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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
CAN'T LOSE OUR SALVATION?
Q: I heard a former Catholic, now an Evangelical, insist Romans 5:1 ("since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God") means that we can never lose our salvation. He says the biblical concept of peace is robust and doesn't mean just a temporary cease-fire. What's your reply?
A: That apologist is clearly trying to milk the verse for far more than he can possibly get out of it. First, the best manuscripts of Romans do not say "we have peace" but "let us have peace," making it an exhortation to have peace with God, or, more properly, to continue in the peace we were given in justification.
This leads to the second point, which is that anyone in a state of justification does have peace with God. But the fact that one has peace now doesn't mean that peace can't be broken. If one commits mortal sin, one breaks one's peace with God by turning away from him, and one loses the peace and justification one had.
Peace with God is something other than a temporary cease-fire, but that doesn't mean it can't be broken. By any standard, the United States and England have more than a cease-fire between them and currently enjoy a deep and long-lasting peace between them. Yet that doesn't mean it is impossible for them ever to go to war.
The biblical idea of peace clearly did not indicate a peace which was totally unbreakable. King David would have been shocked by the suggestion that, when God gave him peace (shalom) with his enemies, this meant they would never, ever, under any circumstances go to war with Israel again.
Thus in the divine sphere: peace with God can be broken, but one must do something grave (something with the grave matter of mortal sin) to break one's peace with God and become his enemy. That is why mortal sins break peace with God, but venial sins don't.
Q: I am convinced in my heart that I must become a Catholic, but my family is troubled, and my becoming Catholic could lead to divorce. I wish the priest at the local church could let me quietly enter the Catholic faith so that this could be avoided.
A: If necessary, your local priest can receive you into the Church privately. That is often done for those who are in situations where a public reception would pose a grave familial or financial problem for the person. However, he would want to be assured that the stakes really are high and that waiting a reasonable length of time would not change them.
If waiting a reasonable length of time to be received could prevent grave sins from being committed by others, then waiting could be permitted. However, it could not alter the basic decision to convert, since we are bound by divine law on that point and it would be a grave sin for a person who has recognized the truth of the Catholic faith not to join the Church.
The fact that you have recognized the truth of the faith thus settles the question of whether to convert, but the circumstances of one's life help settle when and how the reception into the Church is to be done (immediately or after a period, at Easter or at some other time, publicly or privately, etc.).
What counts as a reasonable length of time also varies according to a person's situation. What is a reasonable length of time for someone in a normal situation is not the same as a reasonable length of time for one on his deathbed.
However, a "reasonable length of time" is not an indefinite period that can stretch on for years with no end in sight. Once a reasonable period has elapsed, one is bound to go ahead and enter the Church, whether this is done publicly or privately.
Q: An anti-Catholic I heard said we don't need the Church to let us know what belongs in the canon of Scripture because a Jewish believer fifty years before Christ knew that books like Isaiah and Jeremiah were in the canon even without an infallible source to tell him.
A: No, he didn't. A Jewish believer fifty years before Christ didn't infallibly know which books belong in the Bible unless he had access to an infallible source.
In his day this would have been a prophet or an inquiry of the Lord via the high priest's Urim and Thummim. They needed an infallible source to know with certainty which books belonged in Scripture then, just as we do now.
Your anti-Catholic friend is ducking the question of how he knows which books belong in Scripture by trying to shift the burden of proof onto you. Don't let him get away with it.
Q: Can a person baptize himself if there is no one else available or willing to do it and if not, why not?
A: No one can baptize himself. Self-baptisms (also known as "auto-baptisms") are automatically invalid, and anyone who was initially baptized in this way would have to be baptized (unconditionally) by someone else (Denzinger 413 [DS 788]).
Another person must administer the sacrament to symbolize the fact that the person cannot reach up and bring down God's grace upon himself. God's grace must be given to a person; it cannot be taken from God.
However, for someone in a situation where no one is available or willing to baptize him, God will not hold that against him. He will count his desire for baptism in place of the baptism itself and give him the grace anyway. This is because God loves us and wants us to have his grace, even when the normal method of communicating it is unavailable.
Thus God wants the communication of his grace properly symbolized (in the normal rite by which it is communicated) but wants it to be communicated even when this symbolism is not possible (when the normal rite is not available). Thus the Council of Trent taught that "justification . . . cannot be effected except through the laver of regeneration or a desire for it" (Decree on Justification 4).
Q: I am considering becoming a Catholic. A priest told me that I should get a copy of a book called Catholicism, by Fr. Richard McBrien. The book is very expensive, and I was wondering if it is really worth getting.
A: Don't waste your money. Although Fr. McBrien was once the head of the Catholic Theological Society of America, his views on theology-today at any rate-are way out of line with the Church's official teaching. The book you mention by him is highly erroneous and an unreliable guide to the Church's teachings.
This conclusion was recently announced by an official Church doctrinal review panel here in America, the Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, which studied Catholicism for fifteen years.
Among other things, the book claims that Catholics may, in good conscience, believe that Jesus could have sinned, that Mary may not have given birth as a virgin, and that issues such as women's ordination, homosexuality, and contraception are open for discussion. None of this is true. In fact, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome recently ruled that the fact women cannot be ordained to the priesthood is an infallibly defined doctrine.
Fr. Augustine DiNoia, executive director of the American secretariat, said the bishops rarely condemn a book, but in this case it was important for them to act publicly because the book is used as an introductory text for Catholics. He explained, "It's like a book review, only it's a book review authorized by the bishops."
