November Bishops Meeting

The U.S. bishops meet twice a year, and we’re currently in the middle of their November meeting. This time they have a rather full agenda, and they’re in the process of cranking our documents.

Given how these things normally go, I was a bit surprised to discover PDFs of these documents appearing on the USCCB web site in a fashion that was actually and pleasantly timely.

However, the USCCB has a tendency to only put up documents for a short time and then yank them (try finding a version of the the U.S. edition of the GIRM on their web site these days; it used to be there, but t’ain’t now).

I’ll have some commentary about some of these, but for now, get ’em while you can.

BISHOPS’ PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT ON IRAQ

MARRIED LOVE AND THE GIFT OF LIFE

MINISTRY TO PERSON WITH A HOMOSEXUAL INCLINATION

PREPARING TO RECEIVE HOLY COMMUNION

Faceoff

Let’s take a look at the president of Iran, Mahmood Ahmadinejad:

Ahmadinejad_comparison_1

That’s Mr. Ahmadinejad on the right. The question is: Is it also him on the left?

The man on the left is reported to be one of the Iranian hostage takers from 1979-1981, and it has long been rumored that Mr. Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage takers.

He has denied this. Understandably.  It would severely inflame the U.S. public against him if it were confirmed that we were dealing with one of the people who took our diplomats hostage twenty-eight years ago. It would significantly strengthen the national will to go knock over his regime.

Now the Russian press has unearthed the photo on the left, which bears a striking resemblance to Ahmadinejad.

DANIEL PIPES HAS THE STORY (CHT: Powerline).

As curious as I am to know whether Ahmadinejad is one of the hostage takers, I have questions about the picture. Specifically:

1) What is its provenance? How did the press get it? Was it published at the time it was taken? Can we look at hardcopies of it that date from that era? How do we know it’s not a fake? Apropos of that . . .

2) What can Photoshoppers determine about this? Has Ahmadinejad’s face been pasted onto the body of a hostage-taker? Does the angle of his face match up with the angle of his head? Ahmadinejad would have been 23 in 1979. Does the gun-toter on the left look 23? If he did have bags around his eyes like that back then, why doesn’t he look a whole lot worse today?

3) If the picture isn’t fake, what can be determined by biometrics about whether he’s the same guy as Ahmadinejad?

4) If the picture is fake, who faked it, and what game are they playing?

How Big Was The Widow’s Mite?

Lepta
A reader writes:

I was surveying commentary on the Widow’s Mite and ran across one
commentary indicatiing the most serious problem is that, while the story
can be made to relate to a number of other sayings of Jesus on trusting,
detachment, poverty, etc., it is not consistent at all with Jesus’ Corban
statement. He proclaims in Mark (7:10 -13).

Furthermore, it would seem that the only way out of these acute
difficulties is quite simply to see Jesus’ attitude to the widow’s gift as
a downright disapproval and not as an approbation. The story does not
provide a pious contrast to the conduct of the scribes in the preceding
section (as is the customary view); rather it provides a further
illustration of the ills of official devotion. 11 Jesus’ saying is not a
penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament, “Amen, I
tell you, she gave more than all the others.” Or, as we would say: “One
could easily fail to notice it, but there is a tragedy of the day—she put
in her whole living.” She had been taught and encouraged by religious
leaders to donate as she does, 12 and Jesus condemns the value system that
motivates her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do
it.

I am interested in your commentary on these remarks.

I’m inclined to disagree with them. First, though, let’s start with the passage itself:

Mark 12
41: And he sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the multitude putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.
42: And a poor widow came, and put in two copper coins, which make a penny.
43: And he called his disciples to him, and said to them, "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury.
44: For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living."

It is not immediately clear how the widow’s mite would be a violation of Jesus’ teachings regarding the corban rule. When Jesus critiqued the use that was being made of corban, he pointed to some individuals’ use of it to circumvent the need to care for one’s parents, which is not in view here.

One could, however, construct a parallel argument to the effect that just as one owes a certain amount of money to the care of one’s parents so that they aren’t reduced to destitution, one also owes a certain amount of money to the care of oneself, and to donate this money to the temple would be wrong.

