect it’s this: They themselves have an uneasy conscience.

They themselves feel that they have betrayed Christ (as have we all by our sins), but rather than throw themselves on Christ’s mercy and accepting his grace, they want to rationalize or excuse their sins and so–using the character of Judas as a psychological surrogate for themselves–they rationalize and excuse his in fictional form.

The underlying psychological message they’re trying to give themselves is: Hey, if Judas didn’t really betray Christ–if he was a tragic victim of circumstance–then that’s what I am, too. I haven’t really betrayed him. I’m just a victim of fate, too, and I’m not really responsible for what I’ve done.

By their lives of Judas you shall know them.

GET THE STORY.

CPR Update

HERE’S AN INTERESTING STORY ABOUT DOING CPR ON SOMEONE SUFFERING FROM CARDIAC FAILURE.

It turns out that the use of mouth-to-mouth respiration as part of keeping someone alive may actually decrease their chance fo survival. The more important thing is doing chest comrpessions to keep their blood moving. Taking time away from doing chest compressions to try to force air into their lungs may do more harm than good. It also may deter people from helping them in the first place, since many have an aversion to mouth-to-mouth.

Something to think about in case you’re ever in an emergency situation in which someone needs CPR.

Switching RCIA Classes?

A reader writes:

I have spent many years as an active Christian in a Protestant church, but about
2 yrs ago I began reading the early church fathers and
suddenly my eyes were opened to the Truth of
Catholicism! I have been studying ever since and am
involved with several online Catholic groups.

My question is:

Since I am anxious to enter the RCC and I have studied
extensively, is there a reason/need for me to go
through almost 18months (including Inquiry) of RCIA? I
have another year to go in this particular RCIA but I
am struggling with some things. The candidates and
catechumens are doing the exact same program, no
consideration is made for previous Christian life
whatsoever (our priest has delegated RCIA to the
facilitators and will not intervene). The candidates
are required to participate in the scrutnies etc. I
know that it says in the RCIA manual (thanks to your
website :o)) that candidates do not participate in
scrutnies and sent the info along to my facilitators
and they said "technically scrutnies do not apply to
you but we have decided that everyone will participate
in them". I endured sitting through a movie entitled
"The Fourth Wiseman" which was RCIA’s version of
sharing the gospel.

Should I submit to everything this RCIA demands out of
obedience to the church or should I go across town to
another RCIA who is willing to look at each person’s
history and take that into account? I talked with this
other RCIA and they are eager to help me enter the RCC
sooner than NEXT Easter Vigil.

I want to be in full communion with the Church and I
hunger for the Eucharist! I do not think I am
demanding anything the Church does not make allowances
for but I do not want to be rebellious in any way.

Could you please help me with this?

Until you mentioned that there is a nearby RCIA program that would be willing to help facilitate your entrance into the Church by actually obeying the National Statues for the Catechumenate–which require that people not all be treated like catechumens–I was going to suggest that you hold your nose, grit your teeth, and tough it out. In other words, just do whatever you have to to get into the Church, which is the important thing.

That’s what I had to do. I had an awful RCIA program, and the parish I was attending refused to comply with Church law, which requires that candidates for reception into the Church who have already lived lives as catechized Christians are to be sorted out from the uncatechized and be given abbreviated periods of formation and then received into the Church apart from Easter Vigil.

Unfortunately, I was in a town where there were only two Catholic churches, and I didn’t have another alternative.

Neither do many people.

But if you are in the fortunate situation of having another RCIA program available to you that actually will follow the law then by all means make use of it!

There is zero problem with obedience on your part regarding this. You have no obligation whatsoever to stick with an RCIA program that is refusing to follow the law if you have the alternative of one that is. The obedience problem isn’t yours; it’s theirs.

If I were in your shoes, I’d count myself fortunate at having made the discovery of the other option and then waste no time in following it up.

Welcome home!