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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
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This Rock
Volume 1, Number 9
 September 1990 
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CAN GOD MAKE IMMORALITY MORAL?
Q: I have a question for you which has do with morality and religions, and it's this: Is something moral because God commands it, or does God command it because the thing is moral? It seems to me that if the former is true, then God could command rape or murder and it would be good. If the latter is true, then God has to submit to a moral law which is higher than himself. This implies he's subordinate to something else and is less than the supreme being.
A: Something is moral or good because in some way it shares in God's goodness. God's nature is goodness itself. A law is good and moral only to the degree it reflects divine law, which flows from God's nature as goodness. God can't make something intrinsically evil good simply by commanding it to be so. This would amount to a contradiction in terms (a good evil act), something which is meaningless. Not even God can do what is meaningless.
Although God commands things because they are good, this doesn't mean he must submit to a moral law higher than himself. The goodness of what he commands flows not from his commanding it, but from his nature. In other words, God's acts are in accord with his nature, which is goodness itself.
Q: A Fundamentalist friend insists Catholicism is a religion, but that his faith isn't. He says I'm being religious by going to Mass, but he isn't religious when he goes to church on Sunday. Can you explain what he's talking about?
A: Your friend is using religion in a peculiar sense. He means by it a man-made system of belief, as opposed to a divinely-revealed one. As he sees it, Catholicism is man made, but his faith is divinely revealed.
Some Fundamentalists contrast "being religious" with being a Christian. Being religious is understood as doing things to try to earn your way to heaven or to establish a measure of righteousness so God must let you in. Your Fundamentalist friend apparently thinks this is how Catholics view their obligation to assist at Mass on Sunday.
As your friend sees it, a Christian, as opposed to a Catholic, is someone who recognizes he can do nothing of himself to earn his way to heaven and merely accepts God's redemption as a free gift. Here's where your friend sees himself.
Tell him his definition of religion is different from yours (and from most people's, for that matter), but, if he chooses to use it, then Catholicism is not a religion. Explain that weekly Mass attendance is involved in fulfilling God's commandment to keep holy the Lord's day (Ex. 20:9-10; Heb. 10:25).
This flows from obedience to Christ, which, in turn, is made possible only by God's grace (Phil. 2:12-13). It's not tallying up brownie points with the Lord so he has to accept you for heaven.
Q: Can you tell me what the Liturgy of the Hours is?
A: The Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office, is the public prayer of the Church intended to offer worship to God and to sanctify the day. It consists of hymns, biblical and extra-biblical readings, and prayers offered at different times of the day.
The Liturgy of the Hours is required for those possessing holy orders (deacons, priests, and bishops) and for those men and women in religious orders (can. 1174). For others it is highly recommended.
Q: You people are worse than Fundamentalists. You should know better. You have abandoned the Catholic faith by defending the New Mass of Paul VI. Pope St. Pius V spoke out against those who would try to alter the True Mass, just as Archbishop Lefebvre is speaking out today.
A: The statement of Pope St. Pius V to which you apparently refer is found in the Apostolic Constitution Quo Primum (1570). The claim is often made by Lefebvrists that Quo Primum forbade future changes in the Mass, even those undertaken by a pope.
Quo Primum states: "We likewise declare and ordain that no one whosoever is to be forced or coerced to alter this Missal, but that this present document cannot be revoked or modified, but remains always valid and retains its full force--notwithstanding the previous constitutions or edicts of provincial or synodal councils, and notwithstanding the practice and custom of the aforesaid churches, established by long and immemorial prescription--except, however, if of more than two hundred years' standing."
There are several things to note here. First, Quo Primum was a disciplinary document, not an infallible doctrinal definition on the Mass. As such, there's no reason to think it's irreversible.
Second, Pius V's purpose in Quo Primum was to establish standards for the celebration of Mass throughout the Roman rite, not to determine how Mass would be said until the end of time. While allowing for a few exceptions, the revised Missal of Pius V was to be the norm.
Pius V wanted to ensure that "conservative" priests of his day wouldn't continue to celebrate their own local liturgies at the expense of the newly revised Roman Missal. In other words, he suppressed many local liturgies to establish uniformity of rite according to the needs of his day.
Third, the statement in Quo Primum that "no one whosoever is to be forced or coerced to alter this Missal" wasn't aimed at future priests who might dislike the liturgical changes of a future pope and who wanted to retain Pius V's liturgy. It was a safeguard for priests of that day who followed the revised Missal rather than the liturgy of a hesitant local bishop.
Fourth, when Quo Primum did mention those who were forbidden to alter the revised Missal, it said nothing about future popes. After all, how could Pius V have forbidden his successors to revise his Missal? If Pius V had the power to change the liturgies of his predecessors, why shouldn't future popes have the power to revise his? After all, his authority couldn't be superior to theirs.
Fifth, there's no evidence subsequent popes were aware of any intent by Pius V to limit their pastoral authority over the Church. Since the sixteenth century there have been numerous changes in the Missal of Pius V approved by various popes. Although none were as extensive as those of Paul VI, there were changes, a fact which refutes the Lefebvrist reading of Quo Primum.
Q: Please explain what is meant in the New Catholic Encyclopediaarticle on the Blessed Virgin Mary (page 337). It makes it sound as though Catholics believe Mary and Joseph had children and that Jesus had blood brothers and sisters from Mary. Some Jehovah's Witnesses with whom I've been dealing cite this article against the Church's teaching.