This is, indeed, something that often strikes people when they read this passage: They wonder what the widow was going to live on if, as Jesus said, she gave her whole livelihood.

It would be wrong to starve oneself to death by giving away all the money one has so that one is unable to care for oneself, but I don’t think that we can infer from this fact that Jesus disapproved of the woman’s action. The obvious interpretation of the passage is that he approved of what she was doing. The plain sense of Jesus statement that "Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For they all contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her
poverty has put in everything she had, her whole living" is that he is favorably comparing what the widow did compared to those who put in larger amounts but had larger amounts of money that made their gifts less sacrificial.

If needed, I can go into detail about why this is the likely interpretation, but for most readers I assume that it will be obvious that this is the natural sense of the text.

If we then accept that (a) Jesus was saying something favorable about the woman in comparison to others and (b) that it would be immoral to starve oneself to death by giving away all one’s money then that allows us to infer (c) that the woman was not starving herself to death by giving away all her money.

What might she have been doing?

Hypothetically, she might have had another source of support lined up and was expecting new money to come in soon–perhaps a small business she had or from a relative.

Or perhaps she really was at the end of her financial rope and, rather than spend her last two lepta on herself, she decided to give them to God in an act of faith, asking him to provide her with a new source of income so that she could keep living.

Or Jesus was using hyperbole.

Hyperbole–or exaggeration to make a point–is an extremely common feature of the biblical language, and my strong suspicion is that Jesus was using it here. In other words, the woman really wasn’t giving "everything she had, her whole living." Jesus uses these phrases in order to forcefully underscore the value of what she did put in relative to what she had. It wasn’t literally all that she had, but it was enough of what she did have that it made the use of hyperbole warranted when comparing what she gave to what those who were rich gave.

Incidentally, the picture above is of the front and back of a first century BC coin that is the same type as the widow used (though the pictures on the coin may have been different by the time she made her offering).

Asking For Forgiveness

A reader writes:

I listen to a radio show called People to People and the commentator, Bob George states that we never have to ask for forgiveness because, it has already been given. We just have to give God thanks for forgiveness.

Callers confront Mr George with 1 John 1 :9 which says, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Mr George states that in the Greek, the real translation would be in the “past tense” not the present, so the verse should read, “ he has been faithful to have forgiven us our sins. “

He uses this to support his claim that we do not have to ask for forgiveness since it has already been given.

Could you please shed some light on if he is right or not. In the Greek does it really use the past tense and not the present?

I haven’t heard Mr. George’s claims, so I can’t comment on them directly, but if he has said what you report then he is flatly in error.

First, Greek does not have a past tense. It has several tenses that can refer to the past: the pluperfect, perfect, imperfect, and (often) the aorist.

Here’s a so-literal-it’s-klunky-English translation of 1 John 1:9 with the relevant verbs (and one other important word) emphasized:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just that he would forgive us the sins and would cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The first verb in this that describes God is "is" (estin). It’s an ordinary, present-tense "is." Nothing special about it; nothing past-tensy at all. In context, it tells us that God is faithful and just, not that God has been faithful.

But John has something particular in mind when he says that God is faithful and just, so he clarifies what he means by introducing the clause beginning with "that," which I’ve put in red.

In Greek the word corresponding to "that" is hina, which is often found at the beginning of clauses where the verbs are in the subjunctive mood. That’s what we have here. The verbs in this clause aren’t in the indicative mood but the subjunctive mood, which is why I’ve translated them as "would forgive" and "would cleanse." They tell us what God would do if we confess.

Now, these two verbs are in the aorist tense, and the aorist tense usually indicates an action occurring in the past–if the aorist is in the indicative mood–but in the subjunctive mood the aorist tells you nothing about time. It just refers to the occurrence of an event without telling you whether it is past, present, or future. Since we’re in the subjunctive mood here, one cannot appeal to the aorist as showing that God has already done something.

So if Mr. George has been claiming what is reported about the Greek in this passage, he is making some elementary (first year Greek) mistakes, including not recognizing the correct tense of "is" and/or not recognizing that the aorist doesn’t point to the past in the subjunctive.

