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Q u i c k Q u e s t i o n s
THE PILL AND PACEMAKERS
Q: Why is contraception any more "unnatural" than, say, pacemakers or appendectomies? If it’s okay to intervene artificially in the circulatory system, why not the reproductive system? If you can have your appendix removed, why can’t you have a tubal ligation or a vasectomy?
A: When Catholics say contraception is "unnatural," they do not mean that it is artificial, but that it is contrary to the natural or proper function of the body. Its purpose is to prevent the reproductive system from functioning as it was designed to. A pacemaker does not prevent the heart from beating properly—on the contrary, it helps the heart beat properly; it compensates for some dysfunction of the heart’s natural "pacemaker." It is this dysfunction, not the pacemaker, that is "unnatural" in this sense (i.e., contrary to the natural or proper function of the heart), even though the dysfunction is naturally occurring and the pacemaker is artificial.
Similarly, the inflammation of the appendix, not its removal, is "unnatural," contrary at least to its proper state or condition. We do not know what, if anything, is the proper function of the appendix, but we do know it is not meant to be inflamed or to rupture and cause death. We cannot restore it to its proper condition, so the best we can do is remove it. Even a more valuable organ with a clear and necessary function, such as a lung or a kidney, may be removed if it has become dangerously pathological. The reproductive system is no different: Cancerous ovaries or testes may be removed.
What makes contraception radically different from all this is that its purpose is not to correct some pathological condition, but to "correct" a healthy condition and to induce, or at least simulate, a pathological condition: sterility. Fertility is not a disease, like a heart condition or appendicitis; it is what the reproductive system is designed for. Contraception is not a helpful intervention designed to help proper function, but a harmful interference designed to prevent the proper function of the reproductive system.
Stephen Greydanus
Q: I don’t need your Church’s rules. My conscience tells me what’s right and what’s wrong. All I have to do is follow my conscience.
A: Not exactly. Conscience is the faculty that warns you you’re doing something wrong or neglecting to do something you should be doing. But it doesn’t work in a vacuum. Your conscience first must be told what’s right and wrong—it starts out as an empty slate—and that’s a job for your intellect. If you learn that stealing is no sin, and if you really believe it, your conscience won’t bother you when you rob a bank. If you learn that fornication is not sinful, no warning bells will go off when you engage in it. In either case your conscience will have been formed improperly.
Although you have a duty to follow your conscience, you have a prior duty to form your conscience well. You do this through following the moral teaching of the Church, through prayer, and through close attention to Scripture. Neglect those, and you will end up with either an empty conscience, which won’t be able to guide you at all, or with a cramped conscience, which will see sin where there is no sin.
The former condition is called licentiousness, the latter scrupulosity. Those who suffer from licentiousness never seem to see any sin but the grossest (which only other people commit, of course). Those who suffer from scrupulosity see sin even in innocent things. Someone who is burdened by no guilt at all (I have met some people like that) or by much guilt (I have met that sort too) should see a good priest-confessor. These conditions are signs of spiritual malformation, and they can be corrected.
Karl Keating
Q: A man in our parish who is pushing for women’s ordination says that, because Jesus and the apostles were Jews, they did not ordain women since, because of the taboos about blood and menstruation, they would not have been able to preach in the ritually pure Temple and would have offended the Jews. He says that since such taboos do not hold today, we should ordain women.
A: Inform your friend that, if Jesus and the apostles were afraid of a blood taboo, they had a funny way of showing it: refusing to ordain women to celebrate the sacrament of drinking Christ’s blood. In fact, the Church’s reason for not ordaining women has nothing to do with some supposed impurity of women. Rather, women are not ordained because Christ and the apostles deliberately chose not to do so. The question is not and never has been "Are men purer than women?" In worth, man and woman are absolutely equal in the eyes of God. Rather, the question is: "What sort of symbol is a woman and what sort of symbol is a priest?" As symbols man and woman have different meanings. Women are not the appropriate image of Christ, the husband of the Church, just as men are inadequate symbols of Mary, the God-bearer.
Mark P. Shea
Q: Why the big deal with angels? Are they really a part of the Tradition of the Church, or are Catholics free to believe or disbelieve in them?
A: As to whether or not angels are a part of the authentic Tradition-with-a-big-T of the Church, why, of course they are! When I was in the seminary there was an entire course of theology, called "angelology," devoted to the study of angels.
The teaching of the ancient Church and the testimony of the Bible itself ought to settle the matter for anyone who accepts either of them as authoritative sources. Those of us who accept both as authoritative ought to have even less problem.
Both Old and New Testaments speak often of angels. They appeared, for example, to Abraham before visiting Sodom to try to find ten honest men. Jacob wrestled an angel and had a dream in which he saw angels ascending and descending upon a ladder. There was an angel stationed at the gates of Eden as Adam and Eve were cast out. There was the angel of the Annunciation, Gabriel—without whose presence it is difficult to visualize the Incarnation. There was the angel who appeared to John the Baptist’s father, angels who appeared outside the tomb, and angels who appeared to the faithful at the Ascension—not to mention angels who "ministered" to Christ so often in Scripture. These are far too many references to be simple embellishments, with far too much detail.