A: Read the article you mention more carefully and invite your Jehovah's Witnesses friends to do the same. Rather than undermining the Church's teaching on the perpetual virginity of the Blessed Virgin, the article upholds it.
The part of the article Jehovah's Witnesses like to quote concerns the meaning of the Greek words adelphoi and adelphai (derived from adelphos) as used in places such as Mark 6:3. It says that these words "have the meaning of full blood brother and sister in the Greek-speaking world of the Evangelist's time and would naturally be taken by his Greek reader in this sense."
Jehovah's Witnesses want to leave the impression the New Catholic Encyclopedia says the Greek words in question here indicate Jesus had brothers and sisters and that, therefore, Mary was not perpetually a virgin.
What the Jehovah's Witnesses fail to quote and what the author of the article goes on to say is that the Evangelists are following the Septuagint, not the classical Greek, usage of adelphos.
The New Catholic Encyclopedia article says:
"In the Septuagint (LXX) [adelphos] is used in the sense of 'kinsman.' In Gen. 13.8; 14.14, 16 Abraham's nephew Lot is called his 'brother'; the same term is applied to Jacob's nephew Laban in Gen. 29.15. In 1 Chr. 23.22 the sons of Cis (Kish) are called the 'brothers' of Eleazar's daughters, though they were their cousins.
"This usage of [adelphos] in LXX derives from the fact that Hebrew is deficient in terminology for blood relationships (as is also Aramaic, the language behind the Greek of the Gospels). Both Hebrew and Aramaic were forced to use ahim, 'brothers,' in the sense of 'kinsmen' to supply for the deficiency. The translators who produced LXX transferred this broader meaning of ahim to [adelphoi] and thus established a usage that the Evangelists could follow."
So, according to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, when the Evangelists refer to the brothers and sisters of Jesus, they're using adelphoi and adelphai in the way the Septuagint did, not as classical Greek writers did.
(Notice the article doesn't say adelphos is used to mean exactly cousin, but rather kinsman or relative. Jehovah's Witnesses and others sometimes argue that the New Testament's use of the Greek word for cousin, anepsios, precludes the Evangelists' using adelphos to mean the same thing. Whether this is so is beside the point, since Catholic scholars don't claim the Evangelists' use of adelphos is meant to assert Jesus' brethren could only have been his cousins--though they may have been that.)
The New Catholic Encyclopedia's closing comments about Jesus' brethren and Mary's perpetual virginity make it clear where it comes down on the subject: "There is, then, no necessary incompatibility between the Church's doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity . . . and the Gospel usage of 'brothers' and 'sisters' for the relatives of Jesus."
Q: What can you tell me about the Vulgate? A friend of mine says it's the Latin Bible. Is it true that Catholics translated the Bible into Latin so people couldn't read it?
A: If that were so, why even bother to translate the Bible at all? Why take the risk that someone might know Latin (as literate people did at the time)? Why not just destroy the Bible, if you didn't want people to know what it says?
Your friend is correct about the Vulgate being a Latin translation of the Bible. The name comes from the Latin versio vulgata, which means common or popular version. Since the thirteenth century the name Vulgate has been applied to the Latin translation of the Bible which was mainly the work of Jerome (A.D. 342-420).
The Vulgate was translated at the behest of Pope Damasus to provide a standard Latin version of Scripture as a replacement for the Old Latin versions which had become corrupt as a result of uncritical copying. The purpose wasn't to keep the Bible from people. Just the opposite. The Vulgate was the result of a demand on the part of Latin-speaking Catholics for a standard Latin version of the Bible to replace the Greek versions and the inferior Old Latin translations. The Vulgate was the vernacular version of its time.
Q: I read a Gallup Poll which said that fewer Catholics believe in the divinity of Christ than do Protestants. What does this indicate?
A: It indicates that the Catholics polled either aren't truly Catholics or that they're confused. It doesn't matter how many so-called Catholics disbelieve in Christ's divinity; it's still a teaching of the Catholic Church. A person who rejects Christ's divinity can call himself a Catholic--he can call himself anything he likes--but that doesn't make him one.
Failure to accept the divinity of Christ, a defined dogma of the Church, indicates one has abandoned the Catholic faith (and Christianity as a whole, for that matter). There are, of course, people who still use the name Catholic after they've ceased to believe what the Church teaches, but that says nothing about what the Church, through its magisterium (the Pope and the bishops in union with him), teaches.
Q: I keep hearing that some Catholics support abortion as a matter of conscience. I'm not sure what they mean by this.
A: Apparently, this means some Catholics feel it wouldn't be moral for them to support the Church's teaching on abortion or that their failure to live by the Church's teaching doesn't bother their consciences. Of course, this says nothing about the correctness of the Church's teaching. It tells us only what certain Catholics think about things or, at least, what they say they think about things.
It's hard to understand how a Catholic couldn't in good conscience follow the consistent moral teaching of the Church and remain a Catholic, given that he is obliged to form his conscience according to that teaching.
This doesn't mean following Christian teaching is easy. No one said Christian moral maxims such as "Love your enemies" or "Do not commit adultery" are effortless to observe. The temptation to set down our own ground rules about what's right and wrong and expect God, the Bible, and the Church to change accordingly can be great.
This temptation notwithstanding, Christ asks us to take up the cross. We sinners need compassion when trying to practice what the Church preaches, but the Church will never alter its preaching to justify our practice. In this, Catholic teaching about abortion is no different from any other Christian truth.
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