The claim that we shouldn’t ask God for forgiveness but should only thank him for receiving it is particularly absurd because Jesus built into the model prayer for his followers  the petition "forgive us our debts." That "forgive" is in the imperative mood which, in Greek, is used to ask for things (among other things), and here it is being used to ask for forgiveness.

Unless one is going to say that the Lord’s Prayer is not for Christians, you’re going to have to say that Christians have an ongoing need to ask for forgiveness.

Literary Stomach In A Bowl

PlanetxThis is just wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG!!!

I was horrified a while back when I was in a bookstore and saw on the shelf that there was an actual crossover novel between Star Trek: The Next Generation and the X-Men.

UGH!!!

This is the literary equivalent of KFC’s Infamous Stomach-In-A-Bowls!

I have nothing against Next Gen.

I have nothing against X-Men.

But I don’t want them jumbled together like this!

Yes, I know, in fits of unmitigated geeky uncoolness, fans of various series have produced reams and reams of fanfic doing franchise mashups like this.

That’s why God created the Internet.

How else would young teenagers explore the question of whether Worf or Wolverine would win a fight?

(I’m guessing that’s a prominent scene early in the book . . . and I’m guessing that they manage to fight each other to a draw . . . big surprise.)

But to have one of these things escape from the wild and actually make it into print . . . WHAT WERE THE RIGHTS-HOLDERS THINKING???

Particularly the rights holders for the Star Trek franchise. It strikes me that this stands to cheapen their brand more than Marvel Comics’.

Perhaps it was to indulge Michael Jan Friedman, who apparently writes many of the Star Trek novels and may be an X-Men fan on the side.

I don’t mind commercial tie-in literature based on popular media franchises. The stories in these series are  usually non-canonical (though not in Babylon 5 or Firefly). People enjoy them, and I respect that.

I don’t mind fanfic. I don’t read it, but I don’t mind that it’s out there. In fact, a lot of the stories told in world history have been the equivalent of fanfic–non-professional storytellers doing their own take on popular stories. I don’t know how many folks sitting around the fire have spun their own tales about Gilgamesh or Ahikar or Odysseus or Jason or Aeneas any of the other heroes of literature. All that’s fine and part of the human experience–a testimony to human creativity.

I don’t even mind crossovers, as long as they’re well done. I would not mind, for example, reading a novel in which Dracula met some other 19th century literary character, like Sherlock Holmes or the Invisible Man. (In fact, Alan Moore did a whole comic book series based on that idea, though I haven’t read it.)

But there has to be a "fit" between the two things you’re crossing over–at least if you’re intending to play the story for something other than laughs. Sure, Bambi meets Godzilla can give you a chuckle, but I really wouldn’t want to read a serious detective story in which Sherlock Holmes solves crimes alongside characters from Beatrix Potter’s universe.

And that’s the problem here.

The X-Men inhabit a comic book universe that plays by comic book rules, where only the slightest gesture is made toward real-world science and physics and character development and Star Trek . . . uh . . . well . . . um . . . nevermind.

I just hope they don’t make a movie out of this thing.

How would you tell Captain Picard and Professor X apart?

Pope Warns Aliens Could Attack At Any Time!

IT’S TRUE!!!

Okay, not Pope Benedict, but Nick Pope, former head of the UK’s Ministry of Defense’s project to investigate UFOs.

During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain.

His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed.

And he complains that the project he once ran is now "virtually closed" down, leaving the country "wide open" to aliens.

Mr Pope decided to speak out about his worries after resigning from his post at the Directorate of Defence Security at the MoD this week.

"The consequences of getting this one wrong could be huge," he said.

"If you reported a UFO sighting now, I am absolutely sure that you would just get back a standard letter telling you not to worry. ”Frankly we are wide open – if something does not behave like a conventional aircraft now, it will be ignored.

"The X-Files have been closed down."

GET THE STORY.

Well . . . if aliens do attack, there’s only one thing to do,

CALL GERRY ANDERSON!

The Smoke Of Satan Homily

Fr. Stephanos Pedrano was kind enough to translate from Italian the famous "Smoke of Satan" homily from Italian, allowing us to see the quote in its original context. I’ve put the entire homily in the below-the-fold part of this post, and I’ll offer some analysis of it here.

