Cussin'?

A reader writes:

I guess my first question is: Are there situations where consciously swearing is not a sin?

First we need to give a brief taxonomy of what commonly goes by the name of "swearing" or "cussing" or other use of "bad language." Though people lump all this under one heading, there are several distinctions here that are relevant.

The first distinction is between profanity and everything else.

Profanity is treating what is sacred as if it is not. For example, using the name of Jesus Christ as an expletive.

In addition to profanity, there are several other forms of tabooed language, which can be classified several different ways. Among them are:

  • Malediction, or wishing someone or some thing ill, such as saying "God damn it" or "Devil take the hindmost" or "Go to hell." (The first of these may also count as profanity but does not necessarily for reasons that will become clear. The latter two are not profanity since the devil and hell are not sacred.)
  • Vulgarity, or the kind of language that would be used by "the common people" (Latin, vulgus) but not in polite society. Into this category go tabooed scatalogical, anatomical, and sexual terms.
  • Slurs, or derogatory ways of referring to people or things. These may be terms applying to a particular religious or ethnic group (fill in your own examples mentally–not in the combox!) or terms referring to personal dispositions (e.g., "He’s a jerk" or "He’s a nerd").

Now, the question was: Can these forms of language ever be used without it being a sin?

The simple answer is: Yes.

Here are two examples:

  1. Suppose that you are an actor in a play or movie and the script calls for you to use such language. As long as the play or movie is not glamorizing or otherwise endorsing the use of such language, it is morally licit for the actors to utter the lines. It is understood (on the above conditions) both by the actors and the audience that the language is not meant in earnest but is a depiction of how certain people (e.g., the vulgar) speak. For example: Many locales have Passion Plays in which the crowd present in front of Pilate cries "Crucify him!" Now, in real life this would be a species of profanity (specifically: it would be blasphemy; CCC 2149). But it is not blasphemous when uttered by actors who are in fact devout Christians and do not mean it and who are depicting the events of Our Lord’s life. Neither, for that matter, is it sinful when a lector reads these words at Mass.
  2. Some slurs, such as "jerk" are mild (i.e., weakly tabooed at best) and do not carry a huge emotional load. They also can be useful shorthand. "Jerk," for example is simply shorthand for "an obnoxious person." If it is true that someone is behaving in an obnoxious manner then it is perfectly within bounds to say "He was acting like a jerk."

Having answered the initial question as phrased, let’s go on to the reader’s elaboration of the subject:

I can see where swearing at someone would be a sin because of the anger behind the words but in that case it is a sin of anger, right? Or is the swearing itself sinful as well? What if the anger were just? Obviously it would be a sin if the swearing were somehow taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Obviously. But it seems that two things would be in play here. The first is the anger. Emotions themselves are not sinful. What can be sinful is how we react to our emotions. If we foster anger when we should be trying to cool it, that is a sin. If we undertake an evil action based on our anger (e.g., attacking someone we’re angry with), that also is a sin. But the emotion itself is not sinful.

If one is feeling an emotion–be it anger, frustration, awe, surprise, or what have you–there is nothing wrong in principle with expressing that emotion. One can do this either discursively (e.g., "I am remarkably angry at the moment, old chap") or by the use of an interjection if the interjection is not otherwise problematic.

In the case of using God’s name as an interjection, this gets us to the second element in play. The name of God is not a fitting interjection for use when we are angry. It is sacred and should not  be used simply to communicate what we are feeling at the moment. That is a misuse of the name.

This is not to say that God cannot be brought in to emotional expression. Of course, he can be. If you say "Praise God!" when something good happens, and you really mean that you want someone to praise (or at least attribute mentally credit to) God for the good thing, that’s no problem at all.

In principle, the same could be true of maledictions against evil things. For example, on 9/11 after the Twin Towers fell, many in America could have literally meant the malediction "God damn Osama bin Laden." That’s not automatically sinful since Osama bin Laden committed acts objectively worthy of damnation by God.

Saying "God damn Osama bin Laden" thus represents a wish that Osama would experience the just rewards of his actions. One has to hold out hope, even for bin Laden, that he will repent and not be damned, or that he was too crazy to be accountable for his actions, but so long as those are not the case, it is entirely appropriate to wish to see divine justice accomplished in his case.