Thus, regardless of what some priest may have told you, the bishops have officially declared the book to be an unsound guide to Church teaching and an inappropriate book to use as an introduction to the Catholic faith.
If you would like a truly reliable guide to the Church's teachings, you can get a much less expensive and much more authoritative one in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Q: Is "liturgical dancing" permitted at Mass? I've seen it once or twice, and it looks silly and irreverent to me, like some kind of pseudo-interpretive ballet in which one person gets up and slowly dances while everyone else just sits and stares, feeling uncomfortable.
A: You have put your finger on one of the key reasons why liturgical dance is not permitted during liturgies in the West.
In 1975, the Vatican's Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship issued Dance in the Liturgy, which it declared is to be treated as "an authoritative point of reference for every discussion on the matter."
The document noted that although there are cultures in which dance retains a religious character and could be permitted in liturgy, "the same criterion and judgment cannot be applied in the western culture. Here dancing is tied with love, with diversion, with profaneness, with unbridling of the senses. . . . For that reason it cannot be introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever: that would be to inject into the liturgy one of the most desacralized and desacralizing elements; and so it would be equivalent to creating an atmosphere of profaneness which would easily recall to those present and to the participants in the celebration worldly places and situations." The document went on to note concerning the pseudo-ballet you mention, "Neither can acceptance be had of the proposal to introduce into the liturgy the so-called artistic ballet because there would be presentation here also of a spectacle at which [only] one would assist, while in the liturgy one of the norms from which one cannot prescind is that of participation [by all]."
This remains the law today. In 1994 the same Vatican congregation ruled: "Among some peoples, singing is instinctively accompanied by hand-clapping, rhythmic swaying, and dance movements on the part of the participants. Such forms of external expression can have a place in the liturgical actions of these peoples on condition that they are always the expression of true communal prayer of adoration, praise, offering and supplication, and not simply a performance" (Instruction on Inculturation and the Roman Liturgy, 42; italics added).
What you are referring to was a performance, whether done by one or a few performers.
Q: Isn't gambling a sin? How then can you Catholics justify playing bingo?-and in church yet!
A: First of all, the stereotype of bingo-playing Catholics is really overblown. The vast majority of parishes don't even have a bingo night. Second, gambling is not in and of itself wrong. Read your Protestant Bible and you will not find gambling condemned anywhere in it.
The average gambler loses money, but the process is entertaining, so what gambling amounts to is paying money to be entertained, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Gambling becomes sinful only when one pays too much money for the entertainment. A person in a casino spending thousands of dollars that his family needs iscommitting a sin, and the Church is very firm about this (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2413). It would likewise be sinful for a person to spend thousands of dollars his family needed on other forms of entertainment, too, like limited edition books, movies, collector's items, or whatever.
However, if you can afford it, there is nothing wrong with spending a few dollars for an evening of entertainment, whether it is bingo, the movies, or something else. In fact, spending a few dollars on an evening playing bingo in a church basement with a bunch of fellow Christians is probably a more wholesome activity than spending the same amount of money going to see a typical movie-or for that matter staying home and watching TV for free.
Q: Someone in the schismatic group the Society of St. Pius X told me that when the pope was in India he had his forehead anointed by a Hindu "priestess of Shiva" and that there is a photo to prove it. Is this true?
A: There is a photo of the Pope having his forehead anointed by an Indian woman, but she was a Catholic, not a Hindu priestess! She was giving the Pope a traditional Indian form of greeting known as "Aarti," which has no more religious significance than a handshake does in Western culture.
A letter dated November 22, 1994, from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications explains the custom and its role in Indian society:
"Indian Catholics . . . use 'Aarti' when a child returns home after receiving First Holy Communion and when a newly married couple are received by their respective families. Nowadays, 'Aarti' is often performed to greet the principal celebrant at an important liturgical event, as it was on the occasion shown in the photograph. On such occasions, 'Aarti' is usually offered by a Catholic married lady and certainly not by a 'priestess of Shiva' as has been alleged."
The letter, by Archbishop John P. Foley, went on to note: "Use of the 'Aarti' ceremonial by Indian Catholics is no more the worship of a heathen deity than is the decoration of a Christmas tree by American Christians a return to the pagan rituals of Northern Europe."
Your friend in the Society of St. Pius X should check his facts before spreading such malicious gossip about the Holy Father (cf. Acts 23:1-5).
Q: I was always taught to fast for one-half hour after receiving Communion, yet I see many parishioners heading for the coffee and doughnuts as soon as Mass is over. What is the rule?
A: Current canon law requires a one-hour fast before receiving Communion (Canon 919): "One who is to receive the Most Holy Eucharist is to abstain from any food or drink, with the exception only of water and medicine, for at least the period of one hour before Holy Communion." The Eucharistic fast was mitigated by Pope Pius XII from a complete fast after midnight to a fast of three hours (1957); then Pope Paul VI further reduced the requirement to one hour (1964). These changes were intended to encourage Catholics to receive Communion more frequently.
There is no present requirement for fasting after Communion, but many books have recommended, as an act of reverence, not eating or drinking for fifteen minutes after receiving -about as long as the sacred Species remains intact. If one remains at Mass until the closing blessing, one likely observes this recommendation even without realizing it.
In some cultures, the faithful follow the pious practice of drinking a glass of plain water before taking any nourishment after Communion. Such acts, while praiseworthy expressions of reverence, are voluntary and are matters of custom, not legislation.
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