FIRST, HERE’S THE ORIGINAL ITALIAN FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO LOOK IT UP IN THE ORIGINAL.

Now for the analysis:

1) A strange thing about this homily is the way it is presented. It isn’t simply the text of his remarks, which is the normal way today for presenting the text of a papal homily. Instead, it’s a kind of narrative summary of what he said, with occasional direct quotations attributed to him. I’ve never seen this way of presenting a papal homily before, but perhaps it was the way they did it back in the early 1970s. It’s unfortunate, from my perspective, because the narrative summary format introduces a new layer of ambiguity into the document. If we don’t have the pope’s exact words, but someone’s narrative re-telling of them, or if we can’t tell precisely when we have the pope’s exact words and when we don’t, it makes it that much harder to determine exactly what the pope meant.

The phrase “from some fissure the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God” is, apparently, directly attributed to Paul VI, but it’s embedded in a big narrative block that narrates what he said in this part of the homily, but we don’t have–or can’t know that we have–his exact words. This means that there must remain a question mark over the correct interpretation of this phrase.

I hereby register my opposition to this manner of presenting papal remarks. Let the pope speak for himself.

2) Despite the above point, if the summary that is offered is remotely accurate, we can get a sense of what the pope meant. Here’s the paragraph in which the quotation occurs, as well as the following one:

Referring to the situation of the Church today, the Holy Father
affirms that he has a sense that “from some fissure the smoke of Satan
has entered the temple of God.”  There is doubt, incertitude,
problematic, disquiet, dissatisfaction, confrontation.  There is no
longer trust of the Church; they trust the first profane prophet who
speaks in some journal or some social movement, and they run after him
and ask him if he has the formula of true life.  And we are not alert
to the fact that we are already the owners and masters of the formula
of true life.  Doubt has entered our consciences, and it entered by
windows that should have been open to the light.  Science exists to
give us truths that do not separate from God, but make us seek him all
the more and celebrate him with greater intensity; instead, science
gives us criticism and doubt.  Scientists are those who more
thoughtfully and more painfully exert their minds.  But they end up
teaching us:  “I don’t know, we don’t know, we cannot know.”  The
school becomes the gymnasium of confusion and sometimes of absurd
contradictions.  Progress is celebrated, only so that it can then be
demolished with revolutions that are more radical and more strange, so
as to negate everything that has been achieved, and to come away as
primitives after having so exalted the advances of the modern world.

This state of uncertainty even holds sway in the Church.  There was
the belief that after the Council there would be a day of sunshine for
the history of the Church.  Instead, it is the arrival of a day of
clouds, of tempest, of darkness, of research, of uncertainty.  We
preach ecumenism but we constantly separate ourselves from others.  We
seek to dig abysses instead of filling them in.

In the next section the subject of the devil is further expounded upon:

How has this come about?  The Pope entrusts one of his thoughts to
those who are present:  that there has been an intervention of an
adverse power.  Its name is the devil, this mysterious being that the
Letter of St. Peter also alludes to.  So many times, furthermore, in
the Gospel, on the lips of Christ himself, the mention of this enemy of
men returns.  The Holy Father observes, “We believe in something that
is preternatural that has come into the world precisely to disturb, to
suffocate the fruits of the Ecumenical Council, and to impede the
Church from breaking into the hymn of joy at having renewed in fullness
its awareness of itself.  Precisely for this reason, we should wish to
be able, in this moment more than ever, to exercise the function God
assigned to Peter, to strengthen the Faith of the brothers.  We should
wish to communicate to you this charism of certitude that the Lord
gives to him who represents him though unworthily on this earth.”
Faith gives us certitude, security, when it is based upon the Word of
God accepted and consented to with our very own reason and with our
very own human spirit.  Whoever believes with simplicity, with
humility, sense that he is on the good road, that he has an interior
testimony that strengthens him in the difficult conquest of the truth.