God himself is willing to damn those who culpably do things like Osama bin Laden did, and if God is willing to do so (as the Church teaches) then it is not sinful for us to make our own what God is willing to do, as long as we also make our own the other things God is willing to do (like not damn Osama if he repents or if he was too crazy to be culpable for his actions).

In this case, the justified anger experienced by the attack of 9/11 finds expression in an utterance expressing this emotion and corresponding to reality (Osama bin Laden is damnworthy) on the appropriate assumptions (e.g., he is gravely culpable for his actions).

The reader continues:

And what if you were not swearing at someone but just let out an expletive in a situation of surprise or dismay?

If you just let an expletive slip out without it being a fully deliberate utterance then it affects your personal culpability for the action. Assuming that the use of the expletive was not otherwise morally permissible (e.g., like saying "God damn Osama bin Laden" in the wake of 9/11) then one will be venially accountable for it if it were done with partial deliberation and non-accountable for it is it were done with no deliberation.

Also, does it matter how coarse the word is considered? When I was a kid, I got scolded once the parents of a friend because I used the word "damn". At the time I really thought it to be equivalent to "darn".

It does matter how strong the taboo associated with the word is perceived to be. This is in two respects: how strong the speaker perceives the taboo to be and how strong the language community considers the taboo to be.

For purposes of illustrating this point, though, let’s prescind from talking about profanity and talk about non-profane tabooed words. In this case the issue of profaning the sacred is not involved. What is involved is the question of whether and in what circumstances it is okay to be break a social taboo–a convention of the linguistic community–not whether the sacred is being violated.

F’rinstance: I have a friend whose native language is an east Asian tongue but who came to America to go to college, where she heard a lot of college-age language. Not being a native-speaker of English, she didn’t have a native’s feel for what words were tabooed and how much. She didn’t even necessarily hear correctly what was being said.

Thus one day years ago I was talking to her in a chatroom and she described a particular software application as "a piece of crab."

I just about died laughing.

She obviously had misheard something from her English-speaking college friends. As members of the vulgus, they no doubt used a particular, well-known expression a great deal as a way of describing things of poor quality. My friend, not being a native-speaker, misheard the expression and thought it was customary in English to refer to things of poor quality using a seafood metaphor.

She was, appropriately, horrified when–so that she wouldn’t use this phrase again in polite company–I clarified for her what the actual phrase was and explained that it was tabooed. (Once she understood what the original phrase was, she also understood why it was tabooed.)

My friend didn’t perceive the taboo in the word, and that would have correspondingly negated her culpability for using it–assuming she’d used it correctly.

What if everyone felt that way? What is everybody (or at least the language community as a whole) didn’t perceive the taboo? Then there would be no taboo and it would not be inappropriate to use the word.

It’s important to realize that the taboos associated with words, like the meaning of words themselves, are arbitrary. They are assigned by society and thus not intrinsic to the word. For example: Think through a list of biological words that are tabooed. In each case (assuming that your vocabulary size is normal), you should be able to think of another word that means exactly the same thing but is not tabooed (or that is at least much less strongly tabooed).

The taboo levels of words also change over time. For example, back in the 1950s the word "pregnant" had a form of taboo associated with it that it simply lacks today. When Lucille Ball got pregnant while the series I Love Lucy was on the air, the producers decided not to hide the pregnancy (as some TV shows do) but they wanted to make sure that they didn’t offend audience sensibilities.

To cover themselves, they consulted several religious leaders (the proverbial priest, minister, and rabbi, if I remember correctly) and got several terms that could be used to refer to Lucy’s condition ("expecting" and the French word for "pregnant," as I recall), but the religious figures agree that she should not be referred to on the air as "pregnant." That word was too indelicate.

Today, whatever taboo was affecting the use of "pregnant" in this case is simply gone. As a result, people can and do say "pregnant" on TV with no moral impropriety at all.

Taboo levels thus change over time. They go up and down based on social mores.

But when a word is tabooed by a language community, and to the degree it is tabooed, it should be avoided apart from special circumstances warranting its use. The impulse to put taboos on words corresponds to something very deep in the human psyche. Every language community has them. They are bound up with politeness codes and when one uses them in circumstances where the taboo applies, one is being impolite.

