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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 2, Number 7
 December 1991 
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Why not an infallible shortcut?
Q: If the Church has the power to interpret the Bible, why doesn’t it just issue an inspired, infallible commentary on the whole Bible and be done with it? Then we would know exactly what each verse means.
A: Your question confuses inspiration, revelation, and infallibility. Church documents aren’t inspired the way Scripture is. God doesn’t positively move the authors of Church documents so they write everything and only those things which he wants written, as he did with the biblical authors (Dei Verbum, no. 11).
Furthermore, the Church’s power to teach Christian truth infallibly isn’t the same as revelation. It’s not a matter of God miraculously illuminating the minds of the pope and the bishops to new or heretofore overlooked truths in Scripture. The pope and the bishops come by their knowledge of the Bible (and Catholic theology in general) the same way everyone else does--through study.
Infallibility doesn’t even guarantee the pope and the bishops will always know what a given biblical author means at a literal level (the meaning of some passages may be beyond biblical science’s ability to penetrate with any certainty--what Paul refers to as "baptism for the dead," for example). What infallibility does guarantee is that when the Church puts forth a definitive interpretation of Scripture, this interpretation cannot distort or misrepresent what the Bible teaches. Although scholarship and study are needed for the Church to determine what the Bible teaches, once such a conclusion has been reached, the Holy Spirit protects the Church from teaching wrongly about it.
Q: Hasn’t the Church changed its teaching on usury? In the Middle Ages usury was considered a mortal sin, and the Church condemned it, yet today the Church doesn’t forbid the taking of interest on loans.
A: Usury and interest taking aren’t the same thing. That the Church didn’t always distinguish the two as it does today is due to the fact that the medieval concept (and use) of money was different from ours today.
Usury involves interest taken on a non-productive loan. (Example: a loan to a friend so he can have an operation.) Since medievals believed money as such to be non-productive and sterile (which in fact it generally was in the Middle Ages), they thought any interest taken immoral. (It’s still immoral to take interest on a non-productive loan, since such a loan violates the virtue of charity.) Only things which were productive could be loaned out with the expectation of compensation for the loss of productivity. For example, it would not have been usurious for a medieval farmer to loan out his cow and expect compensation for the milk lost during the time of the loan.
When the understanding (and reality) of money as a largely inert, non-productive thing changed as a result of economic changes in European society, the principle that interest taken on money was per se inordinate, was abandoned as well.
Q: The Bible says the sins of the fathers are visited on their children down to the fourth generation. How do you square this with Mary’s Immaculate Conception, given she had a sinful human father?
A: Granted, Mary was conceived, biologically speaking, according to the normal order of things, unlike her son, who was conceived without a human father; this doesn’t mean she necessarily inherited original sin. It indicates only what would have happened had not God intervened.
As for the sins of the fathers being visited upon their children down to the fourth generation, you’re misapplying a general observation about how sinful behavior (and divine punishment) can be and often is passed down to descendants.
A "father’s" fourth generational descendent would be a great, great grandson or granddaughter. This would make the "father" a great, great grandfather. By your argument, Jesus would have had to have been a sinner because his great, great grandfather (on his mother’s side) was a sinner. Since you don’t believe the principle that "the sins of the fathers are visited on their children down to the fourth generation" implies this, there’s no reason for you to think it implies Mary’s sinfulness.
Q: My problem with religion is a basic one. If God is good, why did he create human beings with such a capacity for evil? And please don’t tell me because he gave them free will. To me that’s a cop-out. I want a real answer.
A: Why is it a cop-out? Your question implies that God could have given human beings free will, but not have allowed them the freedom to reject him. A "free choice" with no choice is no free choice. It’s like being asked which you prefer, being punched in the nose or hitting the other guy’s fist real hard with your face.
If God made human beings capable of choosing good over evil, then he had to allow for the possibility that at least some would choose the other way around. God intended (and intends) for human beings to freely participate in his life and love (heaven). If some choose otherwise, he allows that as well (hell). The possibility of some freely choosing heaven is worth the risk of some freely choosing hell.
Q: Jeremiah 25:9-12 says that the southern kingdom of Judah would be taken into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, for seventy years. Didn’t the captivity lasted only forty-seven years and didn’t Nebuchadnezzar died before it was over? This sounds like a false prophecy, so Jeremiah would be a false prophet.
A: If Jeremiah and his prophecies were so obviously false as your question implies, why were his prophecies preserved by the Jews after the Babylonian exile? They knew better than we the commandments regarding false prophets (Deut. 18:20-23).