From this–as well as other elements in the rest of the homily–a fairly clear picture emerges of what Paul VI meant. This can be summarized as follows:

The Second Vatican Council did its work to renew the Church and to bring a new day of light. However, the Council’s work has been frustrated by an attack by the devil by means of broader sociological currents that were present in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as secular social experts and social movements and scientists who lack faith and political and cultural revolutionaries. These sociological currents ("the smoke of Satan") have infected the Catholic community and caused many to doubt and trust the Church and turn away from the eternal answers it has to offer and folow after passing modern ideas that are hostile to Christian thought. In this way the devil has thwarted the work of the Council in bringing in the day of joy and renewal that should have followed the Council.

3) It is thus clear–if the reportage of what Paul VI said is even remotely right, that he was not claiming that there were Satanists in the Vatican (as some have claimed), nor is he linking the "smoke of Satan" with the Second Vatican Council itself or the liturgical reforms that followed it or anything like that. He perceives the work of the Council as a good thing that has been thwarted–or partially thwarted–by the social crisis that was breaking out in the developed world at this time. In other words, he’s responding to the cultural crisis of the late 1960s and early 1970s and its impact on the Church using a poetic image and attributing it (rightly) to the work of the devil, but he is not making the kind of sensationalistic claims that some have used to interpret this phrase.

People who have been claiming the latter need to get their tin foil hats adjusted properly or go back on their meds.

Continue reading “The Smoke Of Satan Homily”

Bodily Depilation

A reader writes:

I found your site through a Google search a while ago when I was in
the throes of depression, anxiety, and the terror known as
scrupulosity.  First and foremost, thank you for your advice; your
site is great and full of very helpful information.

You posted an e-mail on your website (http://www.jimmyakin.org/
2005/04/a_crown_of_thor.html) that I could totally relate to, and it
helped me realize that I am a scrupulous person.  I strive to live
life the way that God wants me to, so this brings me to the
meaningful part:

Is it a sin to shave one’s body hair? I bought a
Norelco body groomer and use it to shave my chest, back, and stomach
on occasion.  Can this be considered sinful, or is my scrupulous mind
trying to lure me into something akin to super-sensitivity?

When I
went to confession, I told my confessor that I shave that area and
asked for forgiveness (if it is indeed a sinful act).  He didn’t have
any advice, so I figured I’d ask you.  Please help.

First of all, thanks for writing, and I’m glad that my site has been helpful. Most people go through scrupulosity at various points in their lives (at least morally thoughtful people), and some have a chronic problem with it. So, you’re not alone. As always, I recommend Scrupulous Anonymous for those who need help.

Regarding your question, it had not really occurred to me that a man might want to shave his body hair. I’m afraid that when it comes to personal grooming, I’m a retrosexual (see picture top left).

I did a little thinking and research, though, and realized that body builders often shave their body hair for competitions, as do swimmers, and probably some male models and movie actors do, too. I discovered also that some men today apparently shave their body hair as part of a metrosexual personal style.

That being said, what’s the morality of it?

Well, despite the fact that we naturally grow hair, this is something that God has put within our control. It is not a sin for a man to shave his beard or his scalp–if it were then the Church would have told us this long ago, and would never have required the tonsure–and so it is not in principle a sin to shave hair elsewhere on one’s body.

I would put this in the same category as other stylistic/appearance related things: It’s a matter of cosmetics, and God has given us the authority to make cosmetic decisions regardiung our bodies. We can’t mutilate our bodies–that is, tamper with them in a way that interferes with their basic functions–but we can do cosmetic things to them like cut our hair in particular ways, have pierced ears, tattoos, and even circumcision (which was even the mark of God’s covenant with the Jewish people). None of those things harm bodily function, at least not in an impermissible way, as long as they’re done properly, and shaving one’s body hair is mild by comparison to some of these.

Of course, individuals can develop an unhealthy preoccupation with cosmetic matters, but for a scrupulous person the greater danger is becoming unhealthily preoccupied with whether or not one is unhealthily preoccupied.

The thing to do, then, is to stand up to one’s scrupulosity and not worry about it.

Do not confess this. Do not worry about it. Devote as little thought to the subject as possible. Stand up to your scrupulosity and realize that this is not a sin. Period.

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