True, saccharine images of angels hardly do them justice, and angels like that are certainly not part of Catholic Tradition or theology. Atrocious religious art that depicts them as effeminate creatures of ethereal substance hasn’t really grasped the reality of angels. However well-intended, that kind of thing does no service to the Church or to the faithful.
Fr. Hal Stockert
Q: Transubstantiation assumes that a thing is distinct from its attributes; that there is an unseen "substance" underlying the attributes. But why should we believe this? Why shouldn’t things be simply what they look and feel and taste and smell like?
A: Everyone recognizes that there is more to what a thing is than its physical attributes. Otherwise a thing’s attributes would not be related to one another, and we could not distinguish particular things at all; the world would be a chaos of various attributes.
Suppose outside your window there is a tree with a blue jay in it. Your senses perceive a variety of physical attributes: brownness, greenness, and blueness, rough texture and soft appearance, chirping and rustling. All of these sensible perceptions reach your brain simultaneously, but you do not perceive it all as a jumble, nor do you group it all together and think of it as a single continuous entity "bird-on-a-tree." You understand that some of these properties (blueness, softness, chirping) are united to one another and constitute one entity, while the others (roughness, brownness, greenness, rustling) constitute another entity. Above and beyond the sensible attributes you perceive, you recognize something more: distinct entities uniting in themselves these attributes and not those.
Scriptural accounts tell us about unions of attributes which seem to be entirely miraculous—for example, angels appearing as human beings, sometimes so much so that they are taken for men. There would be nothing obviously miraculous about any specific attribute of such a vision. The hair, skin, teeth, eyes, fingers, and toes would all look and feel perfectly normal. But there is no human nature underlying the effect. When the miracle ceases, the man appears to vanish before our eyes. There is a union of attributes, but an entirely miraculous one, with no natural principle of unity—no substance—holding it together, as in the case of a real man.
Catholics believe the same is true of the Eucharistic elements after the consecration. The physical attributes of bread and wine remain, but in a manner similar to the physical attributes of human flesh in an angelic appearance. These appearances are held together not by a natural principle of unity, as in the case of ordinary bread or a real human being, but by a divine miracle. Were the miracle to cease, the appearances of bread and wine would (Catholic teaching holds) vanish before our eyes.
Stephen Greydanus
Q: Are all Catholics bound to follow the new canon laws that came out a few years ago?
A: In January 1983, Pope John Paul II published a thoroughly revised Code of Canon Law, which became binding in the Roman Catholic Church on November 27, 1983. This 1983 Code, as it is commonly called, replaced an earlier set of canon laws, known as the 1917 Code. The passage of several eventful decades and, more important, the labors of the Second Vatican Council had rendered the 1917 Code, in some respects at least, out of date.
In October 1990, after a long consultation process, Pope John Paul II published a Code of Canon Law for the Eastern Catholic Churches; it went into effect on October 1, 1991. This Eastern Code replaced several smaller sets of Eastern canon law which were then in force.
Both the 1983 Code for Latin-rite Catholics and the 1990 Code for Eastern-rite Catholics are available to the general public in affordable vernacular translations, although Latin remains the only official language for both sets of laws.
Edward Peters
Q: Traditional, orthodox, conservative? What's the difference? Is there some formal definition of these as they relate to Catholicism? I am so confused now as to who I am.
A: The terms have different emphases, but you will find no "formal definition" for them. "Traditional" suggests a preference for older liturgical and devotional styles; a similar word, "Traditionalist," has a somewhat different emphasis and is used to label those intent on restoring the old Latin Mass. One can be "traditional" without being "Traditionalist" in that sense. "Orthodox" means "having the right opinion," and everyone should strive to be that; it's a handy word when used in contradistinction to "heterodox, " which means "having a different opinion (from the official teaching). " "Conservative" is a political term injected into religion, and I recommend against using it if some other word will convey your point.
Final advice: Don't worry about trying to pigeonhole yourself. Learn to be satisfied with just calling yourself "Catholic. "
Karl Keating
Q: I have recently been talking, via email, to a Baptist minister who claims that not only was St. Peter himself a Baptist preacher, but the original Church was Baptist. He claims that Baptists are not Protestant and never belonged to the "Roman Harlot." According to his revisionist account of history, the Baptists had been underground until the Reformation. How can I respond to this outrageous claim? I tried to show the minister that his claims contradict history, but he believes history to be "Roman propaganda."
A: You recognize that this minister's conclusions are not drawn from an examination of the record but from private prejudices. He knows, at least, that the Protestant churches are derived historically from the Catholic Church. His animus against the Church is so great that he refuses to have even the remotest connection with Catholicism. So what does he do? He falls back on the sorry notion that his Church wasn't founded by our Lord, but by John the Baptist. (Most Baptists don't believe this, but a few do.) But this causes a problem. In Matthew 16 our Lord says that he "will" (future tense) establish a Church, meaning that John the Baptist, by then dead, could not have established the Church of which Christ is the head. Conclusion? This Baptist minister isn't a member of the Church Christ founded and isn't a member of any church derived from it. Does this mean, by his own argument, that he isn't a Christian at all?
Karl Keating
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