There’s no reason to suppose Jeremiah intended the seventy years to be exactly seventy. The Bible frequently employs numbers for their symbolic value at the expense of their numerical accuracy. We do similar things today, when we speak of something as having happened a month ago when in reality only (say) nineteen days have passed.
It’s also possible the Jews understood the captivity to have lasted seventy or nearly seventy years, but measured the start and finish of it differently than we do. Some scholars argue the captivity began in 586 or 587 B.C. with the destruction of Jerusalem and ended in 515 B.C. with the restoration of the temple. Others pick the first invasion of Nebuchadnezzar in 605 B.C. as the start and the decree of Cyrus in 537 B.C. as the end. However the captivity is measured, there’s no reason to say Jeremiah was a false prophet.
As for Nebuchadnezzar, the text you cited doesn’t say he would be alive when the captivity ended, only that God would punish the king of Babylon.
Q: What’s the difference between transubstantiation and consubstantiation, since both affirm the Real Presence of Christ?
A: Consubstantiation is the belief that in the Eucharist, after the consecration, the substances of both the Body and Blood of Christ and of bread and wine remain. Some Protestants, particularly some Lutherans and some Anglicans, hold to this or a similar (though not identical) view called impanation.
Transubstantiation is the belief that the whole substance of bread and wine are converted or transubstantiated into the whole substance of the Body and Blood of Christ, with only the appearance (the accidents, as theologians say) or sensible qualities of the former remaining. Consubstantiation means the Eucharist consists of the Body and Blood of Christ and the bread and wine. Transubstantiation means only the Body and Blood are present, although the appearances of bread and wine remain as sacramental symbols of earthly food.
Transubstantiation is the traditional Christian view, the Catholic view, and the Eastern Orthodox believe the same thing, although they don’t use the same theological jargon.
While both views affirm a Real Presence of Jesus, only transubstantiation does justice to the biblical teaching regarding Christ’s presence as well as the tradition and practice of the early Church regarding the Eucharist.
Q: Aren’t all sins equal in the sight of God? James 2:10 says, "Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it."
A: The passage you cite doesn’t mean all sins are equally grave in God’s sight. Even under the Old Covenant some sins were more grievous than others.
The New Testament makes clear that some sins are greater offenses than others. The beam in one’s own eye is obviously more significant than the speck in another’s (Matt.7:2-5). The sin against the Holy Spirit which can’t be forgiven is more serious than others sins which can be (Matt. 12:31-32). The deadly sin John mentions (1 John 5:16-17) is graver than other sins.
Common sense tells us as well that something done half-heartedly isn’t as wrong, all other things being equal, as something done with full deliberation. Furthermore, something done in invincible ignorance isn’t the same as something done in knowledge of the truth (John 9:41).
Q: Can you provide a New Testament example which parallels how Matthew uses the word "until" with respect to Mary in Matthew 1:25? I’ve had Fundamentalists tell me the word translated "until" in most modern versions, is different in the New Testament than in the Old Testament and that Catholic arguments in support of Mary’s perpetual virginity based on Old Testament examples of how "until" is used won’t work.
A: Such examples do work because, while two different words are used (one Greek, the other Hebrew), they mean the same thing ("until") and don’t mean that something which didn’t happen up to a certain time, necessarily happened afterward. Those who say "until" in Matthew 1:25 proves Mary had marital relations after the birth of Jesus, then, are wrong.
Although Old Testament examples commonly cited by Catholics paralleling the use of "until" in Matthew 1:25 are perfectly valid, a New Testament example you can cite is Luke 1:80 which says, "And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel."
The Greek word translated "until" in this passage is heos, the same word used in Matthew 1:25. The child spoken of is John the Baptist who, after as well as before he appeared in public, resided in the desert (Matt. 3:1, Mark 1:3,4; Luke 3:2).
Q: Lately, I’ve heard the term American Catholic Church. How is this different from the Roman Catholic Church?
A: The American Catholic Church means simply that part of the Roman Catholic Church which resides in America. Although some mean by this expression a brand of Catholicism different from that taught by the magisterium of the Church (the Pope and the bishops), they speak only for themselves, not the Catholics in America they claim to represent.
Q: I don’t understand how we can love everyone. Can God really expect us to like everyone we meet, even obnoxious people?
A: You’re confusing loving people, in the Christian sense of charity, with liking them. Liking someone is an emotional response--a feeling--and we can’t always control our feelings. Love, on the other hand, involves an act of the will to desire, and if possible carry out, what is truly good for another person. It means valuing a person as created in the image of God.
A superb book on the subject of love and the numerous misunderstandings of the term is C. S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. Lewis makes clear how you can love someone without liking them.
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