Being impolite, in turn, causes a rupture in social discourse, tends to create feelings of pain and anger and revulsion, and these feelings should not be thoughtlessly or deliberately created without adequate reason. Sometimes, though, there are situations in which being impolite is warranted, and there may be a good to be achieved that allows the breaking of a social taboo.

The general rule, however, is what St. Paul articulates:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen (Eph. 4:29, NIV).

Cussin’?

A reader writes:

I guess my first question is: Are there situations where consciously swearing is not a sin?

First we need to give a brief taxonomy of what commonly goes by the name of "swearing" or "cussing" or other use of "bad language." Though people lump all this under one heading, there are several distinctions here that are relevant.

The first distinction is between profanity and everything else.

Profanity is treating what is sacred as if it is not. For example, using the name of Jesus Christ as an expletive.

In addition to profanity, there are several other forms of tabooed language, which can be classified several different ways. Among them are:

  • Malediction, or wishing someone or some thing ill, such as saying "God damn it" or "Devil take the hindmost" or "Go to hell." (The first of these may also count as profanity but does not necessarily for reasons that will become clear. The latter two are not profanity since the devil and hell are not sacred.)
  • Vulgarity, or the kind of language that would be used by "the common people" (Latin, vulgus) but not in polite society. Into this category go tabooed scatalogical, anatomical, and sexual terms.
  • Slurs, or derogatory ways of referring to people or things. These may be terms applying to a particular religious or ethnic group (fill in your own examples mentally–not in the combox!) or terms referring to personal dispositions (e.g., "He’s a jerk" or "He’s a nerd").

Now, the question was: Can these forms of language ever be used without it being a sin?

The simple answer is: Yes.

Here are two examples:

  1. Suppose that you are an actor in a play or movie and the script calls for you to use such language. As long as the play or movie is not glamorizing or otherwise endorsing the use of such language, it is morally licit for the actors to utter the lines. It is understood (on the above conditions) both by the actors and the audience that the language is not meant in earnest but is a depiction of how certain people (e.g., the vulgar) speak. For example: Many locales have Passion Plays in which the crowd present in front of Pilate cries "Crucify him!" Now, in real life this would be a species of profanity (specifically: it would be blasphemy; CCC 2149). But it is not blasphemous when uttered by actors who are in fact devout Christians and do not mean it and who are depicting the events of Our Lord’s life. Neither, for that matter, is it sinful when a lector reads these words at Mass.
  2. Some slurs, such as "jerk" are mild (i.e., weakly tabooed at best) and do not carry a huge emotional load. They also can be useful shorthand. "Jerk," for example is simply shorthand for "an obnoxious person." If it is true that someone is behaving in an obnoxious manner then it is perfectly within bounds to say "He was acting like a jerk."

Having answered the initial question as phrased, let’s go on to the reader’s elaboration of the subject:

I can see where swearing at someone would be a sin because of the anger behind the words but in that case it is a sin of anger, right? Or is the swearing itself sinful as well? What if the anger were just? Obviously it would be a sin if the swearing were somehow taking the Lord’s name in vain.

Obviously. But it seems that two things would be in play here. The first is the anger. Emotions themselves are not sinful. What can be sinful is how we react to our emotions. If we foster anger when we should be trying to cool it, that is a sin. If we undertake an evil action based on our anger (e.g., attacking someone we’re angry with), that also is a sin. But the emotion itself is not sinful.

If one is feeling an emotion–be it anger, frustration, awe, surprise, or what have you–there is nothing wrong in principle with expressing that emotion. One can do this either discursively (e.g., "I am remarkably angry at the moment, old chap") or by the use of an interjection if the interjection is not otherwise problematic.

In the case of using God’s name as an interjection, this gets us to the second element in play. The name of God is not a fitting interjection for use when we are angry. It is sacred and should not  be used simply to communicate what we are feeling at the moment. That is a misuse of the name.

This is not to say that God cannot be brought in to emotional expression. Of course, he can be. If you say "Praise God!" when something good happens, and you really mean that you want someone to praise (or at least attribute mentally credit to) God for the good thing, that’s no problem at all.

In principle, the same could be true of maledictions against evil things. For example, on 9/11 after the Twin Towers fell, many in America could have literally meant the malediction "God damn Osama bin Laden." That’s not automatically sinful since Osama bin Laden committed acts objectively worthy of damnation by God.

Saying "God damn Osama bin Laden" thus represents a wish that Osama would experience the just rewards of his actions. One has to hold out hope, even for bin Laden, that he will repent and not be damned, or that he was too crazy to be accountable for his actions, but so long as those are not the case, it is entirely appropriate to wish to see divine justice accomplished in his case.

God himself is willing to damn those who culpably do things like Osama bin Laden did, and if God is willing to do so (as the Church teaches) then it is not sinful for us to make our own what God is willing to do, as long as we also make our own the other things God is willing to do (like not damn Osama if he repents or if he was too crazy to be culpable for his actions).

In this case, the justified anger experienced by the attack of 9/11 finds expression in an utterance expressing this emotion and corresponding to reality (Osama bin Laden is damnworthy) on the appropriate assumptions (e.g., he is gravely culpable for his actions).

The reader continues:

And what if you were not swearing at someone but just let out an expletive in a situation of surprise or dismay?

If you just let an expletive slip out without it being a fully deliberate utterance then it affects your personal culpability for the action. Assuming that the use of the expletive was not otherwise morally permissible (e.g., like saying "God damn Osama bin Laden" in the wake of 9/11) then one will be venially accountable for it if it were done with partial deliberation and non-accountable for it is it were done with no deliberation.

Also, does it matter how coarse the word is considered? When I was a kid, I got scolded once the parents of a friend because I used the word "damn". At the time I really thought it to be equivalent to "darn".

It does matter how strong the taboo associated with the word is perceived to be. This is in two respects: how strong the speaker perceives the taboo to be and how strong the language community considers the taboo to be.

For purposes of illustrating this point, though, let’s prescind from talking about profanity and talk about non-profane tabooed words. In this case the issue of profaning the sacred is not involved. What is involved is the question of whether and in what circumstances it is okay to be break a social taboo–a convention of the linguistic community–not whether the sacred is being violated.

F’rinstance: I have a friend whose native language is an east Asian tongue but who came to America to go to college, where she heard a lot of college-age language. Not being a native-speaker of English, she didn’t have a native’s feel for what words were tabooed and how much. She didn’t even necessarily hear correctly what was being said.

Thus one day years ago I was talking to her in a chatroom and she described a particular software application as "a piece of crab."

I just about died laughing.

She obviously had misheard something from her English-speaking college friends. As members of the vulgus, they no doubt used a particular, well-known expression a great deal as a way of describing things of poor quality. My friend, not being a native-speaker, misheard the expression and thought it was customary in English to refer to things of poor quality using a seafood metaphor.

She was, appropriately, horrified when–so that she wouldn’t use this phrase again in polite company–I clarified for her what the actual phrase was and explained that it was tabooed. (Once she understood what the original phrase was, she also understood why it was tabooed.)

My friend didn’t perceive the taboo in the word, and that would have correspondingly negated her culpability for using it–assuming she’d used it correctly.

What if everyone felt that way? What is everybody (or at least the language community as a whole) didn’t perceive the taboo? Then there would be no taboo and it would not be inappropriate to use the word.

It’s important to realize that the taboos associated with words, like the meaning of words themselves, are arbitrary. They are assigned by society and thus not intrinsic to the word. For example: Think through a list of biological words that are tabooed. In each case (assuming that your vocabulary size is normal), you should be able to think of another word that means exactly the same thing but is not tabooed (or that is at least much less strongly tabooed).

The taboo levels of words also change over time. For example, back in the 1950s the word "pregnant" had a form of taboo associated with it that it simply lacks today. When Lucille Ball got pregnant while the series I Love Lucy was on the air, the producers decided not to hide the pregnancy (as some TV shows do) but they wanted to make sure that they didn’t offend audience sensibilities.

To cover themselves, they consulted several religious leaders (the proverbial priest, minister, and rabbi, if I remember correctly) and got several terms that could be used to refer to Lucy’s condition ("expecting" and the French word for "pregnant," as I recall), but the religious figures agree that she should not be referred to on the air as "pregnant." That word was too indelicate.

Today, whatever taboo was affecting the use of "pregnant" in this case is simply gone. As a result, people can and do say "pregnant" on TV with no moral impropriety at all.

Taboo levels thus change over time. They go up and down based on social mores.

But when a word is tabooed by a language community, and to the degree it is tabooed, it should be avoided apart from special circumstances warranting its use. The impulse to put taboos on words corresponds to something very deep in the human psyche. Every language community has them. They are bound up with politeness codes and when one uses them in circumstances where the taboo applies, one is being impolite.

Being impolite, in turn, causes a rupture in social discourse, tends to create feelings of pain and anger and revulsion, and these feelings should not be thoughtlessly or deliberately created without adequate reason. Sometimes, though, there are situations in which being impolite is warranted, and there may be a good to be achieved that allows the breaking of a social taboo.

The general rule, however, is what St. Paul articulates:

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen (Eph. 4:29, NIV).

Fair Trade

Were you wondering who is the hottest collectible personality in trading cards? Probably not, but you might be intrigued to learn that it is not Kobe Bryant or Johnny Damon, but a man who was a soccer player in his youth but found fame in another calling. Karol Wojtyla. Yep. A limited-edition trading card of Pope John Paul II recently sold for $8,100.

"Beckett Media, whose pricing guides are the acknowledged arbiters of value for collectible trading cards, said on Tuesday a limited-edition Pope John Paul II from the 2005 World Treasures line of card maker Topps has sold for $8,100.

"The Topps series includes other historical figures like Czar Paul I and King Frederick the Great, though their cards are trading for around $3,000. All the cards in the series have etchings of the figures’ autographs.

"In comparison, Beckett said, regular cards depicting Barry Bonds, who is contending for baseball’s all-time home run record, have never sold for more than $1,200."

Somehow, I think John Paul would be touched … and highly amused.

GET THE STORY.

EVIL PEOPLE: "Let The Unholy War Begin"

The Rainbow Sashers aren’t the only dissident folks who are gearing up for campaigns against the new pope.

Planned Parenthood wants to take him on, too.

EXCERPTS:

Planed Parenthood has launched a campaign to motivate all of its members and supporters, nominal Catholics and non-Catholics, to send letters to the editor, requesting that Pope Benedict XVI reconsider his “backward views” and change his opinion on sexual morality.

Pope Benedict XVI must be encouraged to “reconsider his dangerously outdated stances on birth control, abortion and sexuality in order to help move the Catholic Church into the 21st century,” reads a memo issued by campaign manager Eve Fox.

“The new Pope’s positions on these crucial issues pose a terrible danger to the health of millions of women and girls around the world and undermines efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS,” Fox wrote.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

In a related development, Frances Quisling of Catholics For A Free Choice was quoted as saying:

The bad news is that he is Pope, and he was elected by two thirds or more of the princes of the church, who knew what they were doing.

I can no longer delude myself about these princes’ almost total lack of interest in healing the divide in the Church, in showing compassion for or even in listening to the voices of the suffering. The time for nuance is over. Let the unholy war begin [SOURCE–WARNING: Evil Ad].

EVIL PEOPLE: “Let The Unholy War Begin”

The Rainbow Sashers aren’t the only dissident folks who are gearing up for campaigns against the new pope.

Planned Parenthood wants to take him on, too.

EXCERPTS:

Planed Parenthood has launched a campaign to motivate all of its members and supporters, nominal Catholics and non-Catholics, to send letters to the editor, requesting that Pope Benedict XVI reconsider his “backward views” and change his opinion on sexual morality.

Pope Benedict XVI must be encouraged to “reconsider his dangerously outdated stances on birth control, abortion and sexuality in order to help move the Catholic Church into the 21st century,” reads a memo issued by campaign manager Eve Fox.

“The new Pope’s positions on these crucial issues pose a terrible danger to the health of millions of women and girls around the world and undermines efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS,” Fox wrote.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

In a related development, Frances Quisling of Catholics For A Free Choice was quoted as saying:

The bad news is that he is Pope, and he was elected by two thirds or more of the princes of the church, who knew what they were doing.

I can no longer delude myself about these princes’ almost total lack of interest in healing the divide in the Church, in showing compassion for or even in listening to the voices of the suffering. The time for nuance is over. Let the unholy war begin [SOURCE–WARNING: Evil Ad].

Space Warp To Heaven

A reader writes:

I’ve been asked to give a talk to a group of young adults about the Eucharist next month. I would like to use a sci-fi example to clarify the role played by the eucharistic species in the Real Presence.

It would go something like this: think of the eucharistic appearances as like a dimensional warp gate or power field which overcomes the spatial/dimensional distance between my body and Christ’s body. When my finger encounters this gate or window, it is actually touching the body of Christ, even though that body is a billion miles away / in a different universe / or whatever. But when the priest breaks the host, what he actually does is break the warp window in half: even though the window is in two pieces, the body with which it brings me into contact is still the same, unbroken body. (I think this is better than the old example of the mirror which is broken into a thousand pieces, yet each piece reflects the entire image.)

The problem is that I haven’t kept abreast of what’s happening in sci-fi. It would be great if I could relate this example to something specific people have seen on Star Trek or some other show lots of people watch.

You’re the only man I know who is thoroughly versed in both the Eucharist and Star Trek. ONLY YOU CAN HELP ME!

Oh, I’m sure many of the fine folks here at the blog could help, but I’ll be happy to.

You analogy is quite good and, actually, is one that I use all the time–particularly when explaining the Real Presence to children. It taps into an element of pop culture that almost everyone is aware of and that does, indeed, do a better job than the broken mirror analogy since one can really be present via a spacewarp (CHT to Einstein for this point) but one is not really present in a mirror.

What I’d suggest is that you tweak the language that you plan on using a little bit in order to avoid confusion. "Power field" describes something other than what you’re thinking of, and "dimensional warp gate," while it gestures at the idea, is inelegant. I would propose that you use the term "space warp." I’d also stay away from "wormhole" because it sounds bad and would also be misleading. I also wouldn’t use the bare term "warp" since in a Star Trek environment that might get people thinking about warp drive (which is absurd from a physics point of view). So I’d stick with "space warp."

I’d also be sure to throw in a qualifier that this may not be how God does it but it is a useful way of showing how what God does is possible.

I often present the analogy like this:

<me talking>When I was in the process of becoming Catholic, I had to grapple with issues like the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and how that could be possible. As a science fan, I realized that there were all kinds of ways that God could choose to perform a miracle, so if I could think of at least one way that God could accomplish a particular thing in a scientific manner then God knew at least that way to do it and probably a lot more besides.

In the case of the Real Presence the issues to be solved are (a) how Jesus’ body can be present under the appearances of bread and wine when, plainly, the consecrated elements are much smaller than an adult human body, (b) how Jesus’ body can be present in more than one place at a time (i.e., in every host in the world), and (c) what happens when one of the consecrated elements is divided, as when a priest breaks a host or when one takes a sip of the Precious Blood.

Thinking about this in scientific terms, it seemed to me that all of these issues could be explained in terms of the warping of space. Einsteinian physics allows for the possibility of the bending and folding and other distortion of space such that two points can be connected or even made present to each other.

It thus seemed to me that it would be possible for God to achieve the above-mentioned effects if he warped space to do it. The accidents of bread and wine might then be seen as a space warp connecting to where Jesus’ body is located in heaven.

The shape and size of the consecrated elements do not have to match the shape and size of Jesus’ body because the two ends of a space warp do not have to have the same shape and size, making it possible for the whole of Jesus’ body to be present, in its entirety, in the consecrated elements without leaving any of the appearances unfilled, thus accomplishing effect (a).

The fact that he is present in all of the consecrated hosts in the world is similarly explained, as it just means that there are many space warps connecting to the location of his body in heaven, thus accomplishing effect (b).

An the fact that he remains present in his entirety even when the accidents of the consecrated elements are separated is also explainable in terms of space warping: It would just mean that the space warp has been divided when the accidents are divided, and so there are now two space warps where there was one before, thus accomplishing effect (c).

Now, in reality, God may not be doing it this way. He may be doing it in another way that is totally beyond the ability of human intellect to even grasp. We also have to be a little careful about talking about Jesus’ body in heaven as if it is currently extended in space, for it may not be. But this analogy shows that, even within the realm of human thought, it is possible to illustrate a means by which God could accomplish the effects that the faith teaches us that he does accomplish in the Eucharist.

Once we have shown that something is possible, it becomes entirely a matter of God’s choice whether he does it or not. Though some things may be hard or easy for humans because of our limited resources, this does not apply to God. All things are equally easy for God, because of his unlimited resources. Creating the universe is as easy for God as sending a gentle breeze. And so once we have shown that a particular type of miracle is possible, this means it is as easy for God as anything else and thus purely a matter of his choice whether he does it.</me talking>

One final tip I’d offer: I wouldn’t speak of touching the accidents as touching the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is present, but it seems to me more proper to speak of touching the accidents rather than touching the Body of Christ directly.

Hope this helps!

Happy Ascension ThursdaySunday???

A reader writes:

It is my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) that the Ascension is celebrated today (Thursday) only in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and the New England states. Everywhere else in the U.S., the feast has been moved to this Sunday. How is a diocese able to move a holy day from Thursday to Sunday? And why the lack of uniformity across the entire church?

I can’t vouch for the geographical information you list. I know that here in California we have Ascension Thursday transferred to Sunday, but I don’t know about the practice in other provinces. I suggest checking your diocesan web site to see what the status is in your area.

Here’s the deal: The U.S. bishops got permission from the Vatican to move Ascension Thursday to a Sunday on a province by province basis.

Here’s the relevant complementary norm:

In accord with the provisions of canon 1246§2 of the Code of Canon Law, which states: "… the conference of bishops can abolish certain holy days of obligation or transfer them to a Sunday with prior approval of the Apostolic See," the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States decrees that the Ecclesiastical Provinces of the United States may transfer the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter to the Seventh Sunday of Easter according to the following procedure.

The decision of each Ecclesiastical Province to transfer the Solemnity of the Ascension is to be made by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the bishops of the respective Ecclesiastical Province. The decision of the Ecclesiastical Province should be communicated to the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and to the President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops [SOURCE, keep scrolling].

Happy Ascension ThursdaySunday???

A reader writes:

It is my understanding (correct me if I am wrong) that the Ascension is celebrated today (Thursday) only in Pennsylvania, Nebraska, and the New England states. Everywhere else in the U.S., the feast has been moved to this Sunday. How is a diocese able to move a holy day from Thursday to Sunday? And why the lack of uniformity across the entire church?

I can’t vouch for the geographical information you list. I know that here in California we have Ascension Thursday transferred to Sunday, but I don’t know about the practice in other provinces. I suggest checking your diocesan web site to see what the status is in your area.

Here’s the deal: The U.S. bishops got permission from the Vatican to move Ascension Thursday to a Sunday on a province by province basis.

Here’s the relevant complementary norm:

In accord with the provisions of canon 1246§2 of the Code of Canon Law, which states: "… the conference of bishops can abolish certain holy days of obligation or transfer them to a Sunday with prior approval of the Apostolic See," the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States decrees that the Ecclesiastical Provinces of the United States may transfer the Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter to the Seventh Sunday of Easter according to the following procedure.

The decision of each Ecclesiastical Province to transfer the Solemnity of the Ascension is to be made by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the bishops of the respective Ecclesiastical Province. The decision of the Ecclesiastical Province should be communicated to the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments and to the President of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops [SOURCE, keep scrolling].

Victory For Forces Of Good–In Canada

Ontario jails now allowing small quantities of wine for celebrating the Eucharist to be brought into prison.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)

EXCERPTS:

A policy has now been spelled out, according to Julia Noonan, a spokeswoman with Ontario’s correctional service.

"The priest may bring in 1½-2 ounces … as needed for that day," she said.

ALSO:

"Unfortunately, it came across that we were discriminating against the Catholics and we weren’t."

In fact, she pointed out, authorities at Lindsay had also prevented Anglican clergy, including a bishop, from celebrating the Eucharist because wine was needed for the sacrament. "We were therefore discriminating against the religious rights of all Christians who use alcoholic wine for celebrating the Eucharist," she confessed.